Cloth, Gender, Continuity, and Change: Fabricating Unity in Anthropology

In this article, I compare backstrap-loom weaving in three cultural contexts: the ancient Maya, the ancient Aztecs, and 20th-century Mesoamerica. Although continuities are present, important differences exist in the ways that weaving was situated historically. Among the Classic Maya, weaving defined class; in Aztec Mexico, weaving defined gender; and in 20th-century Mesoamerica, weaving defined ethnicity. A comparison of these cases suggests that historical study is a useful tool for both archaeologists and ethnographers. It promotes recognition of the diversity of practice and belief in ancient societies. It helps to define the scope of contemporary ethnographic study. It combats cultural essentialism and injects agency into our accounts. It enables us to acknowledge both the rich heritage of indigenous peoples and the fact of culture change. Comparative historical study provides a strong rationale for the continued association of archaeology and cultural anthropology as parts of a wider anthropological whole.     

Gene flow and variation in stature and craniofacial dimensions among indigenous populations of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras

Populations with histories of outbreeding tend to be taller even in the face of seemingly unchanged health and nutritional circumstances, while inbreeding generally results in a negative correlation between body dimensions and level of inbreeding. Populations that have experienced a positive secular trend in stature and maturation typically have histories of higher outbreeding rates in combination with improved nutritional, health, and economic conditions, suggesting a genetic-environment interaction. In general, Middle American Indians have not experienced a secular trend in stature, nor a substantial increase in their standard of living, but they have experienced varying degrees of admixture with Spanish and African populations since the Spanish Conquest. The relationship between estimated gene flow and variation in several anthropometric dimensions is thus considered in indigenous Mesoamerican populations. Available data on height, sitting height, craniofacial dimensions, and admixture rate of Indian populations from southern Mexico, Guatemala, and Honduras were assembled from the literature. The population mean data on 3,371 adults from 23 populations for males and 18 for females were analyzed by regression with anthropometry as the dependent variable, and log10 of admixture as the independent variable. Admixture was less than or equal to 28.9% in this study and is suggestive of a primarily traditional Indian cultural and economic base. The results suggest that populations with higher admixture tend to be taller, and that the increase in stature is due to greater subischial length in both sexes. A decrease in nasion-menton height, and an increase in nasal breadth, nasal height, and the nasal index is suggested for the dimensions of the craniofacial complex.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)     

基于RS与GIS的海南西部土地沙化/土地退化动态趋势研究

遥感和地理信息系统技术的发展为研究沙化／土地退化动态趋势变化提供了有效手段,以１９８７年和１９９８年的ＴＭ遥感资料为信息源,综合ＧＩＳ参与监督分类及目视读的方法,以ＧＩＳ为工具提取土地沙化／土地退化动态信息。结果表明海南省西部研究区土地沙化面积在减少,严重沙化区已基本得到整治,但由于对部分地区生态环境的保护不力,使得这些地区继续沙化同;同时,该研究区土地 化区明显的向着逆转的方向发展,但季雨林面积     

Garden Game: Shifting Cultivation,Indigenous Hunting and Wildlife Ecology in Western Panama

Participatory research documented the hunting yields of 59 households in five neighboring indigenous villages in western Panama. These households captured 2,580 kg of game over 8 months, with 47% of the harvest coming from agricultural areas. The quantity of game captured in anthropogenic habitats is influenced by the hunting strategies employed. Only 25% of game captured during hunting trips was captured in agricultural areas, as opposed to 93% while “awaiting” and 65% using traps. Reliance on different strategies is in turn dependent on age, gender, and access to firearms. I argue that garden hunting is not a response to game depletion, but rather a productive activity that is complementary to broader cultural and economic patterns, and that simultaneously protects crops from animal predation. The creation of heterogeneous habitat mosaics through shifting cultivation has played a key role in the relationship between people and wildlife in the humid neotropics, leading to adjustments in both animal foraging patterns and indigenous hunting practices.     

Overlapping Patchworks of Mountain Agriculture in Peru and Bolivia: Toward a Regional-Global Landscape Model

Overlapping patchworks of farm spatial units are characteristic of the mountain landscapes of Andean regions of Peru and Bolivia. Patchiness and overlap (200-600 m) are shaped by the broad tolerances of major crops, high variability/low predictability of habitat factors, multifaceted cropping rationales of cultivators including their linkages to extraregional influences, and, to varying extents, the sociospatial coordination of crop choice among farmers. Indian peasant farmers manage overlapping patchworks using a concept of farm spaces as loosely bounded. They apply a naming system to farm spatial units based primarily on topographic features in order to serve their cultural, social, and political purposes. Key processes suggest a regionalglobal model of overlapping patchworks. The model elucidates the roles of landscape flexibility and uncertainty in conservation-with-development. Implications are shown by farm units of diverse food plants and prospects for in situ conservation. Findings caution against universality of the zone model of mountain agriculture.     

