AR246 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Samuel Hubbard Scudder, Scarborough Bluffs, Environmental Archaeology
2 Jan 2018
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Mar 8th,2016: environment, behaviour, health and hygiene from preserved insect remains, application of environmental archaeology, designed to reconstruct paleoenvironmental. Insects provide insight into taphonomic processes: many insects - themselves decomposer species, presence is involved in deposit formation/transformation, species have extremely specific habitats, these help establish sequence of taphonomic conditions/ events, e. g. Use of insect remains in forensic anthropology: brief history of archaeoentomology, a development of palaeontologymology. Insects reconstruct past non-anthropogenic environment: oriented toward ancient contexts, pre- holocene deposits, fossil insect parts first identified in peat mid 19th cent, natural historians explained peat biblical flood/glaciations. Tibetan plateau: concluded, since pleistocene insects had not changed morphologically, must adapt to environmental change by migration, fundamental assumption underlying pale-archaeoentomology. Interesting archaeogenetic implications: ancient dna, nuclear ndna, medna, passed only maternally, does not recombine, changes only through mutation, mark stoneking, discovered lice also have medna, head/body louse diverged 107,000bp.
