The influence of diet on the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in animals was investigated by analyzing animals grown in the laboratory on diets of constant nitrogen isotopic composition. 
The isotopic composition of the nitrogen in an animal reflects the nitrogen isotopic composition of its diet. The δ^(15)N values of the whole bodies of animals are usually more positive than those of their diets. Different individuals of a species raised on the same diet can have significantly different δ^(15)N values. The variability of the relationship between the δ^(15)N values of animals and their diets is greater for different species raised on the same diet than for the same species raised on different diets. Different tissues of mice are also enriched in ^(15)N relative to the diet, with the difference between the δ^(15)N values of a tissue and the diet depending on both the kind of tissue and the diet involved. The δ^(15)N values of collagen and chitin, biochemical components that are often preserved in fossil animal remains, are also related to the δ^(15)N value of the diet. 
The dependence of the δ^(15)N values of whole animals and their tissues and biochemical components on the δ^(15)N value of diet indicates that the isotopic composition of animal nitrogen can be used to obtain information about an animal's diet if its potential food sources had different δ^(15)N values. The nitrogen isotopic method of dietary analysis probably can be used to estimate the relative use of legumes vs non-legumes or of aquatic vs terrestrial organisms as food sources for extant and fossil animals. However, the method probably will not be applicable in those modern ecosystems in which the use of chemical fertilizers has influenced the distribution of nitrogen isotopes in food sources. 
The isotopic method of dietary analysis was used to reconstruct changes in the diet of the human population that occupied the Tehuacan Valley of Mexico over a 7000 yr span. Variations in the δ^(15)C and δ^(15)N values of bone collagen suggest that C_4 and/or CAM plants (presumably mostly corn) and legumes (presumably mostly beans) were introduced into the diet much earlier than suggested by conventional archaeological analysis.

Influence of Diet On the Distribtion of Nitrogen Isotopes in Animals

The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Europe and the People without History

Certains aspects de ce que les archeologues appellent traditionnellement variation stylistique peut etre compris comme le resultat de la l'introduction d'une variation selective neutre dans des populations en apprentissage social et l'erreur d'echantillonement dans la transmission culturelle de cette variation (derive). De simples modeles mathematiques permettent la deduction d'attentes de dynamiques de ces mecanismes evolutaires en tant qu'induits dans l'enregistrement archeologique a travers la diversite des assemblages et la distance des assemblages intermediaires. Ces modeles sont appliques pour deduire les causes de changments dans la diversite decorative et dans les assemblages intermediaires des ceramiques du Woodland de l'Illinois

Stylistic variation in evolutionary perspective: inferences from decorative diversity and interassemblage distance in Illinois Woodland ceramic assemblages

In this ground-breaking work, Norman Yoffee shatters the prevailing myths underpinning our understanding of the evolution of early civilisations. He counters the emphasis in traditional scholarship on the rule of 'godly' and despotic male leaders and challenges the conventional view that early states were uniformly constituted bureaucratic and regional entities. Instead, by illuminating the role of slaves and soldiers, priests and priestesses, peasants and prostitutes, merchants and craftsmen, Yoffee depicts an evolutionary process centred on the concerns of everyday life. Drawing on evidence from ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, China and Mesoamerica, the author explores the variety of trajectories followed by ancient states, from birth to collapse, and explores the social processes that shape any account of the human past. This book offers a bold new interpretation of social evolutionary theory, and as such it is essential reading for any student or scholar with an interest in the emergence of complex society.

/pdf/myths-of-the-archaic-state-evolution-of-the-earliest-cities-4bd8i38sj2.pdf

Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations

Specialization encompasses many ways to organize craft production, ranging from small, household-based work units to large workshops. Distinctive types of specialization develop in response to various social, economic, and environmental factors, including the demand for crafts, the social relations of producers, and the support base for artisans. These factors in turn influence manufacturing technology. Thus, different types of specialization can be characterized by a “technological profile,” which reflects relative labor investment, skill, and standardization. An analysis of Prehispanic ceramic technology in the central sierra of Peru demonstrates how these technological profiles can be used to identify the ways ceramic production was organized to provision consumers with utilitarian and luxury pottery. As we demonstrate in our analysis of pottery recovered in the Yanamarca Valley, utilitarian Wanka-style cookwares and storage jars were produced by independent household-based artisans, while imperial Inka-style jars were produced by locally recruited corvee labor working for the state.

