Archaeology and the Public: A Complicated Relationship?

A. Rossi and E. Webb have a brief report in the March 2008 issue of Antiquity detailing sediment loss apparently caused by dramatic increases in the number of tourist visits at Mulka's Cave, a major rock art site in southwestern Australia. To sum up, they reconstructed changes in floor level based on dated photographs which result in the following chilling (archaeologically, at least) composite profile of the ground level at the cave's entrance:

Courtesy of Antiquity (Rossi and Webb 2008).

Here's what the authors make of this observation that the level of the cave floor has dropped roughly one meter in just over half a century!

"Comparison of photographs we took in 2004 and 2006 showed that the shape of the entrance had changed; prompting us to research datable pictures of Mulka’s Cave on file at DIA. The resulting figure (Figure 3) shows that between 1952 and 1988, 0.5m of sediment was lost. By 2004, another 0.5m of deposit had disappeared. That erosion was accelerating is shown by the amount of sediment lost between 2004 and 2006. Had the walkway not been installed, erosion would have continued unabated because the deposits outside the cave were probed to a depth of -1m, without reaching bedrock."

"We attribute this erosion to trampling (Rossi & Webb n.d.). There are few places within Mulka’s Cave where visitors can stand comfortably to view the artwork because it is full of boulders (Figure 4); while the floor at the base of the rock pile measures 2 x 7m. These limitations became a problem with increased tourism, particularly visits by commercial tours. These groups often comprise 30 people, two of whom are crowded into each square metre of floor space. We believe the resultant trampling has eroded 1m of the cave deposits in 50 years. That sediment is now spread over the slope outside, but the stone artefacts it contains lack stratigraphic context." (Rossi and Webb 2008)

These are sobering observations about the potential impact of uncontrolled tourist visits at archaelogical sites. First, there's the clear conclusion of a one-meter drop in floor level over 50 years. More alarmingly, the most recent 50cm drop took place between 1988 and 2004, or 16 years. This means that the rate of tourism-mediated erosion has tripled relative to what it was between 1952 and 1988, in tandem with increasing peaks in the numbers of visitors at the site (Rossi and Webb 2008: Figure 2).

This raises the age-old question of what the interface should be between archaeology and the public. Much archaeological research is financed by public funds of one sort or another, and archaeologists can thus be argued to have some kind of obligation to make the fruit of their work available to the public. The problem, of course, is how to do this.

There is a lot to be said for doing for science in the interest of furthering science, in the sense of refining of our understanding of various phenomena even if this understanding cannot be immediately be translated for the public at large. On the other hand, we also have a duty to make the public appreciate the importance of publicly-funded research, in this case archaeology. This is made especially salient for archaeology due to the public appeal of archaeological research and the fact that it takes place 'in the real world', that is in space most people can access and occasionally even see as part of their lived landscape. In other words, archaeology can take place, quite literally, in your backyard, making this kind of research immediately engaging to contemporary people, at least on occasion. This is a far cry from most laboratory research where unquestionably important discoveries are made in contexts far removed from people's everyday reality.

While I think public education in archaeology and history is very important, I'm still open about whether this is best achieved through access to data, access to material, or access to sites. Access to data is a great thing, and potentially the easiest of the three to effect. However, archaeological data can take a very long time to analyze fully, resulting in delays in publication and therefore in public dissemination. Additionally, archaeological data are unlikely to be the easiest to digest for the untrained public, even a comparatively educated one.

Access to materials is perhaps the best way to make archaeology accessible and "tangible" to the public at large. The conservation and display of artifacts in museums is a tried, tested and true method of doing this, provided this is done well. Badly organized displays do very little to effectively carry across the importance/relevance of given archaeological collections.

Access to sites is much more tricky - visiting a site is unique manner of experiencing what 'doing archaeology' might be like, albeit very superficially. Visiting Paleolithic sites was certainly a formative experience for me, on at least one level. Visiting ruined cities, etc, also can give a sense that "people in the past" were a lot more like you and me than one might otherwise think, which is a good realization for anyone to have in an age of growing intolerance. However, while a one-off site visit may well convey the excitement of 'doing' archaeology, it transmits little to none of the tediousness that can characterize actual fieldwork, where you might be stuck working in the same square meter unit for days on end (see this post for more on this and another one by Kris Hirst). Personally, this was something I only learned when I finally got to do fieldwork, and that's coming from someone who loves being in the field – imagine what it must be like for people who don’t enjoy digging that much!

On top of that, as Rossi and Webb’s study demonstrates, unchecked tourist access can have serious impacts on the integrity of the archaeological deposits remaining at a site. This can be true of even extremely modest and highly controlled visit regimens, as the ongoing Lascaux crisis demonstrates. I’d surmise that even very large, very resilient sites (e.g., cities, temples, and the like) deal with very similar issues albeit perhaps at a different scale. Allowing the public to visit sites is thus fraught with conservation issues, but also a unique way of making people "experience archaeology" first-hand, resulting in a sort of tug-of-war over the value of making sites accessible to visitors. That said, I’m still not sure either is necessarily the best way to get across why archeology is important as opposed to simply being a cool thing to research.

References:

Rossi, Alana M., and R. Esmée Webb. 2008. The erosive effect of tourism at an Aboriginal rock art site on the western edge of the arid zone in south-western Australia. Antiquity 82 (315): http://www.antiquity.ac.uk/ProjGall/rossi/index.html.

AVRPI Coffee News: Starbucks to close... for three hours!

We care deeply about all things coffee here at A Very Remote Period Indeed. So this comes as very good news indeed:

Starbucks to close all stores for three hours.

In related news, yours truly to be seen dancing in the streets for those three hours! By all means, take that time to get to know your local coffee shop(s), if you don't already!

Spoken too soon? More Dmanisi news

I'm finally back from various unexpectedly lengthy pursuits south of the border, and now enjoying the light snow lightly caking everything in MTL, like so much powdered sugar on a delicious sfogliatella...

Two weeks ago I posted about a new study on the potential impact of volcanism on the accumulation of hominin remains at the Lower Pleistocene site of Dmanisi, Georgia. One of the appealing aspects of the conclusions of that study by de Lumley et al. (in press) is that it accounted for the presence of fully five distinct individuals at the site, since large accumulations of hominin remains at single localities tend to be rare.

The situation at Dmanisi may, however, be slightly more complex than this, suggest M. Calvo-Rathert and his colleagues, in a paper in Quaternary Research. They claim that, in fact, the individuals recovered at Dmanisi come from two distinct geological units. How distinct, you ask? Distinct enough that one (Unit A, the volcanogenic one) has normal magnetic polarity, while the other (Unit B, ) evidences reversed polarity. This, they infer, means that Unit B could be as young as 1.07 mya, while Unit A dates to 2.0-1.8 mya, which they interpret as meaning that the various hominins found at the site oculd have been deposited over a very span of time.

If the results from the present study are compared with the
geomagnetic polarity scale, and available radiometric data (1.8
to 2.0 Ma for the underlying lavas and the volcanic ash level)
are considered, the lower part of the section shows a clear
correlation with the Olduvai subchron (Fig. 1). If considered
reversed, the upper levels cannot be correlated with any specific
point and could be as young as 1.07 Ma (age of Jaramillo)
because the whole section is not continuous and so the smaller
events might not be recorded, even though the data set from this
study is composed of continuous subsections. If directions of
the upper-lying Unit B samples are considered intermediate,
those data might correspond to a polarity change between
Olduvai and any of the normal polarity subchrons shown,
although because of the reasons outlined before we do not favor
that interpretation.

Despite the morphologic differences observed between mandible
D2600 found in layer A1 and the remaining hominin
findings (Rightmire et al., 2006), different data sources (i.e.,
stratigraphic and sedimentological) suggest that the time frame
spanning the Dmanisi lithostratigraphic section is not long (e.g.,
Gabunia et al., 2001). On the other hand, human remains and
artifacts have been found in volcanic ashes (Unit A, normal
polarity), pipe features (reversed polarity) and Unit B (reversed
polarity), and the Olduvai/Matuyama reversal is not recorded in
the discontinuous sequence presented in this study. A conservative
analysis of these observations suggests that the age of the
Dmanisi site could at least span several ten thousands of years,
although a much wider period of hundreds of thousands of years
cannot be excluded. All this might point to more than one
human population occupying the studied area. (Calvo-Rathert et al. 2008: 96)

It therefore seems that the Dmanisi hominin sample might have accumulated under much less 'catastrophic' conditions that implied by de Lumley et al. (in press), and that some of the morphological variability in said sample might be due to the fact that it contains individuals belonging to distinct populations potentially separated in time by hundreds of thousand years.

