Differences between Middle and Upper Paleolithic
Homo sapiens in the East Mediterranean Levant:
The Roles of Intraspecific Competition and Dispersal
John J. Shea
Anthropology Department, Stony Brook University
KEY WORDS: Africa; Behavioral differences; Competition; Dispersal; Homo
sapiens; Levant; Neandertals; Paleolithic
Archaeological, paleontological, and genetic evidence indicate that Homo
sapiens originated in Africa around 200,000–150,000 years ago (200–150
kya). Behavioral differences between earlier and later Homo sapiens populations
are clearly germane to research on the origins of uniquely derived (i.e., “modern”)
human behavior. This paper examines evidence for behavioral differences
between Middle (MP) and Upper Paleolithic (UP) Homo sapiens in the East
Mediterranean Levant. Levantine archaeological assemblages associated
with Homo sapiens between 130 and 75 kya and again between 45 and 25
kya show contrasts in settlement, subsistence, technology, and social
organization. Recent explanations for these differences include technological-social
evolution, neurogenetic mutation, population growth, and interspecific
competition. These hypotheses are each critically examined. None accounts
for the particular timing of the MP-UP transition, ca. 45 kya. A new
hypothesis explains Middle vs. Upper Paleolithic behavioral differences
among Levantine Late Pleistocene Homo sapiens as the result of intensified
intraspecific competition among African Homo sapiens populations who
dispersed into the Levant after a period of rapid climate change, 50–45
kya. This hypothesis contradicts the long-standing assumption of biological
and cultural continuity across the MP-UP transition in the Levant.
and Identity at Grasshopper Pueblo, Arizona
Charles R. Riggs
Department of Anthropology, Fort Lewis College
KEY WORDS: Grasshopper Pueblo; Households; Identity; Migration; Pueblo
architecture; U.S. Southwest
In the southwestern United States, Pueblo migration traditions hold the
key to understanding the identity of migrants in what Bernardini (2005)
data from Grasshopper Pueblo, this study assesses the concept of serial
migration by focusing on four layers of identity: the community, the
dual division between locals and non-locals, lineages, and households.
These four layers of identity are explored by focusing on the building
behaviors of these various groups as they settled into the Grasshopper
community in the early part of the fourteenth century AD. This paper
demonstrates that the concept of serial migration, combined with a focus
on the architectural correlates of social group identity, helps to explain
the formation of large aggregated communities in late Southwest prehistory.
between State, Nation, and Tradition: Palestinian Women
in Israel Make Creative Applications of Polygyny
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
University of Haifa
Gender morality; Israeli Palestinians; Polygyny; Social poetics
This paper presents ethnographic documentations of Israeli Palestinian “women
without men,” who seek out married men and use the notion of polygyny
to make moral sense of their non-normative heterosexual relationships.
presentations of self are construed against popular attitudes to polygyny
as practically negligible and morally anachronistic. Following a political-economic
approach to gender as constructed, historical, and embedded in multiple
structures of power, the cases are interpreted as providing a lens into
the structural contradictions that inform the lives of Palestinians inside
Israel. It is argued that the women’s uses of an explicitly
traditional and patriarchal script of gender morality to legitimize lifestyles
that are easily stigmatized as immoral have a quality of social poetics.
These day-to-day subversions of norms expose the strategic nature of “big” power
structures of state, nation, religion, and community.
Habits and Prosthetic Performances: Negotiation of Individuality
and Embodiment of Social Status in Australian Fishing
Tanya J. King
Deakin University, Australia
KEY WORDS: Embodied knowledge; Individuality; Industrial shark fishing;
Masculinity; Performance; Prosthesis; Social status
of individuality, as a component of masculinity, has tended to focus
on either the performance and championing of autonomy in the West (e.g.,
Kapferer) or the manner in which people in non-Western contexts become
explicitly manifest through relationships with others (e.g., Strathern).
In this paper, I consider an atypical example of masculine identity by
describing intimate interpersonal relationships between Australian commercial
shark boat skippers and their young deckhands. As in other Western fisheries
(e.g., Icelandic), economic success and physical safety are promoted
through synergism among fishers. In the Australian case, however, the
degree of corporeal cooperation is so extreme that deckhands resemble
living prostheses of their skipper, embodying their peripheral socio-productive
status. I consider this bond in the context of the Australian ethos of
masculinity, in which displays of “individuality” are
key. However, for young deckhands, their prosthetic role can compromise
their passage into manhood.
Review Essay by Fekri A. Hassan: Demography in Archaeology,
by Andrew Chamberlain
Jane Buikstra: The Social Archaeology of Funerary Remains,
Rebecca Gowland and Christopher Knüsel, eds.
R. Lee Lyman: Confronting Scale in Archaeology: Issues of Theory and
Gary Lock and Brian Leigh Molyneaux, eds.
Paul R. Mullins: The Archaeology of Class in Urban America,
by Stephen A. Mrozowski
Joe Watkins: The Ethics of Archaeology: Philosophical Perspectives on
Chris Scarre and Geoffrey Scarre, eds.
Melissa Powell: The Antiquities Act: A Century of American Archaeology,
Historic Preservation, and Nature Conservation,
David Harmon, Francis P. McManamon, and Dwight T. Pitcaithley, eds.
