oreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . v Carole L. Crumley Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Ludomir R. Lozny and Thomas H. McGovern The Tragedy of the Commons: A Theoretical Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 James M. Acheson Who Is in the Commons: Defining Community, Commons, and Time in LongTerm Natural Resource Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Michael R. Dove, Amy Johnson, Manon Lefebvre, Paul Burow, Wen Zhou, and Lav Kanoi Managing Risk Through Cooperation: NeedBased Transfers and Risk Pooling Among the Societies of the Human Generosity Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Lee Cronk, Colette Berbesque, Thomas Conte, Matthew Gervais, Padmini Iyer, Brighid McCarthy, Dennis Sonkoi, Cathryn Townsend, and Athena Aktipis Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77 Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Anthony J. Newton, Megan T. Hicks, Andrew J. Dugmore, Viðar Hreinsson, A. E. J. Ogilvie, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Árni Einarsson, Steven Hartman, I. A. Simpson, Orri Vésteinsson, and Thomas H. McGovern Contentsx The Organizational Scheme of HighAltitude Summer Pastures: The Dialectics of Conflict and Cooperation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Ludomir R. Lozny LargeScale Land Acquisition as Commons Grabbing: A Comparative Analysis of Six African Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 Tobias Haller, Timothy Adams, Desirée Gmür, Fabian Käser, Kristina Lanz, Franziska Marfurt, Sarah Ryser, Elisabeth Schubiger, Anna von Sury, and JeanDavid Gerber Open Access, Open Systems: Pastoral Resource Management in the Chad Basin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165 Mark Moritz, Paul Scholte, Ian M. Hamilton, and Saïdou Kari Mollusc Harvesting in the PreEuropean Contact Pacific Islands: Investigating Resilience and Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189 Frank R. Thomas Environment and Landscapes of Latin America’s Past. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213 Vernon L. Scarborough, Christian Isendahl, and Samantha Fladd The Scale, Governance, and Sustainability of Central Places in PreHispanic Mesoamerica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 235 Gary M. Feinman and David M. Carballo The Native California Commons: Ethnographic and Archaeological Perspectives on Land Control, Resource Use, and Management . . . . . . . . 255 Terry L. Jones and Brian F. Codding Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study of Water Commons from the North American Southwest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 281 Michael J. Aiuvalasit
Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation Ludomir R Lozny Thomas H McGovern Editors Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management With a Foreword by Carole L Crumley Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation Series editors Daniel G. Bates, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA Ludomir R. Lozny, Hunter College, City University of New York, New York, NY, USA More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/6877 Ludomir R Lozny • Thomas H McGovern Editors Global Perspectives on Long Term Community Resource Management With a Foreword by Carole L Crumley Editors Ludomir R Lozny Hunter College, CUNY New York, NY, USA Thomas H McGovern Hunter College, CUNY New York, NY, USA ISSN 1574-0501 Studies in Human Ecology and Adaptation ISBN 978-3-030-15799-9 ISBN 978-3-030-15800-2 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15800-2 © Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019 This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Foreword This book examines the aspects of the contemporary and historic management of resources held in common The very existence of such management strategies runs counter to the long-held assertion that they are obsolete and must be removed from local management and subjected to state, corporate, or other external controls A brief look at the not-so-distant history of this view can provide context for this important volume It may surprise some readers that the main point of Garrett Hardin’s 1968 Science article ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ is that overpopulation is the chief source of environmental degradation, not that communities are incapable of sustained management of the commons At the time of its publication, the article was the focus of an enormous controversy about what was soon referred to as the ‘population bomb’ (Ehrlich and Ehrlich 1968) In the same period, but with a broader perspective more characteristic of contemporary opinion, the Club of Rome’s The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al 1972) argues that the number of humans is only part of the larger problem: the Earth’s resources are finite Concerns of the tumultuous late 1960s to early 1970s reflect a long struggle to define the role of humanity in the degradation and