The past decade has seen a revival of environmental determinism in palaeoenvironmental research, with palaeoclimatic shifts implicated in the collapse of many past civilizations. Implicit in these studies is a belief that the observed cultural transitions can be causally related to the magnitude of climatic change. However, examination of the processes of these declines suggests that many exhibit patterns characteristic of complexity cascading within self-organized systems. If so, the nonlinear nature of these systems' responses to external forcing means that the assumption of causality in many of these cases should be considered questionable.

/pdf/environmental-determinism-in-holocene-research-causality-or-nce8etasp9.pdf

Environmental determinism in Holocene research: causality or coincidence?

Models of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition in Britain in recent years have tended to downplay the role of changes in the subsistence economy, emphasizing a very gradual adoption of new domesticated resources. This view has been particularly pervasive for the west coast of Scotland, which in the context of Britain presents a relatively marginal environment for farming. In this article, we challenge this too-quickly emerging orthodoxy through the presentation and discussion of both new and previously published stable isotope data and AMS dates. The palaeodietary information, while limited, strongly suggests a very rapid and complete change in the subsistence economy coincident with the earliest manifestations of the Neolithic on the west coast of Scotland early in the fourth millennium cal. BC. Whatever explanation is invoked to account for the transition needs to engage with the isotopic data. The possibility of colonization at some level needs to be seriously reconsidered. La transition du meso...

The Wet, the Wild and the Domesticated: the Mesolithic— Neolithic Transition On the West Coast of Scotland

Dating women and becoming farmers : new palaeodietary and AMS dating evidence from the Breton Mesolithic cemeteries of Téviec and Hoëdic.

In contexts where human remains are scarce, poorly preserved, or otherwise unavailable for stable isotope-based paleodietary reconstruction, dog bone collagen as well as other tissues may provide a suitable proxy material for addressing questions relating to human dietary practices. Inferences drawn from applications of this “canine surrogacy approach” (CSA) must be made with caution to ensure the accuracy and transparency of conclusions. This paper shows that CSA applications are essentially analogical inferences which can be divided into two groups that provide specific types of information and may require different levels of substantiation. A framework of three categories of factors is outlined to aid in establishing positive, negative, and neutral elements of comparison of dog and human diets. CSA applications may benefit from explicitly detailing the type and nature of the analogical reasoning employed and from providing a systematic assessment of the degree to which stable isotope values of dogs and humans under comparison are thought to be like, unlike, or of unknown likeness.

Dogs as Analogs in Stable Isotope-Based Human Paleodietary Reconstructions: A Review and Considerations for Future Use

Firewood, food and human niche construction: the potential role of Mesolithic hunter–gatherers in actively structuring Scotland's woodlands

Mesolithic Lifeways: Current Research from Britain and Ireland

Lithic assemblages from a variety of English later Bronze and Iron Age contexts are examined here in an effort to stimulate debate about the later prehistoric exploitation of flint It is suggested that a variety of technological and morphological features, supporting the idea of discrete later industries, can be identified A special plea is made to excavators of Late Bronze Age and Iron Age settlement sites to pay greater attention to the contexts of deposition (and to the other artefactual associations), of recovered lithic material Flint finds should not automatically be written off as residual from earlier activity on settlements

Flint Use in England after the Bronze Age: Time for a Re-evaluation?.

Marginality and the nature of later prehistoric upland settlement in the north of England

Acatalogue of stamped bronze vessels found in Britain, published by McPeake and Moore in a recent volume of this journal,2 discusses a total of 40 vessels, one of which was omitted by accident from their published list (Part II below, No. 34). There are, however, a number of errors and omissions in this catalogue, and they have failed to include three stamped skillets that have been known since early this century: all these vessels are referred to in papers used by McPeake and Moore in compiling their catalogue. A principal purpose of this paper, therefore, is to correct the major inaccuracies in McPeake's and Moore's contribution, and to bring to wider notice the three 'forgotten' skillets together with three recent finds from Cumbria: this work forms the basis of our Part II. In Part I, however, we discuss the evidence for the date at which Publius Cipius Polybius, the most prolific of the Capuan bronzesmiths, was chiefly active.

Some New and Some Forgotten Stamped Skillets, and the Date of P. Cipius Polybius

Lithics and subsistence in north-eastern England

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