Survey of the black howler monkey,<Emphasis Type="Italic">Alouatta pigra</Emphasis>, population at the Mayan site of Palenque,Chiapas, Mexico

A survey of the population of the black howler monkey (Alouatta pigra) present at the Mayan site of Palenque was conducted during 2000. A total of 911 man/hours, spread over 112 days were spent surveying the 600 ha area of pristine forest at the site for howler troops. We detected the presence of 136 individuals of which 131 were members of 20 troops, the rest were 3 solitary adult males and 2 adult males travelling as a pair. Ecological density was estimated at 23 individuals/km². Mean troop size was 7.0 individuals and it ranged from 2–12 individuals; 60% of the troops were multimale. All sighting of howler monkeys were in evergreen rain forest and 75% were in trees ≥20 m in height. The reported densities and mean troop size are higher than those reported for the species in Guatemala and in central Quintana Roo, Mexico. The vegetation of the forest contains tree species reported to be used by species ofAlouatta in the Moraceae, Sapotaceae, Leguminosae, and Lauraceae plant families. Protection of a large perimeter area (ca 1700 ha) around the archeological site by the Mexican government ensures the conservation of the forest and of the black howler monkey population present at the site.     

Home Garden Production and Energetic Sustainability in Calakmul,Campeche, Mexico

Energy flows were studied for the 2002–2003 agricultural cycle in four households for which agriculture is part of a diversified survival strategy and four that practice agriculture as a business. Home garden inputs and outputs were measured monthly. Quantified inputs were: household labour, household agro-system production, and purchased external renewable and non-renewable energy. Outputs measured were: sales, family and animal foods. While both strategies had similar indicators in biomass and energy production, vegetable richness, and soil quality, household garden function and sustainability differed between subsistence and commercial householders. Subsistence gardens complemented family diet and contributed to household system resiliency. They relied heavily on renewable energy sources from within their agro-system. Gardens in commercial households reduced fruit tree area and increased animal husbandry for the market. They depended more on purchased non-renewable energy sources and were less sustainable and much less energy efficient than traditional gardens.

Climate-induced land health risk in farmland systems: A case study of Qarasou sub-basin in Karkheh River Basin

The present study was carried out to investigate the impact of climate change on land suitability for agricultural development in a sub-basin of Karkheh River Basin, Iran. For this, land suitability of the sub-basin was evaluated twice; once regardless of the climate change impact, and again by involving the impact of climate change. Simple Limitation Approach was used to evaluate the suitability of the sub-basin for cultivation of winter wheat. According to the results, around 22.57% (124121.16 ha) of the study area is suitable for cropping while the capability of 39.29% (216086.13 ha) of the sub-basin was evaluated to be poor/moderate for this purpose. In this research, in order to investigate the impact of climate change on farmlands, the changing trend of the four variables of maximum and minimum temperature, precipitation, and radiation were stimulated by the year 2039 using downscaled interpolation of IPCM general circulation model under three emission scenarios of A1B, A2, and B1. The stimulation was done by LARS-WG Software. The overlaying was done once more, but this time using the stimulated values. Comparing the current and stimulated land suitability maps revealed the fact that, in the most pessimistic future under A1B scenario, approximately 15.51% (85288.95 ha) of the study area will lose its capability for farming as a result of an increase of 1.3?C in temperature, and a decrease of 20.43% mm in total precipitation. The research finding emphasizes the risk of climate change on land health for farming purposes.     

Lake Shira: Microzonality of the soil cover of lake depressions in the Shira steppe

Microzonality was studied on the model object—Shira lake depression. Geometry of the soil structures that comprise the soil cover has been revealed and characteristics of components of soil combinations have been analyzed.     

Round and large: morphological and genetic consequences of artificial selection on the gourd tree Crescentia cujete by the Maya of the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Background and Aims

Artificial selection, the main driving force of domestication, depends on human perception of intraspecific variation and operates through management practices that drive morphological and genetic divergences with respect to wild populations. This study analysed the recognition of varieties of Crescentia cujete by Maya people in relation to preferred plant characters and documents ongoing processes of artificial selection influencing differential chloroplast DNA haplotype distribution in sympatric wild and home-garden populations.

Methods

Fifty-three home gardens in seven villages (93 trees) and two putative wild populations (43 trees) were sampled. Through semi-structured interviews we documented the nomenclature of varieties, their distinctive characters, provenance, frequency and management. Phenotypic divergence of fruits was assessed with morphometric analyses. Genetic analyses were performed through five cpDNA microsatellites.