depletion of resources Which elements of society are at fault? For some, the ‘overpopulation question’ was key to a solution It was also an opportunity to revisit the early twentieth-century ideas of progress and social engineering, the fundamental assumptions guiding the policies of Western nation-states (Scott 1999) In the early twentieth century, the tenets of nationalism and of scientific racism proved particularly compatible, offering a solid justification for colonialism, class privilege, and persecution of minorities Equally attractive was the argument that Europe and North America were doubly blest with the world’s most intellectually invigorating climate and its most enlightened population In shifting blame away from the colonists and onto the colonized, Hardin’s argument echoed the earlier concern about overpopulation But it also cemented the idea that aside from the progressive, competitive West, the human impact on resources was the result of an outdated strategy of collaboration v vi Foreword The rise of eugenics (the application of the principles of selective animal breeding to humans) between the two World Wars coincided with the apogee of Western domination of subject peoples and countries all over the globe in the name of progress, with a potent subtext of racism In Germany, National Socialism adopted a suite of ideas that combined geographical determinism (drawing on Tacitus’ Germania), cultural determinism (promoting the work of the linguist and archaeologist Gustaf Kossinna), and genetic determinism (the idea that human social and behavioural qualities are manifest in the form of ‘racial character’) By 1933, the Nazis had embraced the work of several prominent American scholars, among them, physical anthropologists Aleš Hrdlička and Charles Davenport and geographers Walter Christaller and Ellsworth Huntington, a founder and early president of the Ecological Society of America Following statist economic perspectives and genetic theories that still bore the mark of this history, Hardin, who was an anti-immigrant and an advocate of forced sterilization and held white nationalist sentiments, asserts that individual’s self- interest inevitably undermines communal action Hardin’s education by the interwar generation of scholars (BS zoology 1936, PhD ecology 1941) and his own predilections follow these earlier trends in ecology, economics, and state planning Today, there is abundant evidence that, throughout human history and to the present day, communities have found precise and equitable ways to organize their collective and individual tasks without central authority Ethnographic, archaeological, and documentary evidence points to a wide range of strategies that can benefit individuals, groups, and communities Such equitable forms of governance go by many names: communitarian, collective, anarchist, and many others Of particular current interest are communities that successfully manage common property (jointly held) as well as common-pool (open access) resources In 2009, anthropologists and archaeologists found Lin Ostrom and her colleagues’ work especially welcome: Ostrom’s Nobel Prize in Economics shone a light on Hardin’s adherence to unsupported claims with carefully documented fieldwork, much of it drawn from anthropology They identified ‘design principles’ of common-pool resource management that include local knowledge, effective communication, clear rules, monitoring, sanctions, paths for conflict resolution, internal trust, and recognition of self-determination by higher-level authorities (Ostrom 1990) These are principles that apply equally to agricultural collectives, anarchist squats, fishing communities, community-owned gardens, and employee-owned corporations This volume is a broad and sophisticated update on the commons, employing ethnographic accounts as well as archaeological and historical records The authors examine how a diverse group of communities integrate communal enterprises and organizations into frameworks that necessarily include ranked, nested, and networked structures (e.g., governance at all levels, associations, individual rights, community norms) The authors of this volume emphasize the specificity of the enterprise, which is always necessary due to the diversity of historical, cultural, legal, and environmental parameters They argue that risk management is a local, social enterprise, not amenable to imposition from above Most importantly, their Foreword vii careful work gives back to our human future a skill that is as old as the human experiment itself and as useful as ever: that of self-organization Carole L. Crumley University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, NC, USA References Ehrlich, P., & Ehrlich, A (1968) The Population Bomb New York: Ballantine Books Hardin, G (1968) The tragedy of the commons Science 162(3859), 1243–1248 Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens, W. W., III (1972) The limits to growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind New York: