Spatial dynamics of human dispersals

Hazelwood, Lee; Steele, James

doi:10.1016/j.jas.2003.11.009

Cited by 67 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(31 reference statements)

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“…Because these prey species likely occurred at low densities, local prey would have been depleted quickly, causing foragers to expand into adjacent open regions. Because of their specialized foraging niche, home ranges would have been both very large and have had very low effective carrying capacities, resulting in a fast moving, shallow wavefront (33).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial gradients in Clovis-age radiocarbon dates across North America suggest rapid colonization from the north

Hamilton

Buchanan

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

119

132

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A key issue in the debate over the initial colonization of North America is whether there are spatial gradients in the distribution of the Clovis-age occupations across the continent. Such gradients would help indicate the timing, speed, and direction of the colonization process. In their recent reanalysis of Clovis-age radiocarbon dates, Waters and Stafford [Waters MR, Stafford TW, Jr (2007) Science 315:1122-1126] report that they find no spatial patterning. Furthermore, they suggest that the brevity of the Clovis time period indicates that the Clovis culture represents the diffusion of a technology across a preexisting pre-Clovis population rather than a population expansion. In this article, we focus on two questions. First, we ask whether there is spatial patterning to the timing of Clovis-age occupations and, second, whether the observed speed of colonization is consistent with demic processes. With timedelayed wave-of-advance models, we use the radiocarbon record to test several alternative colonization hypotheses. We find clear spatial gradients in the distribution of these dates across North America, which indicate a rapid wave of advance originating from the north. We show that the high velocity of this wave can be accounted for by a combination of demographic processes, habitat preferences, and mobility biases across complex landscapes. Our results suggest that the Clovis-age archaeological record represents a rapid demic colonization event originating from the north.Early Paleoindian ͉ wave of advance ͉ landscape complexity ͉ hunter-gatherers ͉ Late Pleistocene

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spatial gradients in Clovis-age radiocarbon dates across North America suggest rapid colonization from the north

Hamilton

Buchanan

2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

119

132

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“…Also, if relatively stable ecological͞climatic boundaries to hominid range expansion existed, it is possible that prolonged periods of predator-prey interaction took place in regions situated at the interfaces of human and mammalian ranges. Finally, in the case of extremely rapid range expansion by humans, as in the case of New World colonization, the ''frontier'' may not take the form of simple linear front (19), and rapid colonization events are not expected to produce archaeologically detectable space-and timetransgressive evidence (20). Therefore, distinguishing between these two hypotheses archaeologically may not be as straightforward as in the ideal case outlined above.…”

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confidence: 98%

Global archaeological evidence for proboscidean overkill

Surovell

Waguespack

Brantingham

2005

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

147

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One million years ago, proboscideans occupied most of Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Today, wild elephants are only found in portions of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Although the causes of global Pleistocene extinctions in the order Proboscidea remain unresolved, the most common explanations involve climatic change and͞or human hunting. In this report, we test the overkill and climate-change hypotheses by using global archaeological spatiotemporal patterning in proboscidean kill͞scav-enge sites. Spanning Ϸ1.8 million years, the archaeological record of human subsistence exploitation of proboscideans is preferentially located on the edges of the human geographic range. This finding is commensurate with global overkill, suggesting that prehistoric human range expansion resulted in localized extinction events. In the present and the past, proboscideans have survived in refugia that are largely inaccessible to human populations.archaeology ͉ Pleistocene extinctions ͉ proboscideans P roponents of the overkill hypothesis argue that the global rash of large mammal extinctions that occurred during the Quaternary can be explained by a single factor: the arrival of a novel and efficient predator to new regions, that predator being prehistoric humans armed with a Stone Age hunting technology (1-3). This hypothesis is a difficult one to test and one that has often hinged on the relative timing of two events: (i) the local arrival of Homo and (ii) the local extinction of Pleistocene fauna. But even in the New World, where for more than a half-century the near synchrony of these two events has been known, the causes of Pleistocene extinctions remain unresolved (1-8). Confounding simple explanation in the New World case is the similar timing of a third event, the onset of the Younger Dryas stadial, a sharp reversal to glacial climate that coincides with New World large mammal extinctions (9).If mammalian Pleistocene extinctions resulted from human overkill as humans expanded their range across the globe, now extinct large mammals should have experienced complementary range contractions. As simple as this prediction is, it is far from simple to test, because it could require precisely dating the first appearance of humans and the last appearance of extinct mammals across the globe. Although the timing of Late Pleistocene extinctions is fairly well known for some species in some parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Americas (5, 10-14), the timing of extinction events predating 40-50 ka (thousand years B.P.) (the effective temporal limit of 14 C dating) are less well known. However, we argue that by using only spatiotemporal patterning in archaeological sites demonstrating the spatiotemporal contemporaneity of humans and extinct fauna, it is possible to test the overkill and climate hypotheses without knowing the precise timing of extinction events.The overkill and climate-change hypotheses can be expressed as two simple alternative scenarios to illustrate this point (Fig. 1). Consider a predator and prey in a...