Key Results

The Maya recognize two generic (wild/domesticated) and two specific domesticated (white/green) varieties of Crescentia cujete. In home gardens, most trees (68 %) were from domesticated varieties while some wild individuals (32 %) were tolerated. Cultivation involves mainly vegetative propagation (76 %). Domesticated fruits were significantly rounder, larger and with thicker pericarp than wild fruits. Haplotype A was dominant in home gardens (76 %) but absent in wild populations. Haplotypes B–F were found common in the wild but at low frequency (24 %) in home gardens.

Conclusions

The gourd tree is managed through clonal and sexual propagules, fruit form and size being the main targets of artificial selection. Domesticated varieties belong to a lineage preserved by vegetative propagation but propagation by seeds and tolerance of spontaneous trees favour gene flow from wild populations. Five mutational steps between haplotypes A and D suggest that domesticated germplasm has been introduced to the region. The close relationship between Maya nomenclature and artificial selection has maintained the morphological and haplotypic identity (probably for centuries) of domesticated Crescentia despite gene flow from wild populations.     

Beyond Population and Environment: Household Demographic Life Cycles and Land Use Allocation Among Small Farms in the Amazon

Most research featuring demographic factors in environmental change has focused on processes operating at the level of national or global populations. This paper focuses on household-level demographic life cycles among colonists in the Amazon, and evaluates the impacts on land use allocation. The analysis goes beyond prior research by including a broader suite of demographic variables, and by simultaneously assessing their impacts on multiple land uses with different economic and ecological implications. We estimate a system of structural equations that accounts for endogeneity among land uses, and the findings indicate stronger demographic effects than previous work. These findings bear implications for modeling land use, and the place of demography in environmental research.

Scale and the Explanation of Demographic Change: 3,500 Years in the Valley of Oaxaca

Explicit attention to scale provides ways to relate the long run of archaeology to the shorter moments of ethnography and history, and ways to link biology and ecology to political economy. In the Valley of Oaxaca, in southern Mexico, the long–term history of the aggregate, regional population was constrained by relatively stable factors of human biology and ecology. However, significant, patterned variation in shorter–term, disaggregated, local demographic change was caused by shifts in political economy, both in the past and in recent times. Such conclusions are made possible by an unusual datasetthat combines recent, historical, and archaeological population estimates for a whole region covering a 3,500–year period, from initial settled villages to the present, for every place ever inhabited. [Keywords: population, demography, political economy, Oaxaca, Mexico]     

The fifteenth- and twentieth-century colonization of the Basin of Mexico by the Great-tailed Grackle (Quiscalus mexicanus)

Historical evidence indicates that Great‐tailed Grackles colonized the Basin of Mexico from the Gulf Coast lowlands in the fifteenth century. They were probably assisted by an intentional introduction, but colonization succeeded because of anthropogenic habitat alterations over the previous two centuries. During the Colonial period, grackles withdrew from the Basin, only to recolonize it in recent decades. This withdrawal was also due probably to changes in land use, including drainage of much of the water from the Basin's lakes.     

Fish abundance and trophic structure from the commercial catch in Lake Patzcuaro, Mexico

The composition, abundance and trophic structure of the fish community in Lake Patzcuaro is analyzed, using data from eight samples taken from the commercial fishery acquired between August 1990 and April 1991. A total of 65 767 individuals, caught with gillnets selective to all fish and size, were analyzed. Eleven species (8 native and 3 exotic) were recorded during the study. Zooplanktivorous were the most representative species, amounting to 91% of the total number. Also, they were the most characteristic species (36.4%) when feeding habits were considered, followed by carnivore and omnivore (27.3% each), and herbivore (9.1%). Three species groups and three time-associated groups were detected by means of classification methods. Lake Patzcuaro's ichthyofauna is to be considered as a transitional community that has not reached equilibrium, particularly after the introduction of exotic species and local extinction of native species. However, Lake Patzcuaro has the greatest fishery production of all tropical lakes in the Central Plain of Mexico and it is mainly sustained by native species. The differential use of feeding resources by the fish species and the diversity in their habits must be taken into account to design strategies to maintain the fish structure (avoiding new introduction of exotic species) and the fish production in Lake Patzcuaro.     