Universe Books Ostrom, E (1990) Governing the commons: The evolution of institutions for collective action Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Scott, J. C (1999) Seeing like a state: How certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed New Haven: Yale University Press Contents Foreword���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� v Carole L Crumley Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 1 Ludomir R Lozny and Thomas H McGovern The Tragedy of the Commons: A Theoretical Update���������������������������������� 9 James M Acheson Who Is in the Commons: Defining Community, Commons, and Time in Long-Term Natural Resource Management���������������������������� 23 Michael R Dove, Amy Johnson, Manon Lefebvre, Paul Burow, Wen Zhou, and Lav Kanoi Managing Risk Through Cooperation: Need-Based Transfers and Risk Pooling Among the Societies of the Human Generosity Project ������������������������������������������������������������������ 41 Lee Cronk, Colette Berbesque, Thomas Conte, Matthew Gervais, Padmini Iyer, Brighid McCarthy, Dennis Sonkoi, Cathryn Townsend, and Athena Aktipis Trolls, Water, Time, and Community: Resource Management in the Mývatn District of Northeast Iceland�������������������������� 77 Ragnhildur Sigurðardóttir, Anthony J Newton, Megan T Hicks, Andrew J Dugmore, Viðar Hreinsson, A E J Ogilvie, Árni Daníel Júlíusson, Árni Einarsson, Steven Hartman, I A Simpson, Orri Vésteinsson, and Thomas H McGovern ix x Contents The Organizational Scheme of High-Altitude Summer Pastures: The Dialectics of Conflict and Cooperation�������������������������������������������������� 103 Ludomir R Lozny Large-Scale Land Acquisition as Commons Grabbing: A Comparative Analysis of Six African Case Studies���������������������������������� 125 Tobias Haller, Timothy Adams, Desirée Gmür, Fabian Käser, Kristina Lanz, Franziska Marfurt, Sarah Ryser, Elisabeth Schubiger, Anna von Sury, and Jean-David Gerber Open Access, Open Systems: Pastoral Resource Management in the Chad Basin �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 165 Mark Moritz, Paul Scholte, Ian M Hamilton, and Saïdou Kari Mollusc Harvesting in the Pre-European Contact Pacific Islands: Investigating Resilience and Sustainability �������������������������������������������������� 189 Frank R Thomas Environment and Landscapes of Latin America’s Past������������������������������� 213 Vernon L Scarborough, Christian Isendahl, and Samantha Fladd The Scale, Governance, and Sustainability of Central Places in Pre-Hispanic Mesoamerica ������������������������������������������������������������������������ 235 Gary M Feinman and David M Carballo The Native California Commons: Ethnographic and Archaeological Perspectives on Land Control, Resource Use, and Management���������������� 255 Terry L Jones and Brian F Codding Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study of Water Commons from the North American Southwest ������������������������������������������������������������ 281 Michael J Aiuvalasit Index������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 307 Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study… 295 Table 2 (continued) Context and depth below surface KECK (cm) Material dated lab # Sample ID 172,756 LA70790_3.306 Basin Aggregated (8–12) microchar of leaf cuticle and angio wood xylem fragments Yapashi [LA70798] (n = 3) 170,996 LA70798_2.114 Basin Aggregated charred (22–28) cuticle, fine twig xylem, and poss Leaf bundle fragments 170,997 LA70798_2.121 Basin Aggregated charred (36–42) cuticle, seeds, and poss Cambium fragment 170,998 LA70798_3.309 Berm Charred xylem (18–20) 14 C age (BP) 630 ± 15 2-σ calibrated dates (OxCal 4.2) 1293–1322, 1348–1393 650 ± 30 1280–1326, 1343–1395 605 ± 15 1301–1368, 1381–1401 865 ± 20 1056–1076, 1153–1222 c alibrations Feature use-life histories are estimated as the inclusive range of AMS date probability distributions of samples from sedimentation within the basin In a few cases, I extended the age ranges of feature beyond the basin sediment dates to include dates from the berm construction sequence, but they are always no older than dates from the paleosols Inherent uncertainties in radiometric dating and sedimentation rates, as represented in the probability distributions of the calibrated samples, limit chronological resolution of feature use to decadal- or century-scale correlations with cultural and drought chronologies I compared the chronologies of feature use-life histories to occupation histories at the Ancestral Pueblo villages associated with the reservoirs and tree-ring-based drought periodicities (Fig. 5) I defined drought periodicities within the dendroclimatological record local to the Jemez Mountains (Touchan et al 2011) using a standard deviation approach to isolate protracted dry periods (Ingram 2010) Chronologies of village occupation histories and population estimates on the Pajarito Plateau are based on Ortman’s (2016) analysis apportioning Ancestral Pueblo village