Thomas P Leppard
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 622074 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Thomas P Leppard |
| PRENOMES | Thomas P |
| SOBRENOME | Leppard |
| ASSINATURA | LEPPARD T P |
| AFILIAÇÕES | Florida State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4803-4061 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 35 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 199 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 35 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2012 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 10 |
Adriatic Explorations
Neolithization is one of a handful of major social and economic processes that affected the entire Mediterranean, even if in quite different ways across different periods and regions. Everywhere, however, its impact was substantial, affecting also other parts of Europe and West Asia. It is therefore with good reason that the study of Neolithization has a long and distinguished track-record going back, at least, to the work of Childe, who first ch…
Did Indigenous long-distance voyaging occur below 50°S
Evaluating the Mediterranean Evidence for Over-Water Dispersal in Premodern Homo
The extent, antiquity, and causation of possible over-water dispersal in premodern species of hominin in the Mediterranean remain contentious. The scholarship ranges from maximalist positions, positing early and ubiquitous over-water behaviors amongst Mediterranean hominins, to minimalist positions, stressing the poor quality of evidence for over-water behavior prior to the Upper Paleolithic. Here, we comprehensively review the evidence for such …
Island archaeology provides ecological and behavioral analogs for off-planet exploration and colonization
Settlement Organization and Distribution in Bronze Age Sardinia
Nuraghi are ubiquitous in the Bronze Age Sardinian landscape, but the reasons for their distribution and wider function remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the argument that these megalithic fortified towers were situated for visual control and thus represent nodes of political or coercive power. Using a dataset of 102 nuraghi, we perform a normalized cumulative viewshed to quantify nuraghe visibility in southwestern Sardinia. We analyze …
Myopic Misunderstandings
This paper engages with Nathan Meyer’s (2022) paper ‘Finding Sites in Mediterranean Survey’. Building upon longstanding critiques of Mediterranean survey practices, