- Department of Archaeology,
Simon Fraser University,
8888 University Drive,
Burnaby,
BC V5A 1S6,
Canada.
Mark Collard
Simon Fraser University, Human Evolutionary Studies Program, Faculty Member
- Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Wenner-Gren Symposia, Department Memberadd
- Evolutionary Biology, Paleobiology, Archaeology, Paleoanthropology, Prehistoric Archaeology, Anthropology, and 29 moreBiological Anthropology, Gene Culture Coevolution, Human Behavioral Ecology, Human Evolution, Bioarchaeology, Paleoprimatology, Cultural Transmission (Evolutionary Biology), Systematic Biology, Morphological evolution, Palaeolithic Archaeology, Anthropometry, Biology, Hunters, Fishers and Gatherers' Archaeology, Mesolithic/Epipalaeolithic Archaeology, Evolutionary Anthropology, Primatology, Neolithic Archaeology, Evolutionary Archaeology, Paleontology, Paleolithic Archaeology, Neanderthals (Palaeolithic Archaeology), Archaeological Science, Neolithic Britain and Ireland, Chimpanzees, Culture and Mind in non-human Animals, Early farming, Neanderthal Sexual Dimorphism, Hominin Taxonomy, and Evolutionedit
- http://profmarkcollard.com/edit
This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile the latest thinking about archaeological theory. The authors provide a comprehensive picture of the theoretical foundations by which... more
This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile the latest thinking about archaeological theory. The authors provide a comprehensive picture of the theoretical foundations by which archaeologists contextualize and analyze their archaeological data. Student readers will also gain a sense of the immense power that theory has for building interpretations of the past, while recognizing the wonderful archaeological traditions that created it. An extensive bibliography is included. This volume is the single most important reference for current information on contemporary archaeological theories.
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Monuments are perplexing from a Darwinian perspective because building them diverts energy from survival and reproduction. In the late 1980s, Dunnell proposed a solution to this conundrum. He suggested that wasting energy confers an... more
Monuments are perplexing from a Darwinian perspective because building them diverts energy from survival and reproduction. In the late 1980s, Dunnell proposed a solution to this conundrum. He suggested that wasting energy confers an adaptive advantage in highly variable environments. This hypothesis has been used to explain several instances of monument building but it has only been evaluated once and that study suggested it is flawed. Here, we report a series of experiments in which we used an agent-based model to assess the hypothesis while taking into account two factors that could enhance the adaptiveness of waste—restricted agent movement and spatial structure in resource availability. Waste was strongly selected against in most of the experiments. Two experiments suggested that very restricted mobility can select for waste, but this effect disappeared when environmental variation increased from moderate to high. Thus, our experiments also suggest that the waste hypothesis is flawed.
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Research Interests: Evolutionary Biology, Archaeology, Paleoanthropology, Anthropology, Human Evolution, and 15 morePhylogenetics, Biology, Medicine, Gratitude, Fossils, Animals, Homo Sapiens, Biological evolution, Genus Homo, Human Paleontology, Hominidae, Bayes Theorem, Cc, Bayesian phylogenetic analysis, and cornerstone
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List of fossil hypodigm
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Ethnohistoric accounts indicate that the people of Australia's Channel Country engaged in activities rarely recorded elsewhere on the continent, including food storage, aquaculture and possible cultivation, yet there has been little... more
Ethnohistoric accounts indicate that the people of Australia's Channel Country engaged in activities rarely recorded elsewhere on the continent, including food storage, aquaculture and possible cultivation, yet there has been little archaeological fieldwork to verify these accounts. Here, the authors report on a collaborative research project initiated by the Mithaka people addressing this lack of archaeological investigation. The results show that Mithaka Country has a substantial and diverse archaeological record, including numerous large stone quarries, multiple ritual structures and substantial dwellings. Our archaeological research revealed unknown aspects, such as the scale of Mithaka quarrying, which could stimulate re-evaluation of Aboriginal socio-economic systems in parts of ancient Australia.
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The Viking maritime expansion from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) marks one of the swiftest and most far-flung cultural transformations in global history. During this time (c. 750 to 1050 CE), the Vikings reached most of... more
The Viking maritime expansion from Scandinavia (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) marks one of the swiftest and most far-flung cultural transformations in global history. During this time (c. 750 to 1050 CE), the Vikings reached most of western Eurasia, Greenland, and North America, and left a cultural legacy that persists till today. To understand the genetic structure and influence of the Viking expansion, we sequenced the genomes of 442 ancient humans from across Europe and Greenland ranging from the Bronze Age (c. 2400 BC) to the early Modern period (c. 1600 CE), with particular emphasis on the Viking Age. We find that the period preceding the Viking Age was accompanied by foreign gene flow into Scandinavia from the south and east: spreading from Denmark and eastern Sweden to the rest of Scandinavia. Despite the close linguistic similarities of modern Scandinavian languages, we observe genetic structure within Scandinavia, suggesting that regional population differences were already ...