population densities by applying ethnohistorically derived models of village settlement densities to site- specific room counts and ceramic-based chronologies Site-specific estimates are summed for all of the sites in the region to generate momentary mean population estimates for both regions (Fig. 2) and site-specific population histories (Fig. 6) In case of the Jemez Plateau, complacent stylistic changes in ceramic styles limits the chronological resolution when estimating village occupation histories Diachronic estimates of Jemez population histories at individual sites are based on ethnohistorical records of Pueblo village population densities similar to Ortman’s 296 M J Aiuvalasit Fig 5 Reservoir use-life histories, village occupation spans, and paleoprecipitation model for all tested features (AD 1100–1700) approach, but instead correlate population estimates to rubble mound volumes (Liebmann et al 2016) Diachronic population estimates for the Jemez Plateau are limited to broad ranges until the times of historical records by the Spanish Jemez Plateau On the Jemez Plateau, each of the reservoirs had its own unique use-history relative to its village’s occupation sequence (Fig. 5) For example, it is not likely that the features at Wabakwa and Tovakwa functioned as reservoirs during the life of their villages The reservoir at Wabakwa is a very small feature with an unusual Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study… 297 Fig 6 Momentary mean population estimates of the four village sites on the Pajarito with tested reservoir features (Ortman 2016) elongated J-shaped berm, rather than a U-shaped earthen berm typical to all of the other reservoirs Its catchment area is very small and its basin filled with gravelly sediments unlike any of the other reservoirs It is located near historical erosion control features and immediately downslope of a historic two-track road There was little charcoal suitable for dating from the basin sediments of the Wabakwa feature One charcoal sample dated to the thirteenth century, while another produced a modern date (Table 2) This feature was probably not a reservoir, and instead may have been an infilled borrow pit or possibly an early historic erosion control feature Lacking a reservoir may have introduced vulnerabilities to water scarcity at Wabakwa, as this community is far from perennial water sources It also happens to be the only site I tested on the Jemez Plateau that was not occupied into historic time periods, meaning that water scarcity cannot be ruled out as a driver of the earlier depopulation of Wabakwa By contrast, the large 30 m diameter reservoir at Tovakwa produced a use-life history spanning the late eleventh and twelfth centuries—which pre-dates the occupation sequence at Tovakwa The berm is breached, and the very large catchment area upslope of the feature would produce surface runoff that would overwhelm the storage potential of its basin The feature is located 600 m away from the village site, and there is a natural, albeit intermittent, water source closer to Tovakwa than its reservoir As at Tovakwa, the construction of the reservoir at Kwastiyukwa also preceded the initial occupation date of its village The four radiocarbon dates from the 60 cm thick basin sediments of fine-grained silts and clays accumulated gradually throughout the entire span of the village occupation Its 21 m diameter basin and nearly 1 m high berm could have accommodated an appreciable quantity of water; however, its small, low-gradient catchment area of only 1120 m2 could not generate much runoff 298 M J Aiuvalasit Kwastiyukwa has the highest modeled population of any mesa-top village in the Jemez Mountains (Liebmann et al 2016), yet its small reservoir could only provide a tiny fraction of the water needed by the community when it reached its peak population of over 1,400 people The early use histories of Tovakwa and Kwastiyukwa confirm previously unidentified utilization of mesa-tops in the Jemez Mountains, where presumably small groups coordinated the construction of water storage features Archaeological investigations by Ford (2013) at Jemez Cave, a stratified multicomponent cave in the region with archaeological deposits that date to the developmental period identified a mixed subsistence regime utilizing lowland horticulture in the canyon bottoms and upland hunting and gathering during this early period Maize pollen recovered in a core from the buried paleosol below the reservoir berm at the Jemez site of Amoxiumqua (Aiuvalasit and Kiahtipes 2017) indicates that Ancestral Pueblo farmers were cultivating mesa-tops during this time Tovakwa and Kwastiyukwa may reflect the emergence of collective action strategies to collect surface water—whether to attract game, domestic water, or for agricultural water (e.g., Anderson and Potter 2015) The chronologies of the reservoirs at Amoxiumqua and Boletsakwa closely align with village occupation histories Due to their sizes, both of these features could provide