TY - JOUR
T1 - Multi-analytical approach to zooarchaeological assemblages elucidates Late Holocene coastal lifeways in southwest Madagascar
AU - Douglass, Kristina
AU - Antonites, Annie R.
AU - Quintana Morales, Eréndira M.
AU - Grealy, Alicia
AU - Bunce, Michael
AU - Bruwer, Chriselle
AU - Gough, Charlotte
N1 - Funding Information:
This manuscript was completed with the support of a Smithsonian Institution Peter Buck Postdoctoral Fellowship in the National Museum of Natural History, under the supervision of Dr. Torben Rick and Dr. Helen James. The archaeological investigations carried out in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area were made possible with funding from the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program , the P.E.O. Scholar Award, the Yale Institute of Biospheric Studies , the Yale MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies and the Yale Council on Archaeological Studies . Research permissions were granted to K. Douglass by the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique , Autorisation Numéro 128/13-MESupReS/SG/DGRP and by the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche sur l’Art et les Traditions Orales Malgaches (CEDRATOM) , under the auspices of the Memorandum of Understanding between the University of Toliara , under the direction of Dr. Barthélémy Manjakahery, Director of the CEDRATOM, and Yale University , under the direction of Dr. Roderick McIntosh, Professor of Anthropology. Local permission to carry out archaeological research was granted by the Office du Maire, Commune de Befandefa and by the Chefs de Fokontany of Andavadoaka, Nosy Ve, Antsaragnagnangy, Lamboara, Ampasilava and Salary. Permits for the export of archaeological materials for the purposes of laboratory analysis were granted by the Secretariat Général of the Ministère de l’Artisanat de la Culture et des Patrimoines , Direction Régionale de la Culture et du Patrimoine Atsimo Andrefana , Visas de Sorties Numéro 09/06-MCP/SG/DRCP.AA ; Numéro 05/14-MACP/SG/DRCP.AA ; Numéro 08/14-MACP/SG/DRCP.AA in accordance with Avis Numéro 375, 02/02/1978 . Special thanks to the Morombe Archaeological Project (MAP) team, to the people of Andavadoaka, and to Blue Ventures Conservation for sharing data pertaining to modern Velondriake fisheries and marine habitat distribution. Ditsong National Museum of Natural History in Pretoria granted access to comparative mammal, bird and herpetofauna skeletal collections. MB and AG acknowledge the support of Australian Research Council grant DP160104473 to study bulk bone and thank James Taylor and Daniel Werndly of the Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) Laboratory at Curtin University for technical assistance. Steve Goodman provided helpful feedback on the taxonomic identification of some specimens. BLAST searches were carried out using the infrastructure at the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre (Perth, Western Australia).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2017 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA
PY - 2018/3/25
Y1 - 2018/3/25
N2 - The impact of resource exploitation by ancient human communities on Madagascar's environment is an area of intense debate. A fundamental question in the archaeology of Madagascar is the extent to which arrival of settlers, introduction of non-native plants and animals, and subsequent human exploitation of island biota, which catalyzed declines in biodiversity and significantly degraded environmental conditions. Fine-grained datasets, including zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical and other ecological evidence, are needed to assess the relationship between human resource exploitation and environmental change. On Madagascar, the resolution of zooarchaeological datasets is often reduced by poor preservation of faunal remains, making precise taxonomic identifications difficult, and few projects to-date have comprehensively assessed zooarchaeological data. Here, we present zooarchaeological data from three coastal villages in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar, where human occupation spans from ca. 1400 BP to the present. Faunal remains from the Late Holocene sites of Antsaragnagnangy and Antsaragnasoa were identified using morphological analysis of remains, and a PCR-based bulk bone metabarcoding approach was applied at Andamotibe to molecularly identify fish and other vertebrates in a faunal assemblage that was particularly fragmented. Results were interpreted and contextualized using modern data on local fish diversity, climate and anthropogenic impacts on marine and estuarine habitats, as well as modern fishing practices (including preferred fishing grounds, tackle, taxonomic representation and volume of catch). Our use of multiple analytical and interpretative approaches has provided the most highly resolved view to date of past human subsistence in coastal southwest Madagascar. We contend that future research into human-environment dynamics on Madagascar should make use of diverse analytical methods, in order to more comprehensively evaluate past interactions between human communities and the native biota. Furthermore, we encourage an historical ecological approach, so that long-term perspectives on changing human-environment dynamics may be used to contextualize modern trends.
AB - The impact of resource exploitation by ancient human communities on Madagascar's environment is an area of intense debate. A fundamental question in the archaeology of Madagascar is the extent to which arrival of settlers, introduction of non-native plants and animals, and subsequent human exploitation of island biota, which catalyzed declines in biodiversity and significantly degraded environmental conditions. Fine-grained datasets, including zooarchaeological, archaeobotanical and other ecological evidence, are needed to assess the relationship between human resource exploitation and environmental change. On Madagascar, the resolution of zooarchaeological datasets is often reduced by poor preservation of faunal remains, making precise taxonomic identifications difficult, and few projects to-date have comprehensively assessed zooarchaeological data. Here, we present zooarchaeological data from three coastal villages in the Velondriake Marine Protected Area in southwest Madagascar, where human occupation spans from ca. 1400 BP to the present. Faunal remains from the Late Holocene sites of Antsaragnagnangy and Antsaragnasoa were identified using morphological analysis of remains, and a PCR-based bulk bone metabarcoding approach was applied at Andamotibe to molecularly identify fish and other vertebrates in a faunal assemblage that was particularly fragmented. Results were interpreted and contextualized using modern data on local fish diversity, climate and anthropogenic impacts on marine and estuarine habitats, as well as modern fishing practices (including preferred fishing grounds, tackle, taxonomic representation and volume of catch). Our use of multiple analytical and interpretative approaches has provided the most highly resolved view to date of past human subsistence in coastal southwest Madagascar. We contend that future research into human-environment dynamics on Madagascar should make use of diverse analytical methods, in order to more comprehensively evaluate past interactions between human communities and the native biota. Furthermore, we encourage an historical ecological approach, so that long-term perspectives on changing human-environment dynamics may be used to contextualize modern trends.
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U2 - 10.1016/j.quaint.2017.09.019
DO - 10.1016/j.quaint.2017.09.019
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85030786358
VL - 471
SP - 111
EP - 131
JO - Quaternary International
JF - Quaternary International
SN - 1040-6182
ER -