David L. Browman: Measuring Time with Artifacts: A History of Methods
in American Archaeology,
by R. Lee Lyman and Michael J. O’Brien
Paul G. Bahn: Writing Archaeology: Telling Stories about the Past,
by Brian Fagan
Stacie M. King: Space and Spatial Analysis in Archaeology,
Elizabeth C. Robertson, Jeffrey D. Seibert, Deepika C. Fernandez, and
Marc U. Zender, eds.
Jon C. Lohse: Palaces and Power in the Americas: From Peru to the Northwest
Jessica Joyce Christie and Patricia Joan Sarro, eds.
Amber M. VanDerwarker: The Last Pescadores of Chimalhuacán, Mexico:
An Archaeological Ethnography,
by Jeffrey R. Parsons
Lynn H. Gamble: The Prehistory of Baja California: Advances in the Archaeology
of the Forgotten Peninsula,
Don Laylander and Jerry D. Moore, eds.
J. J. Brody: Secrets of Casas Grandes: Precolumbian Art and Archaeology
of Northern Mexico,
Melissa S. Powell, ed.
Jane H. Hill: The Archaeology of Chaco Canyon: An Eleventh-Century Pueblo
Stephen H. Lekson, ed.
Maria S. Sprehn: Mimbres Society,
Valli S. Powell-Martí and Patricia A. Gilman, eds.
Patty Jo Watson: People of the Shoals: Stallings Culture of the Savannah
by Kenneth E. Sassaman
Kit Nelson: The Archaeology of Early Egypt: Social Transformations in
North-East Africa, 10,000 to 2650 BC,
by David Wengrow
David Killick: Myth, Ritual and Metallurgy in Ancient Greece and Recent
by Sandra Blakely
Lawrence Guy Straus, Editor-in-Chief
As small, independent journals such as JAR struggle with the consequences
of the digital revolution, one thing is clear: valid, credible, useful
scholarship is not free—nor is its dissemination.
JAR, like most journals (perhaps even more so than some), has “gone
digital,” while maintaining a high-quality, if no-frills, print
edition. All issues (including JAR’s earlier title, the Southwestern
Journal of Anthropology) are available electronically to subscribing
institutions: current and recent issues through the University of Michigan
Scholarly Publishing Offi ce and back issues through JSTOR. But, in order
to survive, JAR must receive revenues for electronic distribution and
cannot “give away” its copyrighted intellectual content in
the form of pdfs. To do so might “open Pandora’s box,” eventually
leading to the demise of the journal. It is an illusion that the results
of high quality scholarship can be widely circulated for free. There
are costs associated not only with traditional hard-copy publishing (printing,
binding, mailing), but also with digital dissemination. Both share the
costs of administering the flow of, and correspondence related to, manuscripts,
including the acquisition of peer reviews, which are at the heart of
scholarly publishing. Both types of publication share the costs of professional
copy-editing and composition. Systematic billing, accounting, record-keeping,
and copyright management must be paid for; Web sites have to be maintained
and upgraded; journals must advertise to increase subscriptions. Book
reviewing involves maintaining the database, correspondence and mailing
costs, etc. “Anything goes” is not an appropriate model for
high quality academic publishing.
JAR is a non-profi t operation, supported by subscriptions, copyright
permission fees, and the University of New Mexico College of Arts & Sciences.
Its costs are kept to a bare minimum. Since I raised subscription rates
(modestly) when I took over as Editor, 13 years ago, there have been
no increases (except to add postal surcharges for non-U.S. delivery).
Rather than frequently raise the subscription prices, I have held the
line. This is no longer possible, owing mainly to very significant postal
rate increases that are especially harmful to small publishers, as well
as printing charge increases and modest rises in copy-editing and design
costs. With this issue, the basic hard-copy subscription rates for the
U.S. are going to $60 for institutions and $35 for individuals. The full
rate-list is available on the Web site http://www.unm.edu/~jar. I am
sure you will understand that these modest increases are necessary. For
your subscription price you will receive at least 600 ad-free pages of
peer-reviewed research articles, the JAR Distinguished Lectures by eminent
scholars, and timely book reviews—all spanning the diverse areas
of anthropology worldwide. This is our pledge.
The kind of scholarly publishing that goes on in the Anglo-American
world— based on rigorous peer-review and efforts to be objective
in manuscript selection, as well as on seriousness and timeliness in
meeting periodic deadlines—seems to be the envy of much of the
academic world. This is my impression, derived from the increasing manuscript
submissions (to JAR and to other journals for which I review articles)
from foreign authors, who, in some cases, are under institutional or
even governmental pressure to publish in high-impact, English-language
journals. Ironically, this system, which seems generally to have worked
well, is under pressure from the fl ood of non-traditional digital outlets.
JAR intends to hold the line in terms of quality, while being supportive
to authors from beyond the borders of the U.S. I urge you to support
Most sincerely and appreciatively, I wish to thank the staff (Ann Braswell,
June-el Piper, Donna Carpio, and student employees Andrea Cooper, Char
Peery, and Sean Bruna) for their diligent, professional work, and members
of the JAR Editorial Board, Associate Editors, and the following generous,
responsible colleagues for reviewing manuscripts during the past year:
M. T. Sierra
J. von Schwerin