I'm going to dig in Spain! (Plus questions on hominins)

As you can see from the title, I'm been confirmed a place at a dig in Montlleó open-air site in the summer.  The site is about 2 hours from Barcelona.  It's Magdalenian - about 15,000 years old - and I'll be excavating and digging at the site and analysing lithic remains in the lab for three weeks, all with SERP (http://www.ub.edu/SERP/index.htm). All in all I'm very excited, and even better I'll only be paying for the flight and hopefully the sun will come out! A dig and a tan. What could be better for an Arch and Anth student?

I finished my first piece of work of this term yesterday (excluding my collections and their anxiously-anticipated results) on African Plio-Pleistocene hominins and their characteristics.  We complied a fact-file of hominins from Ardipithecus ramidus (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene - about 5.7 mya (million years ago) to Homo ergaster (African erectus) which is thought to have lived 1.9 million mya.  We also had to draw a lineage of these species and multiple genus, so I got to use my colouring pencils...at last!  I used this phylogeny as my basis, which I first saw from Mike Petraglia's lectures on human evolution.

So I was reassured by my tutor today he uses the same one too (I think it's from the Smithsonian Institute).  So many changes have occurred morphologically in such a 'small' amount of time.  At first I questioned the amount of catergories paleoarchaeologists had 'split' the fossils into; however, this approach is opposed to 'lumping', where you bung a lot of similar-featured fossils together in one group.  There's a lot of debate as to which group some fossils belong to, as you can imagine.  I'm really enjoying learning about my very, very old roots, and still have a lot of questions to ask; what behavioural changes have happened apart from physical ones? Which species did we descend from? Why do I feel so old right now? But questions are good. A recent article in Nature argues against the assumption that Homo habilis was the first to use tools; instead, it might have been Australopithecus afarensis, a gracile Australopithecus found in sites in East Africa.  You can read it here: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7308/full/nature09248.html

It just shows there are many questions about out evolutionary past that are still unanswered. I'd like to answer some of these one day.

Rap Guide To Evolution

I'm supposed to be revising for my anthropology paper at the beginning of next term for my collections, but I can't help but admire when someone coincidentally puts any part of my course into a rap.

This is what Baba Brinkman, that dude who rapped Caterbury Tales, is rapping about on his website.  Mark Pallen, the man who writes this blog: http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.co.uk/ persuaded him to rap about Darwin too.  I actually really appreciate this, since I'm going to be studying human evolution and biological anthropology next term.  Cheers, guys!

As a bit of a music fan, I also love it when I can revise by singing.  Safe to say I'll be singing this for my Honour Moderations at the end of next term! My favourite one on the website http://rapguidetoevolution.co.uk/ is 'I'm A African', influenced from the original song 'I'm A African' by Dead Prez.  The animation is pretty groovy too in the video (see below).

Next term I'll hopefully be getting more involved in the Oxford University Archaeological Society; maybe we should try to get Baba Brinkman to come give a talk and give us a spin...

Red Deer Cave People

As you may have heard in the news, it is thought that a new species prehistoric human has been identified from fossilised skeletal remains in south-west Asia.  A skull dug up in 1979 in Longlin Cave, Guangxi Province has only now been fully analysed, and its anatomy appears to be unique in its form against other skeletal evidence of other human ancestors.

This comes from Darren Curnoe at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia.  The skull appears to show a hash of some very 'primitive' features, but also some very modern ones.  Quoting Curnoe,

"They have rounded braincases with prominent brow ridges, thick skull bones, short and flat faces, tucked under the front part of the brain, a broad nose, jutting jaws that lack a human-like chin, brains moderate in size with a modern looking frontal lobe, but primitively short parietal lobes, and they have large molar teeth."
(Source: FAQs on the Red Deer Cave People: http://www.darrencurnoe.net/documents/QA_RedDeerCavePeople.pdf )

Photo by Curnoe

This is extremely exciting, not in the least because evidence of this hominin has apparently appeared also at Mula Cave in Yunnan Province, according to Curnoe and Ji Xueping of Yunnan University.  Curnoe explains that they are hesitant to put this species in with Homo sapiens, mainly because the species H. sapiens is still under question as to what classifies as an example of one! As such, Curnoe says these people could present a 'new evolutionary line' or a 'previously unknown prehistoric population'. (See FAQs page above).

It's also exciting because as Curnoe says:
"...dated to between about 14,500 and 11,500 years ago, the Red Deer Cave people are the youngest population to be found anywhere in the world whose anatomy doesnʼt comfortably fit within the range of modern humans: whether they be modern humans from 150 or 150,000 years ago." (See FAQs page again).

That's very special indeed.  This furthers the view of a very diverse 'human' population at the end of the Ice Age, through which the Red Deer Cave people must have survived.  Christ Stringer, a British anthropologist, suggests that these Red Deer Cave people may have been related to the Denisovian people, whilst one of my lecturers last term Mike Petraglia agrees that a diverse population of 'humans' might have existed at the end of the Ice Age, more broad than we thought.

All in all, this is a very cool discovery, and I can't wait to see if the DNA of the bones from Red Deer Cave can be properly analysed.

