Material Culture, Geographic Propinquity, and Linguistic Affiliation on the North Coast of New Guinea: A Reanalysis of Welsch, Terrell, and Nadolski (1992)

Welsch et al. (1992) study the frequency of occurrence of 47 artifact types across 31 villages on the North Coast of New Guinea. They find variation in assemblages of material culture to be associated with geographic propinquity only, with linguistic relations having virtually no effect. Our reanalysis, which suggests that language and propinquity have equally strong effects, has important theoretical implications for the study of culture, past and present. In addition, we present a new analysis of the differential distribution of material artifacts among village sites.     

Affinities among Melanesians,Micronesians, and Polynesians: a neutral biparental genetic perspective

The human colonization of Remote Oceania, the vast Pacific region including Micronesia, Polynesia, and Melanesia beyond the northern Solomon Islands, ranks as one of the greatest achievements of prehistory. Many aspects of human diversity have been examined in an effort to reconstruct this late Holocene expansion. Archaeolinguistic analyses describe a rapid expansion of Austronesian-speaking "Lapita people" from Taiwan out into the Pacific. Analyses of biological markers, however, indicate genetic contributions from Pleistocene-settled Near Oceania into Micronesia and Polynesia, and genetic continuity across Melanesia. Thus, conflicts between archaeolinguistic and biological patterns suggest either linguistic diffusion or gene flow across linguistic barriers throughout Melanesia. To evaluate these hypotheses and the general utility of linguistic patterns for conceptualizing Pacific prehistory, we analyzed 14 neutral, biparental genetic (short tandem repeat) loci from 965 individuals representing 27 island Southeast Asian, Melanesian, Micronesian, and Polynesian populations. Population bottlenecks during the colonization of Remote Oceania are indicated by a statistically significant regression of loss of heterozygosity on migration distance from island Southeast Asia (r = 0.78, p < 0.001). Genetic and geographic distances were consistently correlated (r > 0.35, p < 0.006), indicating extensive gene flow primarily focused among neighboring populations. Significant correlations between linguistic and geographic patterns and between genetic and linguistic patterns depended upon the inclusion of Papuan speakers in the analyses. These results are consistent with an expansion of Austronesian-speaking populations out of island Southeast Asia and into Remote Oceania, followed by substantial gene flow from Near Oceanic populations. Although linguistic and genetic distinctions correspond at times, particularly between Western and Central-Eastern Micronesia, gene flow has reduced the utility of linguistic data within Melanesia. Overall, geographic proximity is a better predictor of biparental genetic relationships than linguistic affinities.     

Physical variation and history in Melanesia and Australia

Local biological variation is marked in Melanesia. Some of it may result from gene flow from Micronesia, but the essential variation appears to result from isolation due to social fragmentation, and to genetic drift in place. In different regions, the variation may correspond well with language relationships, and probably constitutes differentiation which has been preserved over a considerable period, especially since the arrival of horticulture and development of village farming. However, none of this patterning suggests distinct waves of migration into Melanesia. Variation among Australian aboriginal groups is smaller, though far from absent. It may reflect a hunting culture together with social customs allowing more intertribal marriage than is typical of Melanesia. While phenotypically Australians and Melanesians differ, cranially they are closely allied, as against other major human groups. It is suggested that the genetic and phenotypic variety is old, that it existed in the previous home of the Australo-Melanesians (Old Melanesia, comprising present Indonesia and the Phillipines) at least back to 40,000 years ago, and that much of the variation in Melanesia and Australia, including their differences, results from the sampling process involved when different groups out of the original populations made early crossings of the water barriers from Old Melanesia.     