Standardization, Labor Investment, Skill, and the Organization of Ceramic Production in Late Prehispanic Highland Peru

Clays, nonplastics, pigments, glazes, fuels, pottery artifacts, ceramic vessels, and potsherds compose the "raw materials" considered by ceramic archaeologists-those investigators interested in (some say obsessed by)-a unique category of material culture. Pottery (low-fired clay containers and other artifacts) and ceramics (high-fired, usually vitrified, utensils, and art objects), collectively ceramic materials, are engaging to a wide variety of lay persons and scholars, the latter ranging from potter-artisans, art historians, and ethnographers to materials scientists and archaeometricians. The reasons for this fascination with

Decoding Prehistoric Ceramics

Comparaison de l'importance de la population, du travail consacre aux constructions monumentales, de l'etendue des reseaux routiers, des pratiques funeraires et de l'organisation socio-politique des sites de Chaco Canyon (New Mexico) et de La Quemada (Mexique). Contrairement a la conception qui veut que les societes mesoamericaines soient les plus importantes et les plus politiquemnt centralisees, Chaco Canyon semble avoir ete organisee sur une plus grande echelle que La Quemada. Cependant, La Quemada etait structuree sur une plus forte hierarchie. L'evaluation correcte de la nature et du degre de complexite de ces societes peut aider a comprendre des modeles particuliers d'interaction entre de grands centres politiques eloignes

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/282045.pdf

Complexity, hierarchy, and scale: a controlled comparison between chaco canyon, new mexico, and la quemada, zacatecas

Isotopic investigation of pre-Hispanic macaw breeding in Northwest Mexico

Short-term sedentism in the American Southwest : the Mimbres Valley Salado

Cultivation of agave was common in pre-Hispanic northern Mexico and the American Southwest, and scholars generally accept that it was a strategy to ensure food supply during years of drought when the maize crop failed. Some even suggest that incorporating agave cultivation make large, nucleated settlements possible in arid northern Mexico ca. 500–900 CE. Yet the environmental circumstances under which farmers could reasonably expect such a strategy to decrease the chances of agricultural failure are not well understood. We explore the potential of this crop complementarity by assessing the risk of famine-induced migration events in different idealized environmental settings. We use Monte Carlo simulation to analyze a simple discrete-time, age-structured stochastic model for maize and agave agroecology, deriving the climatological conditions under which agave could have significantly reduced the probability of short- and long-term famine events. Investments in agave production made the most sense where average annual rainfall was between the levels that would ensure maximum maize yield and those that would mean loss of the maize crop due to drought-related mortality. Cultivating agave had little impact on famine risk at high (maize yields sufficient) and low (failure of both maize and agave) rainfall levels. Perhaps more surprisingly, it had its highest impact at moderate rainfall levels when variance in rainfall was relatively low. While a higher variance in rainfall increased the number of ‘good’ years for maize—where production would exceed demand and allow for storage—it also increased the probability of simultaneous failures in both agave and maize production. These findings are difficult to apply to specific times and places in the past, because rainfall distribution in complex, environments change, and it is difficult to take all relevant human interventions into account. The analysis does, however, offer support for the proposition that agave cultivation could have significantly enhanced survival probabilities of large, nucleated settlements in certain circumstances. It remains for further study to identify such circumstances more precisely geographically and temporally.

/pdf/analyzing-the-impact-of-agave-cultivation-on-famine-risk-in-1erv6n1hwh.pdf

Analyzing the Impact of Agave Cultivation on Famine Risk in Arid Pre-Hispanic Northern Mexico

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