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“…They often focused on determining the rate of advance of the dispersal front and factors that increase or decrease that rate. A classic example is the study of the Neolithic spread into Europe through equation-based models (Wirtz and Lemmen 2003;Hazelwood and Steele 2004;Ackland et al 2007;Lemmen et al 2011;Baggaley et al 2012;Fort 2012;Fort et al 2012;Isern and Fort 2012). Other common research topics include the Palaeolithic dispersals (Mithen and Reed 2002;Scherjon 2013;Callegari et al Pre-print version.…”

Section: The Purpose Of the Model And Research Questionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

So You Think You Can Model? A Guide to Building and Evaluating Archaeological Simulation Models of Dispersals

Romanowska¹

2015

Human Biology

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With the current surge of simulation studies in archaeology there is a growing concern for the lack of engagement and feedback between modellers and domain specialists. To facilitate this dialogue I present a compact guide to the simulation modelling process applied to a common research topic and the focus of this special issue of Human Biology-human dispersals. The process of developing a simulation is divided into nine steps grouped in three phases. ThePre-print version. Visit digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol after publication for the final version.conceptual phase consists of identifying research questions (step 1) and finding the most suitable method (step 2), designing the general framework and the resolution of the simulation (step 3) and then by filling in that framework with the modelled entities and the rules of interactions (step 4). This is followed by the technical phase of coding and testing (step 5), parameterising the simulation (step 6) and running it (step 7). In the final phase the results of the simulation are analysed and re-contextualised (step 8) and the findings of the model are disseminated in publications and code repositories (step 9). Each step will be defined and characterised and then illustrated with examples of published human dispersals simulation studies. While not aiming to be a comprehensive textbookstyle guide to simulation, this overview of the process of modelling human dispersals should arm any non-modeller with enough understanding to evaluate the quality, strengths and weaknesses of any particular archaeological simulation and provide a starting point for further exploration of this common scientific tool.All archaeologists start modelling the moment they step out of the excavation trench. We interpret the individual finds (e.g., pots, skeletons, buildings etc.) within certain frameworks (e.g., pottery typologies, bone taxonomies, architectural types etc.) and analyse sets of finds to detect population level patterns (e.g., cultural similarities, age profiles of bone assemblages, urbanPre-print version. Visit digitalcommons.wayne.edu/humbiol after publication for the final version. development, etc.) with strict analytical rigour. However, the interpretations of these patterns in terms of human behaviour and causality are predominantly built using natural language, i.e. they are constructed in the form of conceptual models that hypothesise which causal mechanisms might have led from actions of individual actors (the owners of pots, users of skeletons and inhabitants of buildings) to the detected population-level patterns. These causal relationships are often described as, for example, "culture A influenced culture B," "the dispersal reached area C," or "population D outcompeted population E." Although inferences like these are made on the basis of rigorously collected and analysed data, and are commonly built upon extensive research and a good understanding of multiple strands of evidence, they nevertheless represent a thought experiment and are therefore limited ...

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Spatial dynamics of human dispersals

Cited by 67 publications

References 16 publications

Spatial gradients in Clovis-age radiocarbon dates across North America suggest rapid colonization from the north

Spatial gradients in Clovis-age radiocarbon dates across North America suggest rapid colonization from the north

Global archaeological evidence for proboscidean overkill

So You Think You Can Model? A Guide to Building and Evaluating Archaeological Simulation Models of Dispersals

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