Demographic features, distribution, and habitat selection of the gray mouse opossum (Tlacuatzin canescens) in Colima, Mexico

In western Mexico, gray mouse opossums Tlacuatzin canescens typically are not only in tropical deciduous and semideciduous woodlands but also in croplands and orchards. We conducted mark-recapture studies in January 2003–2007 and 2010 in coastal, northern, and central Colima, Mexico. Each year, five grids, established in areas of thick vegetation within a mosaic of habitats, had 100 stations (10?×?10), each with two Sherman traps, one on the ground and another elevated 1–2 m. On 24 of 30 grids, 82 individuals were captured 126 times (85.7 % in elevated traps). Sex ratio did not deviate from 1:1; there was no sexual dimorphism in mass (average for males, 28.21 g; average for females, 25.64 g); 46.3 % of animals were adults, 27.3 % of adult females were reproductively active, and 77.5 % of males had scrotal testes. Distance from centroid of trap locations averaged 15.24 m, with mean minimum distance moved between captures being 33.19 m. Densities usually were low (0.67–8.03/ha), with the species widespread in habitats studied. We assessed 14 environmental characteristics for each station using ANOVA, logistic regression, and nonparametric multiplicative regression (NPMR) to characterize habitat selection. T. canescens was more likely found where percent grass was about 30 % and litter over 50 %, with height of canopy less than 10 m and about 40 % closed. NPMR, being able to recognize hump-shaped response curves where intermediate variable values are preferred, identified two variables (percent grass and percent canopy closed) not detected by other techniques as important in characterizing habitat selection of T. canescens.     

Lake Sediment Records on Climate Change and Human Activities in the Xingyun Lake Catchment,SW China

Sediments from Xinyun Lake in central Yunnan, southwest China, provide a record of environmental history since the Holocene. With the application of multi-proxy indicators (total organic carbon (TOC), total nitrogen (TN), δ¹³C and δ¹⁵N isotopes, C/N ratio, grain size, magnetic susceptibility (MS) and CaCO₃ content), as well as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) ¹⁴C datings, four major climatic stages during the Holocene have been identified in Xingyun′s catchment. A marked increase in lacustrine palaeoproductivity occurred from 11.06 to 9.98 cal. ka BP, which likely resulted from an enhanced Asian southwest monsoon and warm-humid climate. Between 9.98 and 5.93 cal. ka BP, a gradually increased lake level might have reached the optimum water depth, causing a marked decline in coverage by aquatic plants and lake productivity of the lake. This was caused by strong Asian southwest monsoon, and coincided with the global Holocene Optimum. During the period of 5.60–1.35 cal. ka BP, it resulted in a warm and dry climate at this stage, which is comparable to the aridification of India during the mid- and late Holocene. The intensifying human activity and land-use in the lake catchment since the early Tang Dynasty (∼1.35 cal. ka BP) were associated with the ancient Dian culture within Xingyun’s catchment. The extensive deforestation and development of agriculture in the lake catchment caused heavy soil loss. Our study clearly shows that long-term human activities and land-use change have strongly impacted the evolution of the lake environment and therefore modulated the sediment records of the regional climate in central Yunnan for more than one thousand years.     

Vegetation Heterogeneity and Life-Strategy Diversity in the Flora of the Heterogeneous Landscape of Nizanda, Oaxaca, Mexico

We updated the floristic checklist of the Nizanda region, Isthmus of Tehuantepec (southern Mexico), characterized the occurring plant communities based on dominant species, and described the region’s flora according to life form, growth form, growth type, and growth habit spectra. Ten years of botanical exploration, along with surveys in 188 100-m² samples from different vegetation types, provided the baseline floristic information. Ordination and classification analyses were performed to examine the degree of differentiation between communities. Geographical ranges of all species were used to assess biogeographical relationships of this flora. The inventory includes 920 species (553 genera, 124 families). More than one-third of the families were represented by a single species, whereas the 10 richest families had 43% of the species richness. Dendrograms showing plot classification at three taxonomic levels (species, genus and family) revealed savannah as the most strongly differentiated community amid seven vegetation types. Regarding growth forms, forbs and trees prevailed. Phanerophytes were the most common life form category, whereas herbs and woody plants were the dominant growth types. The largest richness for all taxonomic levels was recorded in the tropical dry forest. The expanded floristic knowledge gained for the Nizanda region provided better criteria to revise the classification scheme of its vegetation. Our preliminary biogeographical analysis illustrates the role of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec as a corridor for thermophilous floras between two oceanic watersheds, and as a natural distributional limit for several Mesoamerican plant species.     

Total,and chemical fractions,of nitrogen and phosphorus in Eucalyptus seedling leaves: Effects of species,nursery fertiliser management and transplanting

Observations at a discharge site in the Eastern Dundas Tablelands show that acid production and iron mobilisation contribute significantly to land degradation in addition to salinity caused by rising saline groundwater. Conditions at discharge are shown to vary markedly with position in the scald and time (both daily and longer periods). Silica and iron cementation of soil particles also occur. A framework is proposed to interpret these processes based on conditions at the discharge point for a reduced groundwater.