References:

CALVORATHERT, M., GOGUITCHAICHVILI, A., SOLOGASHVILI, D., VILLALAIN, J., BOGALO, M., CARRANCHO, A., MAISSURADZE, G. (2008). New paleomagnetic data from the hominin bearing Dmanisi paleo-anthropologic site (southern Georgia, Caucasus). Quaternary Research, 69(1), 91-96. DOI: 10.1016/j.yqres.2007.09.001

DELUMLEY, M. (2008). Impact probable du volcanisme sur le décès des Hominidés de Dmanissi. Comptes Rendus Palevol DOI: 10.1016/j.crpv.2007.09.002

2008 Paleoanthropology Society Meeting preliminary program is available

The preliminary program of this year's Paleoanthropology Society meetings (March 25-26, 2008) is now available as a pdf. It looks like it will be another exceedingly interesting year to attend!

Can you feel the magic in the air?

Oooooh yeah - it's that day of the year again, and people are playful all over their blogs, living today to a slo-funk paleo soundtrack. You've got John Hawks talking about monkey (actually ape) love, Greg Laden talking about cookin' and matin', and Laelaps sending out cute Valendinos.

So, I thought I'd jump on the bandwagon and post this archaeoromantic pic, for all you lovers (of the past) to enjoy... it's from a Neolithic site near Mantua, in Italy (where else!). I know, I know, the story's a year old, but it's just such a fine find, I can't help it!

Four Stone Heart #34...

... is up at Our Cultural World. You might just want to check out that pit-stop along the information superhighway if you dig your bloggin' anthropological.

Ups and downs in experimental archaeology

Have you ever wondered about just how glamorous the lifestyle associated with experimental archaeology can be? If so (and even if not!), you should head on over to The Real Eolith to find out a bit more about the (literally) gut-wrenching details of a recent experimental project on cut marks on decomposing fish remains conducted by L. Willis and M. Eren. Hold on to your stomachs!

Volcanism at Dmanisi

A paper in press by M.-A. de Lumley and colleagues suggests that the five Lower Pleistocene hominins recovered at Dmanisi, Georgia, entered the paleoanthropological record as the result of a volcanic eruption. Here's the abstract:

"The human remains unearthed at the Lower Pleistocene site of Dmanisi (Georgia), are numerous, well preserved and show no evidence of transportation or predation. They were discovered over a small surface and correspond to at least five Homo georgicus individuals, whose age at death is regularly distributed from the teenager to the elder over 40 years old. These characteristics evoke a family group who died suddenly. Granulometry and chemical analyses of ca. 30 volcanic tephra samples prove its unicity and its primary position. Since this tephra cannot correspond to a nuée ardente, it is probable that the Dmanisi Hominids were surprised and asphyxiated, 1 810 000 years ago, by volcanic ashfalls." (de Lumley et al., in press: 1)

Not impossible, I suppose, and it has the advantage of explaining why you find five relatively well-preserved hominins in direct association with volcanic ash. As far as where the eruption itself took place, the authors state, in the abridged English version of the article, that

"The volcanic ashes were sorted during aerial transportation from the emissive point, presumably located ca. 20 km west of Dmanisi (Emliki heights in the Džavacheti Mountains). From such a distance, the ashfall does not burn, but when inhaled, it mixes with naso-bucco-pharyngeal secretions and forms a mixture that provokes suffocation by obstruction of respiratory and digestive tubes...