For more information and as one of my sources, you can read the simple but meaty article from New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn21586-chinese-human-fossils-unlike-any-known-species.html.  Curnoe's FAQ page is also great as a quick summary of his report.  You can read the original PLoS article here: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0031918.

Racing and the Rom

Came back very early this morning from racing the Thames at the Women's Head of the River Race (WeHORR) yesterday - a 7km course of endurance! Both Hertford College teams did well, and our novice team (W2) finished 2 places above our start, and beat the likes of St. Edmund's Hall College 1st crew.  We were also lucky enough to have been coxed by the Captain of Coxes, who was also ace despite his cox box breaking just at the start!

Having recovered (ish), I'm now reading the ethnography 'The Time of Gypsies' by Michael Stewart.  I have to write a critical essay on an ethnography of choice, and prepare a 15-minute oral presentation.  It's a very compelling read,  and because Stewart in unique in having learnt the language of the Rom, a group of Gypsies who live in Hungary, his account seems all the more intimate.

However, analysing it as an ethnography is very tricky.  Some anthropologists say that ethnographic accounts should be analysed as a piece of writing and using literary theory (Clifford 1973); some say that ethnography is as much a way of working as writing (Spencer 1989).  As such, I have my work cut out for me.  Let's hope I'll be as victorious as the rowing team in my essay!

Santa Claus and gift exchange

Only 2 essays to go! I've just finished writing my essay on gift exchange and what it can tell us about society.

After reading (parts) of Marcel Mauss' 'The Gift', Malinowski's infamous ethnography on the Trobriand Islanders, 'Argonauts of the Western Pacific', works of John Davis and the deconstruction of Christmas by various anthropologists (I will never see Christmas in the same way), I hope I've done a good job of the subject that is routinely explored by every anthropology student.

The funny thing is that my tutor asked us to exercise an example of gift-exchange, make notes on it, and bring it to the tutorial. By chance, a childhood friend visited the other day while he was in town, and as a guest I'd bought him dinner and ice-cream. I didn't see this as a gift because I didn't expect or want anything in return; it was, anthropologically an act of 'charity' (though I obviously didn't see him as a charity case!) How surprised I was to find he'd left for my at the lodge a bunch of flowers! As part of the gift-exchange system, this was a reciprocation of the 'gift' of dinner and ice-cream he'd accepted.

The basis of the gift exchange system is that it is a universal activity, and occurs according to Marcel Mauss' 3 obligations:

1. The giving of a gift
2. The acceptance of a gift
3. Reciprocity of a gift

Building on this, you have to distinguish between 'gift' and 'commodity' exchange. A commodity is traded for monetary value, and according to Mauss, 'to make a gift of something to someone is to make a present of some part of oneself.' (Mauss [1925]1990:12) i.e. you have to transfer part of your identity with the gift, otherwise it's just an object or a commodity without any meaning. It's this meaning that makes it the gift.

Malinowski describes the kula, which is the gift-exchange of necklaces and bracelets, each going a certain direction around the Trobriand islands in a circular circuit (Mauss translates 'kula' as circle). (If you wanted to know, the necklaces are called soulava and are made from red shell; the bracelets are called mwali and made of white shell). This process is reserved for men, in particular nobles.  Kula members have temporary possession of these prized items. But in the end, after a year or so at most, they have to pass them on. This is obligatory, because otherwise conflict and warfare could emerge, according to Malinowski and Mauss.

The Maori of Samoa, according to Mauss, believe objects like this contain a spiritual power, the hau, which arises from previous possessions of the object, and it's this symbolic force that means people fear it that they oblige to reciprocity. I likened examples like these to contemporary capitalist societies, like American society at Christmas. Although many buy commodities as gifts, the act of transforming it by altering it, or wrapping it up, means we can convey a sense of our identity through the object, like the hau in Maori. The fact we've specially selected this item from a homogenised mass of objects in a shop also signifies that the object is special. In fact, in the time you bought it, wrapped it and given it, you've had temporary possession of that object, familiarising yourself with it. (Carrier, in Miller's 'Unwrapping Christmas 1993). The act of Christmas shopping is a ritual, as is wrapping, much like the ritual of kula or potlatch.

Potlatch is a gift-exchange in North America where exchanged and prized objects are destroyed to show power, but the point is that the act helps one to form a social status or hierarchy, as in the case of the Tlingit and Haida. It's an act of class struggle. You could argue the same is true in other societies, where buying objects for others actually just conceals the desire for material wealth.

The desire for material wealth can arise from conspicuous consumption. This is the idea that objects display your material wealth and thus a status of being economically better off, which is perceived in desirable in a capitalist society. I found evidence for this in Japan, where Tiffany jewellery in the 1990s was the epitome of showing your love romantically. The fact it's recognisable and visual is arguably an act of conspicuous consumption, or even insidious consumption (to provoke envy). Even temporarily possessing these items as intended gifts for someone else, satisfies the temptation of actually having bought the gift yourself, Belk might argue. (Belk, in Miller's 'Unwrapping Christmas', as before). Belk says that at Christmas, adults take over from their parents as Santa, becoming this figure as an excuse to buy themselves things that they desire.