appreciable amounts of domestic water during the occupations of Ancestral Pueblo villages The reservoir at Amoxiumqua has a large basin (36 m diameter) and berm (1.7 m high), and the basin is proportional to store potential runoff volumes generated by its 7,205 m2 catchment area The four radiocarbon dates from basin sediments indicate that it was constructed at or immediately before village formation around AD 1300 and that it was used throughout the long village occupation history Geoarchaeological evidence of basin truncations suggests clean-out events, reflecting coordinated maintenance of this feature (Aiuvalasit 2017; Aiuvalasit and Kiahtipes 2017) Boletsakwa has two features, one immediately near the village (BOL1) and another (BOL2 or LA 25092) approximately 650 m away on the same mesa-top surface A thick accumulation sequence in the Boletsakwa BOL1 reservoir, coupled with a berm likely reconstructed in the fifteenth century, suggests that it was used beginning in the late twelfth or early thirteenth centuries, remodeled in the fifteenth century, and reused during the reoccupation of the site during and after the Pueblo Revolt era (1680–1692) (Liebmann 2012) The second reservoir feature near Boletsakwa is much larger, and its use history spanned a portion of the village’s history with little evidence for occupation Its distance from the site of Boletsakwa, and location on a part of the mesa with numerous small 1–2 room fieldhouses and agricultural features, suggests it may have served as a source for agricultural water as well as domestic water when the village was later reoccupied In sum, use histories of reservoirs and site chronologies on the Jemez Plateau reflect village-specific solutions to water management problems, with neither correlations in use with periods of droughts nor regional synchronicity in construction Collective action solutions to water scarcity were undertaken early in cultural sequences It cannot be ruled out that these features and emerging institutions for water management may have signaled the success of collective action approaches to solving resource stress in these new environments Water infrastructure then may Identifying Common Pool Resources in the Archaeological Record: A Case Study… 299 have served as loci for the local emergence of institutional arrangements and communities on the mesa-tops of the Jemez Plateau In the cases of Kwastiyukwa, Amoxiumqua, and Boletsakwa, these features were maintained throughout the village occupation histories—even if they did not always provide appreciable quantities of water for growing communities This suggests the endurance of collective action strategies around water, through what certainly would be shifting forms of social organization as populations grew and village dynamics became increasingly complex over hundreds of years of occupation Pajarito Plateau I tested nine reservoirs associated with four large Ancestral Pueblo villages on the Pajarito Plateau All of the features were constructed around or after AD 1300 (Fig. 5) Their construction fell within the longest drought-free period after the major drought that occurred at the end of the thirteenth century Except for reservoirs at the site of San Miguel and possibly one of the three reservoirs at Yapashi (site LA70790), all of the features were constructed after villages were established None of Pajarito reservoirs were repurposed features from the Coalition period, even though small catchment basins dating to the Coalition period are reported at small agricultural sites in the region (Gauthier personal communication) Instead of being catalysts for the emergence of village life like on the Jemez Plateau, it appears reservoirs reflect community-wide coordination to manage water after communities had already formed Temporal overlap of reservoir construction suggests that ideas and practices for water management spread rapidly across the region concomitant with community coalescence Similar water features are recorded in other regions of the Southwest, including in the Four Corners region that date to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (e.g., Wilshusen et al 1997) The late thirteenth-century migrants to the Pajarito Plateau are hypothesized to have come from this region, potentially catalyzing new approaches to community-making in the greater Northern Rio Grande region (Ortman 2012), based in part on legacies of prior successes, and failures, of sociopolitical organization (Glowacki 2015) The effort to construct and potentially maintain multiple reservoirs at villages on the Pajarito Plateau suggests a different form of coordination for resource management than on the Jemez Plateau Villages with single reservoir features are more common on the Jemez Plateau, while only the site of Tsirege on the Pajarito Plateau had one reservoir All of the other sites I tested had multiple features Pajarito Plateau reservoirs, especially at the sites with multiple features were typically smaller, with basins averaging just