"In Dmanisi, the concentration of Hominids in a depression may represent a search for shelter. The ashfall, cold hence non-mortal, could have allowed the Hominids to gather in a natural depression. Tephra inhalation, mixed with natural secretions, may have led to animal and human death by obstruction of respiratory
and digestive tubes." (de Lumley et al., in press: 4)

It'd be interesting to see whether the faunal assemblages at the site reflect a similar pattern, and whether the lithic assemblages differ from most contemporary ones by their more or less 'systemic' character (sensu Schiffer 1972). That is to say, whether the stone tools differ from archaeological assemblages comprising purposefully discarded items as opposed to representing an assemblage 'frozen in use' by a volcanic eruption.

References:

de Lumley, M.-A., J.-M. Bardintzeff, P. Bienvenu, J.-B. Bilcot, G. Flamenbaum, C. Guy, M. Jullien, H. de Lumley, J.-P. Nabot, C. Perrenoud, O. Provitina, and M. Tourasse. 2008. Impact probable du volcanisme sur le décès des Hominidés de Dmanissi/Probable volcanic impact on the death of the Dmanisi Hominids. Comptes Rendus Palevol: in press; doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2007.09.002

Schiffer, M. B. 1972. Archaeological context and systemic context. American Antiquity 37:156-165.

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Rock Art Radio!

Over at Archaeozoology, there's mention of a program on BBC radio entitled "The Drawings on the Wall" about rock art that will unfold in five episodes between February 3rd and March 2nd, 2008 (check out also Tim's take at Remote Central). You can listen to the broadcast after they've played live. I'm especially excited about the first episode which is all about the rock art at Creswell Crags (which I posted about a long while ago), a site in the UK where they found some Paleolithic incisions and near which they're planning to build a museum/interpretive center.

Quote of the day

"Moreover, because the academic payoff to finding exceptions to any rule is quite high, we can be confident that cases to the contrary have been reported." (S. Kuhn and M. Stiner. 2006. What's a Mother to Do? Current Anthropology 47: 955).

Updates and clean-ups

At long last, I've added a few new links to my blogroll, and cleaned up some links that were either defunct or that hadn't been updated in over three months. And if you have an archaeology/ancient stuff-related blog that you'd like to be featured on A Very Remote Period Indeed please feel free to contact me and I'll try to include it in there if it's pertinent. Check out all the blogs I'm now linking to, but if you want to catch a glimpse of the soul of archaeology as a vocation (and some very nice photos related to this endeavor), then by all mean check out Metin Eren's new blog, The Real Eolith (love that name!).

Update (Jan. 31, 22:11): Now with updated links!

"What's the other thing that scares you"?

"Carnies." (bonus points to anyone who id's the reference here).

Anyhoo, the latest Four Stone Hearth anthropology blog carnival extravaganza is up at Greg Laden's Blog. Make sure you visit and comment abundantly on the latest in anthropological blogging!

Neanderthals, Now in Color!

Debates over the symbolic behavior of Neanderthals have always been hampered by the unreliability of much of the evidence invoked in support of it. That is to say two things: 1) there are not very many artifacts that are suggestive of symbolic behavior; and 2) those that do exist are often plagued by ambiguity as to whether they are the result of purposeful Neanderthal action or the result of non-human factors.

Over the past few years, pigment use has been claimed to differentiate the symbolic capacity of Homo sapiens from those of Neanderthals, and as one of the defining elements of ‘modern behavior.’ This is partly why the discovery of pigment use – presumably by early Homo sapiens – dating back to 167 kya in South Africa was such big news this past fall (Marean et al. 2007). The basic idea here is that the purposeful collecting and shaping of blocks of coloring material is indicative of behavior in which colors were used to transmit socially-mediated information.

There is some convincing evidence that Neanderthals demonstrated symbolic behavior, especially in the latter moments of their evolutionary history (e.g., d’Errico 2003, d’Errico et al. 2003), but so far there has been little in the way of published work about their use of pigments prior to the Châtelperronian. A paper by Marie Soressi and Francesco d’Errico (2007 – available as a freely accessible pdf), however, presents very convincing evidence for that behavior at least by 60 kya (see also d’Errico and Soressi 2006). That study reviews the evidence for Neanderthal symbolic behavior as a whole, but it contains one section specifically dedicated to the question of identifying pigment use in European Middle Paleolithic assemblages, at least 70 of which have yielded blocks of coloring materials (mainly black-colored manganese dioxide) and/or tools involved in the processing of pigments such as grindstones and mortars (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:303).