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Ancient monuments represent a puzzle from the perspective of evolutionary theory. It is obvious that their construction would have been costly in terms of energy, but it is not clear how they would have enhanced reproductive success. In... more
Ancient monuments represent a puzzle from the perspective of evolutionary theory. It is obvious that their construction would have been costly in terms of energy, but it is not clear how they would have enhanced reproductive success. In the late 1980s, the prominent US archaeologist Robert Dunnell proposed a solution to this conundrum. He argued that wasting energy on monuments and other forms of what he dubbed “cultural elaboration” would have conferred a selective advantage in highly variable environments. In the present paper, we report a study in which we used an agent-based model to test the core prediction of Dunnell’s hypothesis. In the model, the agents inherited a propensity to waste and were subjected to selection in low and high variability environments. The results we obtained do not support the hypothesis. We found that the propensity to waste was subject to strong negative selection regardless of the level of environmental variability. At the start of the simulation ru...
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North American fluted stone projectile points occur over a relatively short time span, ca. 13,300–11,900 calBP, referred to as the Early Paleoindian period. One long-standing topic in Paleoindian archaeology is whether variation in the... more
North American fluted stone projectile points occur over a relatively short time span, ca. 13,300–11,900 calBP, referred to as the Early Paleoindian period. One long-standing topic in Paleoindian archaeology is whether variation in the points is the result of drift or adaptation to regional environments. Studies have returned apparently conflicting results, but closer inspection shows that the results are not in conflict. At one scale—the overall pattern of flake removal—there appears to have been an early continent-wide mode of point manufacture, but at another scale—projectile-point shape—there appears to have been regional adaptive differences. In terms of learning models, the Early Paleoindian period appears to have been characterized by a mix of indirect-bias learning at the continent-wide level and guided variation at the regional level, the latter a result of continued experimentation with hafting elements and other point characters to match the changing regional environments. Close examination of character-state changes allows a glimpse into how Paleoindian knappers negotiated the design landscape in terms of character-state optimality of their stone weaponry.
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CrossRef is an independent membership association, founded and directed by publishers. CrossRef's mandate is to connect users to primary research content, by enabling publishers to do collectively what they can't do... more
CrossRef is an independent membership association, founded and directed by publishers. CrossRef's mandate is to connect users to primary research content, by enabling publishers to do collectively what they can't do individually. CrossRef is also the official DOI registration agency for scholarly and professional publications. It operates a cross-publisher citation linking system that allows a researcher to click on a reference citation on one publisher's platform and link directly to the cited content on another publisher's platform, subject to the ...
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UCL logo UCL Discovery. ...
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*<p>Number of points complete enough to be digitized.</p>1<p>Five of the points analyzed from Drake were epoxy casts.</p>2<p>We analyzed three of the points using scale drawings made by S. Moore (see <a... more
*<p>Number of points complete enough to be digitized.</p>1<p>Five of the points analyzed from Drake were epoxy casts.</p>2<p>We analyzed three of the points using scale drawings made by S. Moore (see <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Huckell2" target="_blank">[43]</a>) and a cast of a fourth point.</p>3<p>The actual location of the Fenn cache is unknown; however, it was most likely recovered from the three-corners area where Utah, Wyoming, and Idaho meet <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Frison4" target="_blank">[47]</a>.</p
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<p>Character abbreviations follow <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0030530#pone-0030530-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>.</p
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<p>Character abbreviations follow <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0030530#pone-0030530-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. Triangles = kill/camp points. Circles... more
<p>Character abbreviations follow <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0030530#pone-0030530-t001" target="_blank">Table 1</a>. Triangles = kill/camp points. Circles = cached points. Solid line = best-fit line for kill/camp points. Dashed line = best-fit line for cached points.</p
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<p>Results of regression analyses using the unstratified global sample (n = 263). See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0072269#s2" target="_blank">Materials and... more
<p>Results of regression analyses using the unstratified global sample (n = 263). See <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0072269#s2" target="_blank">Materials and Methods</a> for details of abbreviations.</p
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<p>Character abbreviations follow <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone-0036364-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>. (Figure is adapted from Buchanan et al.... more
<p>Character abbreviations follow <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone-0036364-t002" target="_blank">Table 2</a>. (Figure is adapted from Buchanan et al. <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Buchanan7" target="_blank">[71]</a>).</p
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Isotopic analyses of human remains have the potential to alter our understanding of prehistoric lifeways and migration in Australia, but very few such analyses have been conducted in the country to date. Here, we report the first regional... more
Isotopic analyses of human remains have the potential to alter our understanding of prehistoric lifeways and migration in Australia, but very few such analyses have been conducted in the country to date. Here, we report the first regional multiproxy isotope study of pre-contact human remains from Australia. We obtained δ13Ccollagen, δ15Ncollagen, δ18Obioapatite, δ13Cbioapatite and 87Sr/86Sr isotope values from three complex interments and two simple beach burials from the Flinders Group of Islands, Queensland. The study had two goals. One was to assess how the diets of the individuals compared to those of pre-contact populations elsewhere in the region. The other goal was to test the hypothesis that burial type was indicative of local/non-local status. We found that the individuals’ diets were diverse and included a relatively high percentage of low trophic level foods. With regard to the difference in burial practices, we found those afforded complex burials had grown up in the Flinders Group, while those given beach burials likely grew up away from the islands. These results highlight the intricacies of the lives of the Indigenous Australians who inhabited the islands and inform our understanding of their pre-contact diet and mobility. The results also suggest that multiproxy isotope studies may be able to aid with the repatriation of unprovenanced remains of Indigenous Australians.