A Sketch of Language History in the Korean Peninsula

Among 7100 languages spoken on Earth, the Koreanic language is the 13th largest, with about 77 million speakers in and around the Korean Peninsula. In comparison to other languages of similar size, however, surprisingly little is known about the evolution of the Koreanic language. This is mainly due to two reasons. The first reason is that the genealogical relationship of the Koreanic to other neighboring languages remains uncertain, and thus inference from the linguistic comparative method provides only provisional evidence. The second reason is that, as the ancestral Koreanic speakers lacked their own writing system until around 500 years ago, there are scant historical materials to peer into the past, except for those preserved in Sinitic characters that we have no straightforward way of interpreting. Here I attempt to overcome these disadvantages and shed some light on the linguistic history of the Korean Peninsula, by analyzing the internal variation of the Koreanic language with methods adopted from evolutionary biology. The preliminary results presented here suggest that the evolutionary history of the Koreanic language is characterized by a weak hierarchical structure, and intensive gene/culture flows within the Korean Peninsula seem to have promoted linguistic homogeneity among the Koreanic variants. Despite the gene/culture flows, however, there are still three detectable linguistic barriers in the Korean Peninsula that appear to have been shaped by geographical features such as mountains, elevated areas, and ocean. I discuss these findings in an inclusive manner to lay the groundwork for future studies.     

Melanesian origin of Polynesian Y chromosomes

BACKGROUND: Two competing hypotheses for the origins of Polynesians are the 'express-train' model, which supposes a recent and rapid expansion of Polynesian ancestors from Asia/Taiwan via coastal and island Melanesia, and the 'entangled-bank' model, which supposes a long history of cultural and genetic interactions among Southeast Asians, Melanesians and Polynesians. Most genetic data, especially analyses of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) variation, support the express-train model, as does linguistic and archaeological evidence. Here, we used Y-chromosome polymorphisms to investigate the origins of Polynesians. RESULTS: We analysed eight single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and seven short tandem repeat (STR) loci on the Y chromosome in 28 Cook Islanders from Polynesia and 583 males from 17 Melanesian, Asian and Australian populations. We found that all Polynesians belong to just three Y-chromosome haplotypes, as defined by unique event polymorphisms. The major Y haplotype in Polynesians (82% frequency) was restricted to Melanesia and eastern Indonesia and most probably arose in Melanesia. Coalescence analysis of associated Y-STR haplotypes showed evidence of a population expansion in Polynesians, beginning about 2,200 years ago. The other two Polynesian Y haplotypes were widespread in Asia but were also found in Melanesia. CONCLUSIONS: All Polynesian Y chromosomes can be traced back to Melanesia, although some of these Y-chromosome types originated in Asia. Together with other genetic and cultural evidence, we propose a new model of Polynesian origins that we call the 'slow-boat' model: Polynesian ancestors did originate from Asia/Taiwan but did not move rapidly through Melanesia; rather, they interacted with and mixed extensively with Melanesians, leaving behind their genes and incorporating many Melanesian genes before colonising the Pacific.     

On the materials of mats: thinking through design in a Melanesian society

This article examines the selective use of plant materials in design in Melanesia. It explores – through an analysis of pandanus leaf mats in New Ireland, Papua New Guinea – how makers select fibres on the basis of their capacity to express social relations to varying temporalities before their natural decay. J.J. Gibson's theory of affordance and Donald Norman's concept of mapping are critically applied for this purpose. This approach emphasizes how social and temporal relations are condensed into objects, and refocuses anthropological attention towards materials and their affordances in the production of material culture.     

Linguistic Magic Bullets in the Making of a Modernist Anthropology

This article engages current debates about concepts of culture in U.S. anthropology by examining how assumptions about language shape them. Characterizing linguistic patterns as particularly inaccessible to conscious introspection, Franz Boas suggested that culture is similarly automatic and unconscious—except for anthropologists. He used this notion in attempting to position the discipline as the obligatory passage point for academic and public debate about difference. Unfortunately, this mode of inserting linguistics in the discipline, which has long outlived Boas, reifies language ideologies by promoting simplistic models that belie the cultural complexity of human communication. By pointing to the way that recent work in linguistic anthropology has questioned key assumptions that shaped Boas's concept of culture, the article urges other anthropologists to stop asking their linguistic colleagues for magic bullets and to appreciate the critical role that examining linguistic ideologies and practices can play in discussions of the politics of culture. [Keywords: Franz Boas, culture concept, linguistic anthropology, language ideologies, scientific authority]     

God Is Nothing but Talk: Modernity, Language, and Prayer in a Papua New Guinea Society