The reason why this ongoing study is so convincing is that the authors used replicative referents that objectively establish the microscopic and rugosimetric features of blocks of coloring materials worked in different manners and with different tools. This provides an objective baseline against which to compare the characteristics of objects found in assemblages attributed to Neanderthals and to determine whether they bear evidence of having been purposefully manufactured by human action.

In the case of the specific study conducted by the authors – on the French Mousterian sites of Pech de l’Azé I and Pech de l’Azé IV, located about 80 meters apart – they created a series of experimental referents obtained through 13 kinds of modifications/uses, including scraping for powder with a flint object, abrading against various kinds of stone, coloring leather, and drawing body paintings (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:304). The preliminary results of their analysis show that 250+ blocks from Pech I and 20+ blocks from Pech IV appear to have been modified by Neanderthals:

“… of the Pech de l’Azé I blocks, over half were abraded on sandstone before being used on soft materials such as dried skin, or human skin. Neanderthals seem to have abraded the pigments on sandstone slabs that were also recovered during excavation so as to create elongated facets with strong coloring properties that could be used in the manner of a charcoal pencil to mark various materials, including human skin in the case of body painting. The blocks from Pech IV appear to have been used in largely similar manners. However, some pieces bear grooves resulting from scraping their surface with flakes or retouched tools. This indicates that, beyond using [manganese dioxide] in pencil form, Neanderthals also manufactured coloring powder used either as is, or more likely mixed to some binding agent. (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:306; my translation)

Since environmental condition and local manganese abundance appear to be comparable for the two sites, the authors interpret the disparity in the number of manganese pieces between Pech I and IV as resulting from contextual factors, suggesting that coloring was not equally important in all contexts or site-occupation modalities. Also, I especially like this section about what the use of coloring material might mean in terms of Neanderthal symbolic capacity:

“It would be hard to confirm a purely functional use [of coloring materials]; in fact, such a use would be nearly impossible to demonstrate if we consider the omnipresent nature of symbols in human societies. If the model provided by known foragers is extended to Neanderthals, the systematic use of pigments in a strong argument in favor of their capacity to develop symbolic cultural practices.” (Soressi and d’Errico 2007:306; my translation)

References:

d’Errico, F . 2003. The invisible frontier: A multiple-species model for the origin of behavioral modernity. Evolutionary Anthropology 12:188–202.

d’Errico, F., C. Henshilwood, G. Lawson, M. Vanhaeren, A.-M. Tillier, M. Soressi, F . Bresson, B. Maureille, A. Nowell, J. Lakarra, L. Backwell, and M. Julien. 2003. Archaeological evidence for the emergence of language, symbolism, and music: an alternative multidisciplinary perspective. Journal of World Prehistory 17:1–70.

d’Errico F., and M. Soressi, 2006 Des hommes en couleurs. Les Dossiers de la Recherche 24: 84-87.

Marean, C. W., M. Bar-Matthews, J. Bernatchez, E. Fisher, P. Goldberg, A. I. R. Herries, Z. Jacobs, A. Jerardino, P. Karkanas, T. Minichillo, P. J. Nilssen, E. Thompson, I. Watts, and H. M. Williams. 2007. Early human use of marine resources and pigment in South Africa during the Middle Pleistocene. Nature 449:905-908.

Soressi, M., and F. d’Errico. 2007. Pigments, gravures, parures: Les comportements symboliques controversées des Néandertaliens. In Les Néandertaliens. Biologie et cultures (B. Vandermeersch and B. Maureille, eds.), pp. 297-309. Editions du CTHS, Paris.

The Vasts

I had the very pleasant experience of attending a short concert by Montréal band The Vasts at l'Esco last night. The band, who describe themselves as Johnny Cash meets Portishead (!), have grown by leaps and bounds since I first saw them last fall, which bodes well indeed for them. They have a little EP out, if you like what you hear on their page, and this one too...

