Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ethnoarchaeology of Gender-Specific Foraging among Martu in Western Australia

布莱恩·F·科丁先生将与道格拉斯·W·伯德博士合作，研究生活在澳大利亚西部沙漠偏远社区的土著群体马尔图人在不同性别的觅食活动中产生的差异造成的材料(即考古上可见的)残留物。今天，许多马尔图人每天都在狩猎和聚集。一场典型的觅食比赛始于一队觅食者一起前往一个临时日营，在那里男性和女性通常分开行动，从事在不同栖息地发生的相互排斥的觅食活动(例如，男性可能以山地袋鼠为目标，而女性则专注于沙地蜥蜴)。几个小时后，派对在日营重新集结，烹饪、加工、分享和消费一天中获得的大部分食物。然后，这群人通常会回到社区，留下当天活动的物质残留物。由于劳动中的性别差异在几乎所有人类社会中都很常见，但在其他灵长类动物中却很少见，因此，关于人类为什么会有这种差异以及为什么会有差异的问题，是许多关于人类家庭形成和合作社会组织的进化起源的有影响力的争论的核心。然而，尽管性别职业很重要，但对于性别职业何时以及为什么成为人类社会安排的显著特征，人类学家和考古学家之间几乎没有达成一致。解决这些问题需要了解考古遗迹如何代表个人做出的按性别划分的觅食决定。然而，由于考古记录是个人行为的积累，材料不能被解读为了解个人生存实践的直接窗口。为了解决这个问题，这项研究将量化观察到的觅食行为和保存在每个营地的相关材料。其目的是更好地了解觅食行为的考古学后果，以及这些后果与资源使用的性别决策之间的关系。通过将观测数据与对其材料残留物的分析相结合，这项工作旨在提供必要的工具，以审查过去仅通过觅食残留物做出的按性别区分的觅食决定。开发这种清晰的觅食劳动性别分工的考古学特征，将直接有助于理解人类史前的广泛问题，从人属的出现到经济和政治的强化过程。这项研究也有可能为公众对这些问题的理解提供更广泛的影响。具体地说，这项工作提供了培训一名博士生和Martu研究助理的资金，他们将在项目期间提供考古调查和挖掘技术方面的帮助。这次培训将为积极参与管理和保护其文化遗产的马尔图提供重要的背景知识。与Parngurr社区学校和Parnngurr社区理事会直接合作，这项研究的结果也将通过合作网站公布。通过这样做，这项工作的目的是让公众更深入地了解家庭动态及其具体表现的可变性范围。

In collaboration with Dr. Douglas W. Bird, Mr. Brian F. Codding will examine the material (i.e., archaeologically visible) residues that result from variability in gendered foraging activities among Martu, an indigenous group who live in remote communities in Australia's Western Desert. Today, many Martu hunt and gather on a daily basis. A typical foraging bout begins with a foraging party travelling together to a temporary day-camp from which men and women usually operate separately, engaging in mutually exclusive foraging activities that occur in different habitats (e.g., men may target hill kangaroo while women focus on sand monitor lizards). After several hours, the party regroups at the day-camp to cook, process, share and consume most of the food acquired during the day. The group then typically returns to the community, leaving behind the material remains of the day's activities. Because gender differences in labor are common in almost all human societies but are rare among other primates, questions about why humans have such differences and why they vary lie at the heart of many influential arguments about the evolutionary origins of human family formation and cooperative social organization. Yet despite its importance, there is little agreement among anthropologists and archaeologists about when and why gendered occupations became prominent features of human social arrangements. Addressing these issues requires an understanding of how archaeological residues represent the gendered foraging decisions made by individuals. However, since the archaeological record is an accumulation of individual behaviors, materials do not read as a straightforward window to individual subsistence practices. In order to work towards a solution to this problem, this research will quantify observed foraging behavior and the linked material remains deposited at each camp. The goal is to gain a better understanding of the archaeological consequences of foraging behavior and how these are related to gendered decisions about resource use. By combining observational data with the analysis of its material residues, this work aims to provide the tools necessary to examine gendered foraging decisions in the past through the residues of foraging alone. Developing such clear archaeological signatures of the gender division of foraging labor will contribute directly toward understanding a wide range of issues in human prehistory, from the emergence of the genus Homo to processes of economic and political intensification.This research also has the potential to provide a broader impact on the public's understanding of these issues. Specifically, this work provides the funds to train one PhD student and Martu research assistants who will help with the duration of the project in archaeological survey and excavation techniques. This training will provide an important background for Martu who are actively involved in the management and preservation of their cultural heritage. Working directly with Parnngurr Community School and the Parnngurr Community Council, the results of this research will also be publicized through collaborative websites. In so doing, this work aims to provide a deeper public understanding of the range of variability in family dynamics and their material expressions.