Annapolis Valley
28vi26 Collected while reading David MacInnes's manuscript
Resources and Home Page nsarchaeology.com
Nova Scotia Map Data Canadian Council of Forest Ministers
Map Gallery novascotia.ca
Historical Maps of Nova Scotia Nova Scotia Archives
The Great Map William Mackay (1834)
Bartington Instruments MS2/MS3
Woodland Indians: Iroquois and Algonquin
Colonization of Maine: The Indigenous People in 1600
Precolonial North American History: Tarrentine Wars
HISTORICALLY SPEAKING WITH ED COLEMAN: Deer were never extinct in Nova Scotia
Proximate Factors Limiting Population Growth of White-Tailed Deer in Nova Scotia
Deer coy.pdf
Timeline of First Nations history in Canada
Champlain
2020
Portal:Indigenous peoples of the Americas
Debitage
Debitage, Prehistoric Stone Tools
Debitage Analysis and Archaeological Interpretation October 1985American Antiquity 50(4):755-779
Experimental Archaeology: Assessing Methods in Lithic Debitage Analysis
SHELL-MIDDENS OR HEAPS IN NOVA SCOTIA
Dry summer shrinks N.S. lake, revealing 'works of art' in ancient Mi'kmaw artifacts
Digging Keji — Archeological discoveries hint at Mi'kmaq lives going back six millennia
He's standing beside the Mersey where construction crews are building a new bridge that will span 150 feet across the water without touching it. Both sides are an archeologist's dream.
For the millennia between 6,500 years ago and 1,400 years ago – even up to 500 years ago – the Mersey River is a huge archive of archeological evidence of the Mi'kmaq heritage in Nova Scotia, he said.
"So from that perspective, once you consider the artifacts and the features associated with the artifacts and the numerous petroglyphs that are found along the river system – all the way – then you do see that this is a very significant component of Mi'kmaq heritage in Nova Scotia, or Mi'kma'ki," Burke said, using the indigenous term for the Mi'kmaq Nation.
The Ceramics of the Kejikawek L'nuk, Port Joli (Emsik)
Zea Jones
Relics of the Stone Age in Nova Scotia
Harry Piers
TWO CONCENTRATIONS OF PALAEO-INDIAN
OCCUPATION IN THE FAR NORTHEAST
Stephen A. DAVIS
Where to store a million artifacts? Nova Scotia's past poses present problem
On "Aggregate rationality"
Rational choice model Wikipedia
Aggregate rationality in archaeology
Aggregate rationality in archaeology via Google Scholar
Particularism and the retreat from theory in the archaeology of agricultural origins Kristen Gremillion et al. PNAS (2014)
Review of Wurzer, Gabriel, Kowarik, Kerstin and Reschreiter, Hans (eds.): Agent-Based Modeling and Simulation in Archaeology Advances in Geographic Information Science (2014)
Archaeology as Complexity Science: An Agent-based Perspective bergbaumuseum.de
...A complex adaptive system, then, is a complex system containing adaptive agents, networked so that the environment of each adaptive agent includes other agents in the system.
...Agent-based Modelling and Complexity Economics for Archaeology?!
Social_Theory and Archaeology Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley (pdf)
Materiality, Agency and Evolution of Lithic Technology: an Integrated Perspective for Palaeolithic Archaeology Shumon T Hussain and Maneul Will J Archaeol Method Theory (2020) (full text)
In anthropology
Anthropologists approach aggregate rationality in the following ways:
1. Rational Choice Theory (Formalism)
Aggregate rationality in anthropology Google Scholar
Rational Choice Theory R Jon McGee and Richard L Warms
4vii26
Social Theory and Archaeology Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley (1987) (pdf)
Archaeological Reconnaissance NS Dept of Communities, Culture and Heritage
...In a recent presentation before the Kentville Historical Society, David MacInnes spoke about the extinction of deer, questioning its cause. Was it overhunting by "the ancestors of the Mi'kmaq or was it due to other factors?" he asked.