Ed Wilmsen lecture

The Dept. of Anthropology and the Center for Society, Technology and Development at McGill University are sponsoring a talk by Ed Wilmsen (UT - Austin), famous for his 198 book Land full of Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari, and for his spearheading in part the 'revisionist' side of the 'Kalahari Debate' over the past 25 years. This is an especially timely talk, since this very debate was discussed in my seminar last week (as discussed here).

Wilmsen will be talking about “Globalization before the globe: Regulation of intercontinental trade in southern Africa, ca. CE 700-1800.” Here's the abstract

In this paper, I engage a social geography in order to map the processes by which intercontinental trade was regulated in interior southern Africa during the 8th-15th centuries. This region was at that time part of an early form of "globalization" encompassing the entire Indo-Pacific province as well as the Islamic caliphates of the eastern Mediterranean. There are no written records for or from this interior region until the beginning of the 16th century when Portuguese captured the Swahili trading entrepôts on the east coast and began to penetrate into the interior. Other forms of evidence must be adduced to illuminate the social processes active in the interior in the centuries I am considering. Material artifacts are a prime source of evidence for this task, for, I contend, they have the same ontological status as words. Drawing on the works of Locke, Marx and Engels, Simmel, and Veblen I argue that, marked by distinct intentions of their makers and users, material artefacts are potentially as comprehensible as verbal documents. With these premises set forth, I turn to the scope of early Indo-Pacific commodity exchange, then to an overview of the southern African landscape, and finally to episodes of origin mythology widespread in the region. From this I specify certain minimum components of a structure of rights to possession of things, rules governing who may inherit specific things, rules governing movement of these things, rules governing who may handle them, and rules governing processes of their valuation.

It's open to everyone, so if you're in the Montreal area next week and are interested in those issues, you should definitely try to attend! The whole thing takes place Monday, January 28, 2008, (12:30-2:00PM), in Room 738 of the Leacock Building, McGill University.

NESPOS vid

NESPOS is one of the collaborating organizations on the Paleoanth Portal site, which I mentioned in a recent post. NESPOS stands for the Neanderthal Studies Professional Online System and is described thusly on the Paleoanth Portal:

NESPOS grew out of the TNT (The Neanderthal Tools) project, which ran from 2004-2005 and developed a database of information about Neanderthal-related sites, fossils and archaeological assemblages. Currently more than 500 CT-Scans and data from 50 Neanderthal sites are accessible; the data base is extended constantly. Members of NESPOS (an international professional society) receive access to CT & 3D surface scans of fossils and artifacts visualized in ArteCore and 3D terrain models and virtual excavation sites accessible with GeoCore, a GIS and exploration tool.

The NESPOS site is pretty slick - well done, and the demo files give a good impression of the versatility of some of the 3D models of bones they have available. It certainly look like a worthwhile organization to join if you're interested in Neanderthal studies.

Also on the site is this promotional video, just to whet your appetite until you get yourself there.

I like the vid quite a bit, and it gives a fly-thru (literally!) of some of the data and models they've got available. Though, with The Who providing the soundtrack and the flying in and out of things, I couldn't help but to think.... CSI: Neanderthal!! I was almost expecting the inimitable David Caruso to pop up at the end and deliver a gag-inducing one-liner about "dead-ends"!

Science on TV: Shubin @ Pharyngula

You just might enjoy this little interview on the Colbert Report earlier this week, with Neil Shubin talking about his new book Your Inner Fish.

If you did, you also just might enjoy reading this guest post by Neil Shubin on Pharyngula. He talks about how he prepped for the interview experience, and I think that he has some really thoughtful suggestions on how to present scientific research in ways that are likely to engage non-scientist audiences.

Time for a carnival!

Four Stone Hearth XXXII is up at Testimony of the Spade. Magnus did a bang-up job putting together a diverse set of entries - check 'em all out, but I especially enjoyed Kambiz's (Anthropology.net) take on what some recent functions of Google and Facebook might have to contribute to the development of paleoanthropology, in so far as the sharing and dissemination of data are concerned. While the link is not immediately obvious, when you realize that Delson et al. (2007) published a short paper summarizing the highlights of a recent conference held in Washington, D.C. about access to data in paleoanthropology as a discipline, it all starts making sense! If this interests you, you should also definitely check out the Paleoanth Portal website that resulted from that meeting.

