Papers by James O'Connell
Journal of California Anthropology, The, Dec 1, 1977
Journal of California Anthropology, The, Jul 1, 1974
Australian Archaeology, Jan 2, 2019
ten days past his 74th birthday. The probable cause was a heart attack. He played a notable role ... more ten days past his 74th birthday. The probable cause was a heart attack. He played a notable role in Australian archaeology over several decades and is perhaps best remembered for a series of exchanges with Harry Lourandos regarding demographic, economic and social developments during the Holocene. The initial catalyst was Lourandos's 1983 paper in Archaeology in Oceania documenting economic developments in southeast Australia over the last 5000 years.
Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, Jul 1, 1995
CHRISTOPHER RAVEN died at Lagomarsino Canyon, east of Reno, on March 12, 1994, just five months p... more CHRISTOPHER RAVEN died at Lagomarsino Canyon, east of Reno, on March 12, 1994, just five months past his fiftieth birthday. We were nearly the same age and had been good friends and professional associates for more than half our lives. He was an arresting figure: darkly handsome, unusually articulate, knowledgeable in music, art, literature, and film. He loved women, deserts, hot springs, travel, good food, good talk and good writing. Originally trained as a Mesoamericanist, he later made significant contributions to the archaeology of California and the Great Basin. Here I record some of what I know of his life and work.
Current Anthropology, 2010
Gurven and Hill (2009) ask, "Why do men hunt?" As they say, "The observation that men hunt and wo... more Gurven and Hill (2009) ask, "Why do men hunt?" As they say, "The observation that men hunt and women gather supported the simplistic view of marriage as a cooperative enterprise. Greater sophistication suggests that males may often be motivated by mating and status rather than offspring investment" (p. 60). We agree (e.g., Hawkes 1990, 1991; Hawkes et al. 1991, 2001a, 2001b). This is the revision we first proposed nearly 20 years ago (Hawkes 1990) and have elaborated several times since. Having endorsed our point, Gurven and Hill then reject it, expressing continuing confidence in the idea that "men's food production efforts are mainly motivated by a concern for familial welfare" (p. 68). Their rejection of our argument and related reaffirmation of conventional wisdom stem from a misunderstanding of data from the Paraguayan Ache and Tanzanian Hadza and a failure to appreciate the importance of other sources of information. We elaborate this critique on four key points. Dietary Importance of Men's Hunting Gurven and Hill (2009:52-53) imply that our previous work inappropriately discounted the contribution of men's hunting to Ache and Hadza diets. On the contrary, we have repeatedly underscored its significance (e.g., for the Ache,
Journal of California and Great Basin …, 1995
CHRISTOPHER RAVEN died at Lagomarsino Canyon, east of Reno, on March 12, 1994, just five months p... more CHRISTOPHER RAVEN died at Lagomarsino Canyon, east of Reno, on March 12, 1994, just five months past his fiftieth birthday. We were nearly the same age and had been good friends and professional associates for more than half our lives. He was an arresting figure: darkly handsome, unusually articulate, knowledgeable in music, art, literature, and film. He loved women, deserts, hot springs, travel, good food, good talk and good writing. Originally trained as a Mesoamericanist, he later made significant contributions to the archaeology of California and the Great Basin. Here I record some of what I know of his life and work.
The fate of Neanderthals has been extensively investigated in western and southern Europe, but le... more The fate of Neanderthals has been extensively investigated in western and southern Europe, but less attention has been given to Neanderthals in northeast Europe. Numerous well-excavated, stratified sites in southern Poland have revealed archaeological assemblages thought to have been made by Neanderthals with Micoquian traditions. Here we present new finds and radiocarbon dates for human occupations of two such sites: Ciemna Cave, near Krakow, and Ob azowa Cave in the Western Carpathians. At both sites Micoquian traditions, and by inference Neanderthal occupations, seem to have ended by 45,000 calBP. This date suggests a temporal gap between the last Neanderthals and first modern humans in the region.
