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Papers by Agathe Dupeyron

The 8th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-8) in Kyoto was an opportunity to observe how academy ... more The 8th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-8) in Kyoto was an opportunity to observe how academy and politics are becoming separated areas for many scholars. How WAC will face this situation in the future without losing the spirit of its origins? In this review, the authors analyze some of these problems and the challenges they present for the future.

by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Peter Turchin, Gary Feinman, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Alessio Palmisano, Axel Kristinsson, Daniel Hoyer, Rudolf Cesaretti, Agathe Dupeyron, Andrey Korotayev, Jenny Reddish, Greine Jordan, Christina Collins, and Gavin Mendel-Gleason

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017

Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, 21 December 2017 ht... more Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, 21 December 2017
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/20/1708800115.abstract

This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

Abstract:
Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as " Seshat: Global History Databank. " We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of gover-nance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history. cultural evolution | sociopolitical complexity | comparative history | comparative archaeology | quantitative history

South Coast Peru by Agathe Dupeyron

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2015

Lomas – ephemeral seasonal oases sustained by ocean fogs – were critical to ancient human ecology... more Lomas – ephemeral seasonal oases sustained by ocean fogs – were critical to ancient human ecology on the desert Pacific coast of Peru: one of humanity’s few independent hearths of agriculture and “pristine” civilisation. The role of climate change since the Late Pleistocene in determining productivity and extent of past lomas ecosystems has been much debated.
Here we reassess the resource potential of the poorly studied lomas of the south coast of Peru during the long Middle Pre-ceramic period (c. 8,000 – 4,500 BP): a period critical in the transition to agriculture, the onset of modern El Niño Southern Oscillation (‘ENSO’) conditions, and eustatic sea-level rise and stabilisation and beach progradation.
Our method combines vegetation survey and herbarium collection with archaeological survey and excavation to make inferences about both Preceramic hunter-gatherer ecology and the changed palaeoenvironments in which it took place. Our analysis of newly discovered archaeological sites – and their resource context – show how lomas formations defined human ecology until the end of the Middle Preceramic Period, thereby corroborating recent reconstructions of ENSO history based on other data.
Together, these suggest that a five millennia period of significantly colder seas on the south coast induced conditions of abundance and seasonal predictability in lomas and maritime ecosystems, that enabled Middle Preceramic hunter-gatherers to reduce mobility by settling in strategic locations at the confluence of multiple eco-zones at the river estuaries. Here the foundations of agriculture lay in a Broad Spectrum Revolution that unfolded, not through population pressure in deteriorating environments, but rather as an outcome of resource abundance.

The 8th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-8) in Kyoto was an opportunity to observe how academy ... more The 8th World Archaeological Congress (WAC-8) in Kyoto was an opportunity to observe how academy and politics are becoming separated areas for many scholars. How WAC will face this situation in the future without losing the spirit of its origins? In this review, the authors analyze some of these problems and the challenges they present for the future.

by Johannes Preiser-Kapeller, Peter Turchin, Gary Feinman, Alessandro Ceccarelli, Alessio Palmisano, Axel Kristinsson, Daniel Hoyer, Rudolf Cesaretti, Agathe Dupeyron, Andrey Korotayev, Jenny Reddish, Greine Jordan, Christina Collins, and Gavin Mendel-Gleason

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2017

Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, 21 December 2017 ht... more Published in: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Early Edition, 21 December 2017
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2017/12/20/1708800115.abstract

This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).

Abstract:
Do human societies from around the world exhibit similarities in the way that they are structured, and show commonalities in the ways that they have evolved? These are long-standing questions that have proven difficult to answer. To test between competing hypotheses, we constructed a massive repository of historical and archaeological information known as " Seshat: Global History Databank. " We systematically coded data on 414 societies from 30 regions around the world spanning the last 10,000 years. We were able to capture information on 51 variables reflecting nine characteristics of human societies, such as social scale, economy, features of gover-nance, and information systems. Our analyses revealed that these different characteristics show strong relationships with each other and that a single principal component captures around three-quarters of the observed variation. Furthermore, we found that different characteristics of social complexity are highly predictable across different world regions. These results suggest that key aspects of social organization are functionally related and do indeed coevolve in predictable ways. Our findings highlight the power of the sciences and humanities working together to rigorously test hypotheses about general rules that may have shaped human history. cultural evolution | sociopolitical complexity | comparative history | comparative archaeology | quantitative history

Quaternary Science Reviews, 2015

Lomas – ephemeral seasonal oases sustained by ocean fogs – were critical to ancient human ecology... more Lomas – ephemeral seasonal oases sustained by ocean fogs – were critical to ancient human ecology on the desert Pacific coast of Peru: one of humanity’s few independent hearths of agriculture and “pristine” civilisation. The role of climate change since the Late Pleistocene in determining productivity and extent of past lomas ecosystems has been much debated.
Here we reassess the resource potential of the poorly studied lomas of the south coast of Peru during the long Middle Pre-ceramic period (c. 8,000 – 4,500 BP): a period critical in the transition to agriculture, the onset of modern El Niño Southern Oscillation (‘ENSO’) conditions, and eustatic sea-level rise and stabilisation and beach progradation.
Our method combines vegetation survey and herbarium collection with archaeological survey and excavation to make inferences about both Preceramic hunter-gatherer ecology and the changed palaeoenvironments in which it took place. Our analysis of newly discovered archaeological sites – and their resource context – show how lomas formations defined human ecology until the end of the Middle Preceramic Period, thereby corroborating recent reconstructions of ENSO history based on other data.
Together, these suggest that a five millennia period of significantly colder seas on the south coast induced conditions of abundance and seasonal predictability in lomas and maritime ecosystems, that enabled Middle Preceramic hunter-gatherers to reduce mobility by settling in strategic locations at the confluence of multiple eco-zones at the river estuaries. Here the foundations of agriculture lay in a Broad Spectrum Revolution that unfolded, not through population pressure in deteriorating environments, but rather as an outcome of resource abundance.