November A group of Mi'kmaq First Nations partnering with Premium Brands Holdings Corp. announced their $1 billion purchase of Clearwater Seafoods which represented the "largest investment in the seafood industry by a Canadian Indigenous group". This means that harvest of non-Indigenous fishermen would be purchased by Clearwater Seafoods' Mi'kmaq part owners. Just prior to the Clearwater sale, a number of non-indigenous fishers had violently protested Mi'kmaq traditional lobster fishers during the 2020 lobster fishing season.[291]
Debitage
...One thing to keep in mind, from Annapolis Royal to Liverpool there are an estimated 250 known indigenous archeological sites which makes up the Mersey River corridor — it contains 25 per cent of all the (indigenous) archeological sites in Nova Scotia," he said.
[stuff gathered while considering David's Question]:"What do you think
about using aggregate rational behaviour
patterned by climate change, population dynamics and technology
as the agent in social evolutionary theory?"
AI Overview In archaeology, aggregate rationality refers to the principle that large-scale, long-term patterns in the archaeological record are the emergent result of many individual, adaptive decisions rather than top-down societal decrees. National Institutes of Health (.gov) Because archaeological data rarely capture the intent of a single person, archaeologists rely on aggregate patterns to understand past human behavior. The concept spans several key theoretical and methodological frameworks: Key Theoretical Frameworks Human Behavioral Ecology (HBE): HBE operates on the premise that individuals make adaptive, rational choices to maximize their survival and reproductive success (e.g., foraging, toolmaking, or settling). Over time and across a population, these localized choices manifest as broad, measurable patterns, such as shifts in settlement locations or dietary breadth. National Institutes of Health (.gov) Agent-Based Modeling (ABM): ABM relies on the concept of aggregate rationality to simulate past societies. Archaeologists program "agents" (digital representations of people) with basic rules of behavior and resource optimization, allowing them to observe how large-scale, complex societal structures organically emerge from the bottom up. Deutsches Bergbau-Museum +1 Assemblage Theory: Instead of viewing artifact groups as reflections of a single unified "culture," this approach explores how individual objects, human actions, and environmental factors intersect to form dynamic, emergent aggregates of practice over space and time. Springer Nature Link +1 Methodological Implications Understanding "Irrational" Acts: Not all ancient practices conform to modern, Western standards of practical, cost-effective utility. Archaeologists, such as those working with the European Journal of Archaeology, note that ritualistic or symbolic actions—which might appear irrational on the surface—can reflect distinct, past forms of rationality when viewed in their complete environmental and cultural context. Taylor & Francis Online +3 Critique of Homo economicus: Many anthropologists have moved away from the assumption that ancient humans acted as perfectly rational, omniscient economic actors. Instead, aggregate rationality allows for bounded rationality, where decisions are made with limited information and under social or environmental constraints
Models are pieces of machinery that relate observations to theoretical ideas (Clarke, 1972)
...
In anthropology, "aggregate rationality" refers to the concept of whether the collective behaviors of a society—such as economic trends, institutions, or rituals—can be explained as the logical sum of individual, self-interested decisions. It is a central point of debate between formalist and substantivist schools of thought. [1, 2, 3]
2. The Cultural Critique (Substantivism)
3. Bounded Rationality and Practice
4. Group Selection vs. Individual Maximization
Rational choice theory is an umbrella term for a variety of models explaining social phenomena as outcomes of individual action that can in some way be construed as rational. "Rational behavior" is behavior that is suitable for the realization of specific goals, given the limitations imposed by the situation. The key elements of all rational choice explanations are individual preferences, beliefs, and constraints. Preferences denote the positive or negative evaluations individuals attach to the possible outcomes of their actions. Preferences can have many roots, ranging from culturally transmitted tastes for food or other items to personal habits and commitments. Beliefs refer to perceived cause-effect relations, including the perceived likelihood with which an individual's actions will result in different possible outcomes. For example, a village head may believe that raiding a neighboring village A has a higher probability of success than raiding a neighboring village B. Constraints define the limits to the set of feasible actions (e.g., the amount of credit one can get imposes a budget constraint on those considering buying a house).