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，对生活在澳大利亚西部沙漠偏远社区的土著群体马尔图人（Martu）的性别觅食活动差异所产生的物质（即考古学上可见的）残留物进行研究。今天，许多马图人每天都在狩猎和采集。一场典型的觅食比赛开始于一个觅食队一起前往一个临时营地，在那里男人和女人通常分开行动，在不同的栖息地进行相互排斥的觅食活动（例如，男人可能以山袋鼠为目标，而女人则专注于沙蜥）。几个小时后，这群人在日营重新集合，烹饪、加工、分享和消耗白天获得的大部分食物。然后，这群人通常会返回社区，留下一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，所以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，是关于人类家庭形成和合作社会组织的进化起源的许多有影响力的争论的核心。然而，尽管它很重要，人类学家和考古学家对性别职业何时以及为何成为人类社会安排的突出特征却鲜有共识。解决这些问题需要了解考古残留物如何代表个体做出的性别觅食决定。然而，由于考古记录是个人行为的积累，材料不能被解读为个人生存实践的直接窗口。为了解决这个问题，本研究将量化观察到的觅食行为和在每个营地沉积的相关物质。其目的是为了更好地了解觅食行为的考古结果，以及这些结果与资源使用的性别决定之间的关系。通过将观测数据与物质残留分析相结合，本研究旨在提供必要的工具，通过单独的觅食残留来检查过去的性别觅食决策。发掘出如此清晰的关于觅食劳动性别分工的考古特征，将直接有助于理解人类史前的一系列问题，从人属的出现到经济和政治的强化过程。这项研究也有可能对公众对这些问题的理解产生更广泛的影响。具体来说，这项工作为培养一名博士生和Martu研究助理提供了资金，他们将在项目期间帮助考古调查和挖掘技术。这次培训将为积极参与管理和保护其文化遗产的马图人提供重要的背景知识。与Parnngurr社区学校和Parnngurr社区委员会直接合作，这项研究的结果也将通过合作网站公布。通过这样做，这项工作旨在为公众提供对家庭动态变化范围及其物质表达的更深层次的理解。

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.