This article brings together theories of local modernity and of linguistic ideology to analyze the way the Urapmin of Papua New Guinea have encountered modern linguistic ideology through their Christianization. Against the prevailing anthropological focus on the indigenization of modernity, this article argues the importance of attending to cases in which people grasp the content of modernity on its own terms. Studying this kind of local modernity allows us to model an important kind of contemporary cultural change and discover neglected aspects of modernity as refracted through the experiences of people new to it. Here, an analysis of the Urapmin encounter with modern linguistic ideology reveals that ideology's rootedness in a model that ties meaning to intention and truthfulness and favors the speaker over the listener in the construction of meaning. It is suggested that an awareness of the biases of this ideology can open up new topics in linguistic anthropology. [ modernity, linguistic ideology, religion, Christianity, Melanesia ]     

Human skeletal and dental remains from Lapita sites (1600-500 B.C.) in the Mussau Islands, Melanesia

The Lapita Cultural Complex, radiometrically dated to between 3,600 and 2,500 B.P., is regarded on archaeological evidence as ancestral to modern Austronesian-speaking cultures of eastern Melanesia and Polynesia. To date, there has been a lack of human skeletal and dental material from Lapita sites; thus, the present sample from Mussau Island, although small, offers an opportunity to present some preliminary observations of their importance to Oceanic prehistory. The present analysis, based mainly on teeth, suggests that the Mussau Island Lapita people had slightly closer affinities with Indonesian than with Melanesian populations. These results correspond well with linguistic and archaeological evidence regarding the origin of the Lapita Cultural Complex.     

Genetic and linguistic coevolution in Northern Island Melanesia

Recent studies have detailed a remarkable degree of genetic and linguistic diversity in Northern Island Melanesia. Here we utilize that diversity to examine two models of genetic and linguistic coevolution. The first model predicts that genetic and linguistic correspondences formed following population splits and isolation at the time of early range expansions into the region. The second is analogous to the genetic model of isolation by distance, and it predicts that genetic and linguistic correspondences formed through continuing genetic and linguistic exchange between neighboring populations. We tested the predictions of the two models by comparing observed and simulated patterns of genetic variation, genetic and linguistic trees, and matrices of genetic, linguistic, and geographic distances. The data consist of 751 autosomal microsatellites and 108 structural linguistic features collected from 33 Northern Island Melanesian populations. The results of the tests indicate that linguistic and genetic exchange have erased any evidence of a splitting and isolation process that might have occurred early in the settlement history of the region. The correlation patterns are also inconsistent with the predictions of the isolation by distance coevolutionary process in the larger Northern Island Melanesian region, but there is strong evidence for the process in the rugged interior of the largest island in the region (New Britain). There we found some of the strongest recorded correlations between genetic, linguistic, and geographic distances. We also found that, throughout the region, linguistic features have generally been less likely to diffuse across population boundaries than genes. The results from our study, based on exceptionally fine-grained data, show that local genetic and linguistic exchange are likely to obscure evidence of the early history of a region, and that language barriers do not particularly hinder genetic exchange. In contrast, global patterns may emphasize more ancient demographic events, including population splits associated with the early colonization of major world regions.     

The colonization of the Pacific: the story according to human leukocyte antigens.

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) distributions in 16 Pacific populations have been collated from published and unpublished reports. Gene frequency and linkage disequilibrium relationships among groups show that Australians and Papuans share a common ancestry, that coastal Melanesia has about 16% Austronesian admixture, and that Fiji is truly intermediate between Melanesia and Polynesia. In Polynesia, Cook Islanders show closer affinity with populations of Western Polynesia than with Maoris and Easter Islanders, in contrast to their linguistic affiliations, but otherwise HLA distributions show a clear division between the populations of Eastern and Western Polynesia. This study emphasizes the contribution the HLA system can make to anthropological studies and has provided a version of colonization of the Pacific compatible with theories based on prodigious efforts in many disciplines.     