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<p><i>P</i>-values (one-tailed) from Fligner and Killeen's <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Fligner1" target="_blank">[65]</a>... more
<p><i>P</i>-values (one-tailed) from Fligner and Killeen's <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Fligner1" target="_blank">[65]</a> distribution-free two-sample test for coefficient of variations are shown.</p>*<p>Base character has CV that is significantly lesser than the non-base character using Benjamini and Yekutieli's <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Benjamini1" target="_blank">[69]</a> alpha correction; the critical value for 40 tests is <i>α</i> = 0.01169.</p>‡<p>Base character has CV that is significantly greater than the non-base character using Benjamini and Yekutieli's <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0036364#pone.0036364-Benjamini1" target="_blank">[69]</a> alpha correction; the critical value for 40 tests is <i>α</i> = 0.01169.</p>1<p>Measurements of base thickness (BT) were available for 61 of the 68 kill/camp points.</p
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<p>The same procedure was repeated for each of the 1000 top-level pairs at the bottom of <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0191055#pone.0191055.g001" target="_blank">Fig... more
<p>The same procedure was repeated for each of the 1000 top-level pairs at the bottom of <a href="http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0191055#pone.0191055.g001" target="_blank">Fig 1</a>, resulting in a total of 2,000,000 simulated pairs of time-series for each experiment.</p
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The comments of Stanford and Bradley (above) do not address our criticisms and obfuscate the topic at hand with irrelevant data (e.g. the south-to-north movement of fluted points through the Ice Free Corridor), nonexistent data (e.g.... more
The comments of Stanford and Bradley (above) do not address our criticisms and obfuscate the topic at hand with irrelevant data (e.g. the south-to-north movement of fluted points through the Ice Free Corridor), nonexistent data (e.g. ‘under the water’ or ‘destroyed sites’), and questionable data (e.g. Meadowcroft and Cactus Hill are by no means widely accepted, nor are Stanford and Bradley's ‘eight LGM sites’ in the mid-Atlantic region). Before touching on some of these points, we direct the reader to several recent articles (e.g. Morrow 2014; Raff & Bolnick 2014) that provide new evidence or arguments inconsistent with a trans-Atlantic migration, including the fact that DNA from the Clovis Anzick child (Montana) shows no European ancestry (Rasmussen et al. 2014). Although Stanford and Bradley describe their Solutrean ‘solution’ (Stanford & Bradley 1999) to the Pleistocene colonisation of North America as ‘testable’, their position is that the idea is correct until falsified. Th...
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The age at which women wean their infants varies substantially both across and within populations. Lactation is energetically expensive, and the time and energy available to a woman over her lifespan is finite. Thus, maternal decisions... more
The age at which women wean their infants varies substantially both across and within populations. Lactation is energetically expensive, and the time and energy available to a woman over her lifespan is finite. Thus, maternal decisions regarding the timing of breastfeeding cessation impact fertility because they involve reproductive trade-offs between continuing to invest in the currently breastfed infant, investing in self, or investing in other offspring. What is less clear is which social and ecological factors affect these trade-offs. One factor proposed to contribute to variation in age at cessation of breastfeeding is the availability of alloparental care (“the alloparental care hypothesis”). This hypothesis holds that access to other people (alloparents) that can subsidize the costs of caring for infants by assisting with infant feeding, carrying, and protection may allow mothers to wean earlier. We used interview data from 32 indigenous Mayan women from Santa Cruz la Laguna,...
Nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP), associated with appetite suppression, presents an evolutionary puzzle. NVP and related symptoms impose substantial energetic and nutritional costs, yet continue to affect most pregnant women in... more
Nausea and vomiting during pregnancy (NVP), associated with appetite suppression, presents an evolutionary puzzle. NVP and related symptoms impose substantial energetic and nutritional costs, yet continue to affect most pregnant women in most populations. Several hypotheses from the literature propose that NVP persists because it offers fitness benefits that outweigh its costs. All such adaptive hypotheses share the underlying assumption that NVP imposes lower relative costs on well-nourished mothers, since these women possess larger energetic and nutrient buffers against NVP-related declines in food intake. This reasoning suggests that obese women should be more likely than other women to express NVP symptoms because they can more easily afford to do so. While some Western epidemiological evidence supports this prediction, it has previously not been directly tested and it has not been investigated in a non-industrialized context. So, we evaluated this prediction using data from 26 ...