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Archaeoprimatology intertwines archaeology and primatology for understanding the ancient liminal relationships between humans and nonhuman primates. During the last decade novel studies have boosted this discipline. This edited volume is the first compendium of archaeoprimatological studies ever produced. Written by a culturally diverse group of scholars, with multiple theoretical views and methodological perspectives, it covers new zooarchaeological examinations and material culture evaluations, as well as innovative uses of oral and written sources. Themes covered comprise the survey of past primates as pets, symbolic mediators, prey, iconographic references, or living commodities. The book covers different regions of the world, from the Americas to Asia, along with studies from Africa and Europe. Temporally, the chapters explore the human-nonhuman primate interface from deep in time to more recent historical times, covering both extinct and extant primate taxa. This anthology of archaeoprimatological studies will be of interest to archaeologists, primatologists, anthropologists, art historians, paleontologists, conservationists, zoologists, historical ecologists, philologists, and ethnobiologists.
A review of Minoan frescoes and artefacts suggests interactions with two primate groups in sacred and leisure contexts, respectively. This demonstrates the early exchange of iconography and knowledge of monkeys between the Aegean and North Africa.
By
Loretta A. Cormier, Department of Anthropology, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL,
Bernardo Urbani, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Human and nonhuman primates share a relatively recent history of interaction in the New World in comparison with the Old World. The earliest known platyrrhine fossils only date back to the late Oligocene in Bolivia (e.g. Rosenberger et al., 1991; Takai et al., 2000). The earliest definitive evidence of human beings in South America does not occur until approximately 30 million years later around 12 500 years ago in Chile (Dillehay, 1989, 1997). Current evidence cannot reliably place humans in Amazonia earlier than 11 000 years ago (Roosevelt et al., 1991, 1996). Nevertheless, the roughly 10 000 years of human–nonhuman primate sympatry provides a long history of interaction among numerous Neotropical primate species and diverse human cultures.
The term “ethnoprimatology,” coined by Sponsel (1997), is a newly emerging subdiscipline of anthropology that bridges primatology and cultural anthropology. Primatologists tend to focus their research on understanding the behavior and ecology of a particular primate species or subspecies. Perhaps the most studied aspect of human–nonhuman interactions by primatologists has involved human development and deforestation of primate habitats over the last 500 years. With so many of the world's primate species endangered or threatened, such an approach is logical, meaningful, and most certainly critical for understanding the consequences of human behavior to the quite literal survival of many nonhuman primate species. It is likely that human influence of primate habitats extends even further back in time (e.g. pre-Columbian Mesoamerica; see Kirch, 2005).
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