Evidence that accent is a dimension of social categorization,not a byproduct of perceptual salience,familiarity, or ease-of-processing

Certain features of language, such as accent, are acquired from the local social environment during an acquisition period starting at infancy and ending roughly at puberty. If the scale of social interaction expands after puberty, humans will encounter variance in these linguistic features, and the linguistic similarity between people will indicate the degree to which they share a common early social history. There is reason to believe that such a dynamic is not a modern phenomenon, but has likely occurred throughout our species’ evolutionary history since the advent of language. Consequently, the human mind may contain systems for categorizing others according to their linguistic repertoires, including their accents. Four studies demonstrate that (i) accent differences—both native versus non-native accents and also two different non-native accents‚ are the basis of spontaneous and implicit social categorization, and (ii) this is not driven by general acoustic-differences, low level sound differences, or differences in familiarity or ease-of-processing. Results are consistent with the hypothesis that human mind contains systems for categorizing others according to their accents.     

Structural Similarities between Brain and Linguistic Data Provide Evidence of Semantic Relations in the Brain

This paper presents a new method of analysis by which structural similarities between brain data and linguistic data can be assessed at the semantic level. It shows how to measure the strength of these structural similarities and so determine the relatively better fit of the brain data with one semantic model over another. The first model is derived from WordNet, a lexical database of English compiled by language experts. The second is given by the corpus-based statistical technique of latent semantic analysis (LSA), which detects relations between words that are latent or hidden in text. The brain data are drawn from experiments in which statements about the geography of Europe were presented auditorily to participants who were asked to determine their truth or falsity while electroencephalographic (EEG) recordings were made. The theoretical framework for the analysis of the brain and semantic data derives from axiomatizations of theories such as the theory of differences in utility preference. Using brain-data samples from individual trials time-locked to the presentation of each word, ordinal relations of similarity differences are computed for the brain data and for the linguistic data. In each case those relations that are invariant with respect to the brain and linguistic data, and are correlated with sufficient statistical strength, amount to structural similarities between the brain and linguistic data. Results show that many more statistically significant structural similarities can be found between the brain data and the WordNet-derived data than the LSA-derived data. The work reported here is placed within the context of other recent studies of semantics and the brain. The main contribution of this paper is the new method it presents for the study of semantics and the brain and the focus it permits on networks of relations detected in brain data and represented by a semantic model.     

Clan, language, and migration history has shaped genetic diversity in Haida and Tlingit populations from Southeast Alaska

The linguistically distinctive Haida and Tlingit tribes of Southeast Alaska are known for their rich material culture, complex social organization, and elaborate ritual practices. However, much less is known about these tribes from a population genetic perspective. For this reason, we analyzed mtDNA and Y-chromosome variation in Haida and Tlingit populations to elucidate several key issues pertaining to the history of this region. These included the genetic relationships of Haida and Tlingit to other indigenous groups in Alaska and Canada; the relationship between linguistic and genetic data for populations assigned to the Na-Dene linguistic family, specifically, the inclusion of Haida with Athapaskan, Eyak, and Tlingit in the language family; the possible influence of matrilineal clan structure on patterns of genetic variation in Haida and Tlingit populations; and the impact of European entry into the region on the genetic diversity of these indigenous communities. Our analysis indicates that, while sharing a "northern" genetic profile, the Haida and the Tlingit are genetically distinctive from each other. In addition, Tlingit groups themselves differ across their geographic range, in part due to interactions of Tlingit tribes with Athapaskan and Eyak groups to the north. The data also reveal a strong influence of maternal clan identity on mtDNA variation in these groups, as well as the significant influence of non-native males on Y-chromosome diversity. These results yield new details about the histories of the Haida and Tlingit tribes in this region.     

The origins of subsistence agriculture in Oceania and the potentials for future tropical food crops

Subsistence agriculture in the Pacific Islands has a complex prehistory centered on western Melanesia. Based on an analysis of cultigen provenience, a sequential model of a three-tiered crop structure of indigenous agricultural systems has been derived: (1) The independent early domestication of endemic species in the New Guinea region; (2) introduction of species from Southeast Asia; (3) the advent of American crop plants. The temporal sequence has archaeological and linguistic confirmation of 10 000 years ago for the beginnings of agriculture, 6000 years for Southeast Asian introduction, with the sweet potato contributing in Polynesia in prehistory, and in Melanesia only in post-Columbian times. Recent research directed toward issues of domestication in New Guinea and subsistence prehistory in Australia on three genera,Canarium, Colocasia andIpomoea, exemplify under-recognized resources with quite different potentials for economic botany. Unlike past exploitation of indigenous plant resources, future users of plants such as those exemplified, and especially where commercialization is involved, cannot avoid addressing intellectual property rights that pertain to species domesticated, selected or conserved by peoples of the non-industri-alized world.     