But that's a pretty cynical view of Christmas and dismisses sentiment as the reason for giving gifts, and the example of a Trinidadian Christmas by Miller later in the book shows that materialism doesn't solely prevail in all societies in festivals. Ritual and symbolism can account for a lot, as the Trinidadian custom of giving your house a good ol' clean and paint is one what a lot of money goes towards at Christmas. Besides, gift exchange is just one aspect of Christmas.

I do like what David Mitchell has to say on British gift exchange. He's very funny, very aware of social "awkwardness", and gets himself into a tizz at the end, just like I first did trying to structure my essay.

Trains, aboriginals and rocks (space and landscape)

I haven't been updating for a few days because I've just had to study for and write two essays in a very busy week of rowing preparation. It's Torpids week at the river Isis, which means I've been racing 'bumps' today and will be everyday til Saturday; then I can relax... until the Women's Head of the River Race (WeHORR) next weekend in London. Busy busy busy!

All this rowing doesn't mean to say I haven't enjoyed reading and writing for the essays. I just got one back on space, place, and landscape for anthropology - was so pleased to see my tutor really liked it! The question was whether space and landscape were cultural constructions. I argued that they shouldn't be dichotomised as either 'cultural' or 'natural' (a very debated topic in the "nature-culture debate"). Instead, after reading the books and articles, and being especially influenced by Corsin Jiménez's article on space in Antofagasta in Chile, I argued that space is a temporal pathway in relation to social relationships. If this sounds a bit crazy, it's probably because it is, but after reading theories written in the 1990s on space, place and landscape like Tilley, Bender, Hirsch and O'Hanlon, it probably won't sound so silly!

The idea is that space and landscape are not merely geographical locations. We see the world around us as how we perceive it, and create our own spaces (like houses, churches) which create, and are simultaneously created by, social relationships. A lot of people see landscape as an idyllic, picturesque rural scene, and it's not hard to see why: the word 'landscape' originates from the word 'landshap'(Dutch) via 'landskip'(English) used in Dutch paintings in the 17th century. It's been passed down over time, and is still used today when people say they're a 'landscape painter' or a 'landscape photographer' and produce idealised scenes. Barbara Bender used the example of a British Rail intercity poster, which likened English landscape art to the view out of a train window.

Now if you take the train regularly into any major town or city in Britain, you will have probably noticed that not everything you see is aesthetically pleasing. In fact, the space of the train compartment may not be either. Someone talking on the phone, the seats are a bit grotty... But the train itself is a landscape. The seats have been worn down by the passage of other human beings; you're travelling the same route as many other people. You could compare this to an Aboriginal landscape, where parts of the rocks and ground have been worn away by the passage of other people; you're walking in a pathway your ancestors made. The relations you make along this past with living, or past, peoples arguably creates the landscape at the same time as you create it. It's this pathway you travel that becomes the space or landscape; it's not entirely physical, as it occurs through time too. I proposed that the more you travel on this pathway, the more landscape is created, and the more it creates your social relations.

Obviously, you could say I'm being too airy-fairy, and that a rock is a rock. That's it; no more. But Aboriginal Australians certainly don't think Ayers rock is just a rock! They and anthropologists might ask: But doesn't this rock change over time? Does your view of this rock change over time? It's a very interesting question. I think I'll wrap it up; I've spent too long writing, and the space I've created is far too long.

Cognitive archaeology and clever chimps

The archaeology of human thought and intelligence was the subject of my lecture this morning.  Moving on from the functionalist processual approach of Binford in the 1960s (sort of a mathematic, scientific approach to archaeology), people started to consider how to reconstruct the ancient mind.  We looked at Paleolithic toolkit developments, cognitive evolution, and Mithen's theory of cognitive 'modularity', which suggests that at one point in time our brains switched from thinking from modular thinking (i.e. like a monkey seeing a 
python as dangerous, but not linking fresh python tracks to the possibility of danger), to our brains being an information processor.

Mithen's idea has since been refuted by archaeologists, but it's a very good question: how did our brains come into being today, and are they similar to our ancient people's brains? In what respects did they think like us, and how did it differ? A few days ago I saw this programme on iplayer:


In the video, Ayumu the chimpanzee is challenged to memory tests that get as hard as memorising a set of number faster than the blink of an eye.  This got me wondering; how can a chimpanzee have the ability to do this more successfully than the average human? Is it a physical difference in brain function (such as being able to see the numbers for longer because of neural passage from the eye to the brain being wired differently or 
being more adept than ours); or was a cultural difference, such as the fact that for us numbers are associated with meaning - Ayumu may see the numbers as shapes, and so can process the numbers without the associations our minds have with them?

There is the question of training to the programme, but in such a short space of time I doubt many humans or chimpanzees would be able to improve from practise, and if there is an element of luck to Ayumu's success, it is probably minimal in comparison with skill. Either way, I feel very forgetful in comparison. Perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to think ourselves as more clever than our hominidae fellas that share a large percentage of our DNA.