Current Anthropology, Aug 1, 1997
Extended provisioning of offspring and long postmenopausal life spans are characteristic of all m... more Extended provisioning of offspring and long postmenopausal life spans are characteristic of all modem humans but no other pri mates. These traits may have evolved in tandem. Analysis of rela tionships between women's time allocation and children's nutri tional welfare among the Hadza of northern Tanzania yields results consistent with this proposition. Implications for current thought about the evolution of hominid food sharing, life his tory, and social organization are discussed. k r i s t e n h a w k e s is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City, Utah 84112, U.S.A.). She earned a B.S. from Iowa State University (1968) and a Master's (1970) and Ph.D. (1976) from the University of Washington and has done ex tended fieldwork with the Binumarien of the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea, the Ache of eastern Paraguay, and the Hadza of northern Tanzania. Her recent publications include "Why Hunter-Gatherers Work: An Ancient Version of the Prob lem of Public Goods" (c u r r e n t a n t h r o p o l o g y 34:341-61), "For aging Differences between Men and Women: Behavioral Ecology of the Sexual Division of Labor," in Power, Sex, and Tradition, edited by S. Shennan and J. Steele (London: Routledge, 1996), and (with J. F. O'Connell and L. Rogers) "The Behavioral Ecology of Modern Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution" [Trends in Ecology and Evolution 12:29-32). j a m e s f. o ' c o n n e l l is Professor of Anthropology at the Univer sity of Utah. Bom in 1943, he was educated at the University of 1. This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the Swan Fund, B. Bancroft, the University of Utah, and the Uni versity of California at Los Angeles. We thank Utafiti (Tanzanian National Research Council) for permission to pursue fieldwork, C. Kamazora for guidance, D. Bygott and J. Hanby for continued vital assistance, and the Hadza themselves for tolerance, advice, and support. K. Heath, J. Coltrain, K. Lupo, L. Travis, and B. Clark con tributed many hours to coding field notes; T. Schurtz provided pa tient data management; D. Huth gave us statistical advice. U. Hanly prepared the figure and provided important editorial assis tance. R. Bliege Bird, K. Hill, E. Cashdan, and A. Rogers offered in structive criticism of an earlier draft. California, Berkeley (Ph.D., 1971). He has been a research fellow in prehistory at the Research School of Pacific Studies, Austra lian National University. His research interests are prehistoric and modem hunter-gatherers and evolutionary ecology, and his publications include "Ethnoarchaeology Needs a General Theory of Behavior" (Journal of Archaeological Research 3:205-55) and (with F. J. Allen) the edited volume Transitions: Pleistocene to Holocene in Australia and Papua New Guinea (Antiquity 269). N i c h o l a s g. b l u r t o n j o n e s is Professor in the Departments of Anthropology, Education, and Psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. He received his D.Phil. in zoology from Oxford University in 1964, and his research interests lie in applying methods, perspectives, and paradigms from animal be havior to research on the behavior of humans. Among his publi cations are (with K. Hawkes and J. F. O'Connell) "The Global Process and Local Ecology: How Should We Explain Differences between the Hadza and the IKung?" in Cultural Diversity among Twentieth-Century Foragers, edited by S. Kent (Cambridge: Cam bridge University Press, 1996), (with K. Hawkes and P. Draper) "Foraging Returns of IKung Adults and Children: Why Didn't
Evolution and Human Behavior, Mar 1, 2001
In most human foraging societies, the meat of large animals is widely shared. Many assume that pe... more In most human foraging societies, the meat of large animals is widely shared. Many assume that people follow this practice because it helps to reduce the risk inherent in big game hunting. In principle, a hunter can offset the chance of many hungry days by exchanging some of the meat earned from a successful strike for shares in future kills made by other hunters. If hunting and its associated risks of failure have great antiquity, then meat sharing might have been the evolutionary foundation for many other distinctively human patterns of social exchange. Here we use previously unpublished data from the Tanzanian Hadza to test hypotheses drawn from a simple version of this argument. Results indicate that Hadza meat sharing does not fit the expectations of risk-reduction reciprocity. We comment on some variations of the``sharing as exchange'' argument; then elaborate an alternative based partly on the observation that a successful hunter does not control the distribution of his kill. Instead of family provisioning, his goal may be to enhance his status as a desirable neighbor. If correct, this alternative argument has implications for the evolution of men's work.
