Prehistoric Hunters and Gatherers
Anthropology UA-210
Spring 2015
Office: 307 in 25 Waverly Place
Office Hours: Tuesday 3-5 and by appointment
Phone: 212-998-8573 (X88573), includes voicemail
E-mail: pc4@nyu.edu OR PamCDougC@comcast.net
COURSE OUTLINE
Prehistoric hunters and gatherers examines the archaeological record left by foraging
peoples–people who made their living by hunting, scavenging, gathering, and fishing–in both the
Eastern and Western hemispheres. This course will examine the Paleolithic and Mesolithic periods
in Africa and Eurasia, Australian prehistory, and the Paleoindian and Archaic periods in the
Americas. The course will focus most closely in late Pleistocene and early Holocene hunters and
gatherers, including both the Neanderthals and modern humans. In studying these hunter-gatherers,
we will draw on perspectives derived from archaeology, cultural anthropology, and biological
anthropology.
Course Requirements
All students will be required to take two exams, one at the mid-term and one at the end of
the semester. Both in-class and take-home exams will be offered. In addition, all students will be
required to write a short research paper on a topic related to the archaeology of prehistoric hunters
and gatherers. Your paper should be about 8-10 pp. in length (roughly 2000-2500 words). The
final paper is due on May 14th.
Readings:
The following textbooks have been ordered at the university story. They will be
supplemented by a series of readings that will be available via CLASSES.
1. Meltzer, D.
2010 First Peoples in a New World. University of California Press.
2. Lourandos, H.
1997 Continent of Hunter-Gatherers: New Perspectives on Australian Prehistory.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3. Papagianni, D. and Morse, M. A.
2013. The Neanderthals Rediscovered. London: Thames and Hudson.
Course Syllabus
1/27
Introduction to hunter-gatherer prehistory
1/29
Video: The Hunters
2/3
Ethnographic approaches to hunter-gatherers. Reading: F. W. Marlowe,
Hunter-Gatherers and Human Evolution.
2/5
Primate models for early hunter-gatherer behavior. Reading: Mercader et al.:
Excavation of a Chimpanzee Stone Tool Site in the African Rainforest; Wynn et al.:
“An Ape’s View of the Oldowan” Revisited.
2/10
The beginnings of the archaeological record—stone tools, butchered bones, and
early hominins; Traditional models for early hominin behavior; Reading: Potts:
Home Bases and Early Hominids; Isaac: The Food-Sharing Behavior of
Protohuman Hominids.
2/12
Contemporary models for early hominin behavior; Reading: Dominguez-Rodrigo
and Pickering: Early Hominid Hunting and Scavenging: A Zooarchaeological
Review.
2/17
Homo ergaster/erectus, the Acheulian, and out-of-Africa 1: Dmanisi, ‘Ubeidiya,
and Sangiran. Reading: Gabunia et al.: Dmanisi and Dispersal.
2/19
Out-of-Africa 1 continued: the initial settlement of Europe. Reading: Dennell:
Dispersal and Colonisation, Long and Short Chronologies: How Continuous Is the
Early Pleistocene Record for Hominids Outside East Africa?; Bermudez de Castro
et al., The Atapuerca Sites and Their Contribution to the Knowledge of Human
Evolution in Europe.
2/24
The African Middle Stone Age and the appearance of early modern humans; begin
reading The Neanderthals Rediscovered.
2/26
The archaeology of the Neanderthals and out-of-Africa 2; Reading: Shea:
Neanderthals, Competition, and the Origin of Modern Human Behavior in the
Levant.
3/3
The Upper Paleolithic of Eurasia: Settlement, Subsistence, and Technology.
Reading: J. F. Hoffecker, Innovation and Technological Knowledge in the Upper
Paleolithic of Northern Eurasia.
3/5
Paleolithic Art
3/10
Exam 1
3/12
The human colonization of Siberia and Beringia: the background to the peopling of
the Americas; evidence of early settlement in South America Reading: Goebel:
Pleistocene Colonization of Siberia and Peopling of the Americas: An Ecological
Approach; Hoffecker and Elias: Environment and Archaeology in Beringia. Please
read the Meltzer text over break.
Week of March 16th–SPRING BREAK
3/24
The Late Pleistocene archaeology of North America—Clovis and Folsom;
Discussion: Alternative models for the settlement of the Americas–Clovis first vs.
pre-Clovis; Reading: Finish the Meltzer book.
3/26
Pleistocene Overkill; Reading: Grayson and Meltzer: Clovis Hunting and Large
Mammal Extinction: A Critical Review of the Evidence; G. Haynes: The
Catastrophic Extinction of North American Mammoths and Mastodonts; Miller et
al., Ecosystem Collapse in Pleistocene Australia and a Human Role in Megafaunal
Extinction; Truman et al., Prolongued Coexistance of Humans and Megafauna in
Pleistocene Australia.
3/31
The initial human colonization of Australia; Reading: Lourandos Ch. 1-3.
4/2
Later Australian prehistory; Reading: Lourandos Ch. 4-6.
4/7
Tasmanian prehistory and the question of “devolution”; Reading: Lourandos Ch. 7;
Jones: Tasmanian Archaeology: Establishing the Sequences.
4/9
Climatic change at the end of the Ice Age
4/14
The North American Archaic; Reading: Chatters: The Recovery and First Analysis
of an Early Human Skeleton from Kennewick, Washington.
4/16
No class; SAA meetings
4/21
European Mesolithic 1: settlement, subsistence, and technology in post-glacial
Europe. Reading: Bogucki and Crabtree, pp. 132-156.
4/23
Mesolithic 2: Case studies and contemporary approaches. Reading: Larsson, the
Skateholm Project.
4/28
The Near Eastern Upper Paleolithic and the Early Epipaleolithic; Reading: Maher:
the Pre-Natufian Epi-Paleolithic.
4/30
The Natufian culture of the Southern Levant. Reading: Bar-Yosef: The Natufian
Culture of the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of Agriculture.
5/5
Student presentations
5/7
EXAM 2
5/14
Final Papers are due.