Reference:
Delson, E., W. E. H. Harcourt-Smith, S. R. Frost, and C. A. Norris. 2007. Databases, Data Access, and Data Sharing in Paleoanthropology: First Steps. Evolutionary Anthropology 16;161-163.

Recent research pertaining to the 'Kalahari Debate'

We were talking about the 'Kalahari Debate' and its unfolding over the past 20-25 years, yesterday in my hunter-gatherer seminar. Basically, it boils down to whether one considers some Kalahari Bushmen (I'm aware of the debate over the name here, just using this one for convenience) to be 'true' hunter-gatherers or to have been forced into a hunting-gathering subsistence by the geopolitics of the region as they unfolded over the past centuries.

There's an interesting paper by Alan Barnard (available as a freely downloadable pdf on the Social Anthropology journal web site) that summarizes the debate up to now, and inserts it in the broader debate over the notion of 'indigenous peoples,' as recently rekindled by Kuper (2003). The paper's pretty comprehensive in its historical coverage and does a nice job of situating the various debates in their intellectual contexts. Here's the abstract:

The debate on the notion of ‘indigenous peoples’ is one of the newest facing anthropology. Yet its theoretical foundation is not new. It is implicit in both Kalahari revisionism and its opposite, the ecological approach that treats hunter-gatherers as exemplars of primal culture. It is also reminiscent of the earlier views of Wilhelm Schmidt, whose vision of the earliest culture circle was represented by living hunter-gatherers. That said, the notion of ‘indigenous peoples’ is more complex than earlier models; and its opponents, such as Adam Kuper, must struggle against both philosophical premises (which are relatively easy to challenge) and practical arguments in favour of keeping the notion (which are more resilient). This paper focuses on the ‘indigenous peoples’ debate in Africanist anthropology, but its wider aspects include the interconnections of theoretical premises within diverse schools in the discipline and the general relation between anthropological theory and practical politics. (Barnard 2006)

Focusing more narrowly on recent research dealing specifically with the 'Kalahari Debate', there's also a paper by Victor Grauer in the latest issue of the online journal Before Farming. Therein, he argues that genetics and musicology, two lines of evidence that haven't been used much if at all so far in this debate, independently seem to favor the 'traditionalist' perspective. Here's the abstract of that paper:

While the ‘Great Kalahari Debate’ hinged almost exclusively on the interpretation of sparse and confusing archaeological and historical data, abundant and convincing genetic evidence from the realm of biological anthropology has been largely ignored, while equally compelling cultural evidence drawn from the musical traditions of the populations in question has been overlooked entirely. In this paper, I attempt to demonstrate how genetic and musicological research can be combined to provide a compelling case for the ‘traditionalist’ position in this ongoing controversy. To this end, I draw upon an important but little known musical ‘genome’, the Cantometric database, compiled under the direction of the late Alan Lomax, at the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research. (Grauer 2007)

I'm all for multiple lines of evidence informing anthropological research, so this paper certainly seems to be an innovative contribution to this ongoing, long-standing debate.

References:

Barnard, A. 2006. Kalahari revisionism, Vienna , and the “indigenous peoples” debate'. Social Anthropology / Anthropologie sociale 14: 1-16.

Grauer, V. A. 2007. New perspectives on the Kalahari debate: a tale of two 'genomes.' Before Farming 2007/2-4.

Kruper, A. The return of the native. Current Anthropology 44: 389–402.

Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology Back-Links, Set 4

From August 2007:

"Some sort of proto-human": comments on a paper on archaeological research at Misliya Cave, Israel, which indicates that early Middle Paleolithic foragers were fully competent large-game hunters.

Stone Age Atlantis!: a few thoughts on reports about the discovery of an underwater Mesolithic site.

Long distance raw material procurement in the Mousterian: summary and comments on a paper that reports on the transfer of stone over several hundred kms in the Mousterian of southeastern France.