The Central Mountains Archaic began with the arrival of foraging populations in the Intermountain West about 6000 years ago. This migration coincided with the "extremely dramatic" winter-wet event of 4350 cal b.c. and the arrival of piñon pine forests in the central Great Basin. Human foragers likely played a significant role in the rapid spread of piñon across the central and northeastern Great Basin. Logistic hunters exploited local bighorn populations, sometimes serviced by hunting camps (the "man caves" such as Gatecliff Shelter, Triple T Shelter, and several others) and they staged communal pronghorn drives at lower elevations. As climate cooled and became more moist, logistic bighorn hunting gradually shifted downslope, then apparently faded away about 1000 cal b.c. Communal pronghorn driving persisted into the historic era in the central Great Basin. This volume, the first in the Alta Toquima trilogy, describes and analyzes more than 100 alpine hunting features on the Mt. Jefferson tablelands. High-elevation, logistical bighorn hunting virtually disappeared across the central Great Basin with the onset of the Late Holocene Dry Period (about 750-850 cal b.c.), giving way to an alpine residential pattern at Alta Toquima (26NY920) and elsewhere on Mt. Jefferson. Situated at almost exactly 11,000 ft (3352 m) above sea level, Alta Toquima was sited on the south summit of Mt. Jefferson (the third-highest spot in the state of Nevada), where at least 31 residential stone structures were emplaced along this steep, east-facing slope. When first recorded in 1978, Alta Toquima was the highest American Indian village site known in the Northern Hemisphere. This volume discusses the material culture, plant macrofossils, vertebrate fauna, and radiocarbon dating for Alta Toquima. Bayesian analysis of 95 14C dates documents an initial occupation of Alta Toquima at 1370-790 cal b.c., with the sporadic settlements persisting until immediately before European contact. These alpine residences are the most dramatic examples of the intensified provisioning strategies that began in the Central Mountains Archaic about 3000 years ago, broadening the diet breadth to include plant and animal resources previously considered too costly. The oldest summertime residence at Alta Toquima correlates with the onset of Late Holocene Dry Period (LHDP) aridity (~750 cal b.c.), and these houses were episodically occupied only during the driest intervals throughout the next 1500 dramatic years of abrupt climate change. During the intervening wetter stretches, Alta Toquima was abandoned in favor of subalpine basecamps. This sequenced intensification predated the arrival of bow technology in the central Great Basin by more than a millennium. Exactly the opposite sequencing took place a few miles to the north, when Gatecliff Shelter was abandoned during LHDP aridity--precisely when the first summertime settlements appeared at Alta Toquima. This pattern reversed again when lowland habitats became sufficiently well watered to again support summertime patches of seeds and geophytes (~150 cal b.c.-cal a.d. 100). Alta Toquima families responded by abandoning (temporarily) their alpine summertime camps to repurpose former "man caves" like Gatecliff and Triple T shelters into family settlements. The Monitor Valley sequence documents several syncopated lowland-alpine, wet-dry reversals, reflecting an adaptive diversity that spanned more than two millennia. The drought terminating cal a.d. 1150 devastated much of the western Great Basin and American Southwest, but its impact was less severe in central Nevada. Although subalpine sites were again abandoned during the drought buildup that peaked in the mid-12th century, summertime occupation of Alta Toquima became more commonplace, although it increased notably during the ~cal a.d. 1200-1400 aridity and persisted throughout the Little Ice Age.

The distribution and diverse nature of dunes in southern African drylands makes them a complex and enigmatic landscape component. While dunes are dominant landscape features in large areas of the Kalahari and Namib deserts, localised and topographically constrained dunes elsewhere are also an important part of the continental dune record. Over 600 published luminescence ages from dune sediments through the subcontinent should, in theory, make possible chronometrically robust analyses of the Quaternary palaeoclimate record. Compared to early aridity- and morphology-focussed interpretations of the dune record, in which three or four phases of dune development were proposed with a focus on the period of the Last Glacial Maximum, today’s data demonstrate a complex and regionally variable record of dune development, with almost continuous dune accumulation through the last 30 kyr preserved in the southwest Kalahari and a more sporadic record in presently wetter eastern and northern areas. Dune geomorphological proxies require careful evaluation before Quaternary climate inferences can be usefully made.

A Handbook of Environmental Management presents a range of case studies that demonstrate the complementary application of different social science techniques in combination with ecology-based management thinking to the natural environment. This eloquent and unique Handbook provides a broad overview, complemented by specific case studies and techniques that are used in environmental management from the local level to international environmental regimes.

Environmental degradation and change associated with development have both social and physical dimensions, but research frequently takes either an environmental or a social perspective, without fully investigating variability in both. This paper outlines a project that attempts to combine detailed analysis of both social and physical components of a major environmental issue in central southern Africa. It explains the operation of a project that is investigating the impacts of concomitant structural land use and environmental change in the Kalahari of Botswana. Social and ecological dimensions of the issue are being investigated simultaneously, which enables better attribution of the causation of change in a spatially variable environment. This avoids the problems of using generalized data for one of the components while the other is researched in detail. It is concluded that it is especially important to do this for issues in situations where either the physical environment displays high temporal variability (as in drylands), or where social changes and policy developments are rapid. This ensures that interpretations of the nature and impact of the environmental issue and its outcomes are made with both social and environmental components subject to the same ‘time-bounded’ controls. Even when such an approach is taken, the rapid dynamics of the issue mean considerable care is needed if it is attempted to extrapolate specific findings to the status of general explanations.

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The red disks from El Castillo Cave are among the earliest known cave paintings. Here, we combine the morphometric and technological study of red disks from two areas located at the end of the cave with the microscopic, elemental, and mineralogical analysis of the pigment and compare the results obtained with observations derived from experimental replication. Ergonomic constraints imply that a number of disks were made by adults, and the differences in pigment texture and composition suggest that they correspond to an accumulation through time of panels made by different persons who shared neither the same technical know-how nor, very possibly, the same symbolic system.

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An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.