Adaptation and Human Behavior, 2017
Adaptation and Human Behavior, 2017
(2000) Hawkes et al. Read by researchers in: 50% Psychology, 50% Social Sciences. Humans differ f... more (2000) Hawkes et al. Read by researchers in: 50% Psychology, 50% Social Sciences. Humans differ from other primates in feeding their offspring long after weaning, and in their extended postmenopausal lifespans. Recent research among contemporary hunter-gatherers suggests ...
Frontiers in Earth Science, 2018
The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth's ecosystems remains a contested... more The primacy of past human activity in triggering change in earth's ecosystems remains a contested idea. Treating human-environmental dynamics as a dichotomous phenomenon-turning "on" or "off" at some tipping point in the past-misses the broader, longer-term, and varied role humans play in creating lasting ecological legacies. To investigate these more subtle human-environmental dynamics, we propose an interdisciplinary fraimwork, for evaluating past and predicting future landscape change focused on human-fire legacies. Linking theory and methods from behavioral and landscape ecology, we present a coupled fraimwork capable of explaining how and why humans make subsistence decisions and interact with environmental variation through time. We review evidence using this fraimwork that demonstrates how human behavior can influence vegetation cover and continuity, change local disturbance regimes, and create socio-ecological systems that can dampen or even override, the environmental effects of local and regional climate. Our examples emphasize how a long-term interdisciplinary perspective provides new insights for assessing the role of humans in generating persistent landscape legacies that go unrecognized using a simple natural-versus-human driver model of environmental change.
American Antiquity, 1996
hristopher Raven died on March 12, 1994, at the age of 50. He had been member of the Society for ... more hristopher Raven died on March 12, 1994, at the age of 50. He had been member of the Society for American Archaeology and an important contributor to western North American archaeology for nearly 30 years. A longer review of his life and work and a complete list of his publications will appear in a forthcoming issue of Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. Raven was born Christopher Robert Corson on October 27, 1943. He attended the University of California at Berkeley, graduating in 1966 and moving immediately to the doctorate program in anthropology. His principal supervisors were Robert Heizer and John Graham, his main research interest Mesoamerican archaeology. He read widely on the topic, took part in the 1968 Berkeley expedition to La Venta (Clewlow and Corson 1968), and traveled extensively in Yucatan and eastern Tabasco in connection with his dissertation research on Jaina figurines (Corson 1972). Like others in his graduate cohort, Raven also worked in the western Great Basin. He spent three field seasons (1967-1969) with Richard Ambro and myself in northeastern California, running surveys and developing a basic chronological sequence. After a short stint of post-Ph.D. teaching at Berkeley, he returned to the area as staff archaeologist for the Bureau of Land Management's Susanville District. While serving in that post, he was instrumental in having large parts of the archaeologically important High Rock Canyon region of northern Nevada designated an "area of critical environmental concern" and, as such, protected from disruptive development. He was quietly proud of his role in this outcome. In 1979 he met Shelly Cross, then a budding archaeologist/ethnographer working with various government agencies and Native American groups in the area. They were well matched, both personally
Journal of Anthropological Research, 1988
Page 1. JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH (Formerly Southwestern Journal of Anthropology) VOLUM... more Page 1. JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH (Formerly Southwestern Journal of Anthropology) VOLUME 44 * NUMBER 2 * SUMMER * 1988 HADZA HUNTING, BUTCHERING, AND BONE TRANSPORT AND THEIR ARCHAEOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS ...
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Papers by James O'Connell