Abstract

During the Holocene, what is now the state of South Australia experienced a shift to a drier climate with more frequent droughts c. 4 ka. The ‘intensification model’ in Australian archaeology proposes that Aboriginal people adopted subsistence strategies that exploited resources with high processing costs, while the ‘risk minimization’ model posits that people adopted more flexible foraging strategies. The purpose of this study is to determine whether human groups in South Australia demonstrate evidence for intensification or risk minimisation in response to declining patch quality by examining bone properties of the upper limb in a Holocene skeletal sample from Roonka. Cross-sectional geometry of the humeri and radii was used to examine temporal trends of diaphyseal rigidity and bilateral asymmetry in both sexes. Women show a significant temporal increase in robusticity and rigidity of the upper limbs; men have similar measurements between time periods. Neither sex exhibits a difference in bilateral asymmetry of the humeri and radii over time. These results support risk minimisation at Roonka. In the late Holocene, it is possible that men hunted large game, while women had mixed foraging strategies that involved hunting small game, digging tubers, processing seeds, and collecting shellfish to mitigate high resource variance.

摘要

在全新世期间，现在的南澳大利亚州经历了向干旱的转变，干旱更加频繁c。4 ka。澳大利亚考古学中的“集约化模式”提出，原住民采取维持生计的战略，以高昂的加工成本开采资源，而“风险最小化”模型则认为人们采用了更为灵活的觅食策略。这项研究的目的是通过检查Roonka的全新世骨骼样品中上肢的骨骼特性，来确定南澳大利亚的人类群体是否显示出强化或降低风险的证据，以应对斑块质量下降。肱骨和半径的横截面几何用于检查男女的骨干僵硬和双侧不对称的时间趋势。妇女在上肢的健壮性和刚度方面表现出明显的暂时性增加；男性在不同时间段之间的测量结果相似。两种性别都不会随时间显示肱骨和半径的双侧不对称性的差异。这些结果支持Roonka的风险最小化。全新世晚期，男性有可能猎捕大型猎物，而女性则采取了多种觅食策略，包括猎捕小型猎物，挖块茎，加工种子以及收集贝类以减轻资源的巨大差异。