Is the composition of phytophagous insects and parasitic fungi among trees predictable?

We explore the relationship between the pairwise similarity of assemblages of exploiters (phytophagous insects and parasitic fungi) and pairwise genetic distance, range overlap, niche overlap as well as habitat overlap of host trees. Presence of exploiters was extracted from published literature for 23 tree genera occurring in central Europe (6164 host records of phytophagous insects and 860 host records of parasitic fungi). Across all pairs of tree genera, we found a strong negative correlation between the pairwise similarity of assemblages and genetic distances of hosts. This close correlation is due to deep differences in the composition of assemblages on coniferous and deciduous tree genera. Range, niche and habitat overlap were always of much less importance than genetic distance to explain the variation of pairwise similarity of assemblages of exploiters, although some correlations were significant. Therefore in general host switches of exploiters between related hosts are more important that host switches between hosts co-occurring in the same habitat. We found a robust relationship of the pairwise similarity of assemblages of insects and the pairwise similarity of assemblages of fungi which points to the possibility that insects are vectors for parasitic fungi which promotes correlated switches of insects and fungi.     

Fronto-temporal brain systems supporting spoken language comprehension

The research described here combines psycholinguistically well-motivated questions about different aspects of human language comprehension with behavioural and neuroimaging studies of normal performance, incorporating both subtractive analysis techniques and functional connectivity methods, and applying these tasks and techniques to the analysis of the functional and neural properties of brain-damaged patients with selective linguistic deficits in the relevant domains. The results of these investigations point to a set of partially dissociable sub-systems supporting three major aspects of spoken language comprehension, involving regular inflectional morphology, sentence-level syntactic analysis and sentence-level semantic interpretation. Differential patterns of fronto-temporal connectivity for these three domains confirm that the core aspects of language processing are carried out in a fronto-temporo-parietal language system which is modulated in different ways as a function of different linguistic processing requirements. No one region or sub-region holds the key to a specific language function; each requires the coordination of activity within a number of different regions. Functional connectivity analysis plays the critical role of indicating the regions which directly participate in a given sub-process, by virtue of their joint time-dependent activity. By revealing these codependencies, connectivity analysis sharpens the pattern of structure-function relations underlying specific aspects of language performance.     

石制品研究中的定量分析方法:组合间对比

石制品组合间对比是石制品研究的关键一环,定量分析凭借其在复杂变量对比研究中具有的客观优势拓宽了石制品组合间对比的视野,与考古学思想、石制品组合内涵解读的深化具有相辅相成的关系。一般而言,定量分析方法分为图表法和统计法两类,主要包括三个基本步骤:选择对比组合,确定研究目标;根据研究目标提取变量;选择合适的定量分析方法。值得注意的是,考古学解释仍为石制品研究的重点,定量分析方法更多作为一种辅助手段,应用时需检验其有效性。     

Phylogenetic analyses of Lapita decoration do not support branching evolution or regional population structure during colonization of Remote Oceania

Intricately decorated Lapita pottery (3100-2700 BP) was made and deposited by the prehistoric colonizers of Pacific islands, east of the main Solomon's chain. For decades, analyses of this pottery have focused on the ancestor-descendant relationships of populations and the relative degree of interaction across the region to explain similarities in Lapita decoration. Cladistic analyses, increasingly used to examine the evolutionary relationships of material culture assemblages, have not been conducted on Lapita artefacts. Here, we present the first cladistic analysis of Lapita pottery and note the difficulties in using cladistics to investigate datasets where a high degree of horizontal transmission and non-branching evolution may explain observed variation. We additionally present NeighborNet and phenetic distance network analyses to generate hypotheses that may account for Lapita decorative similarity.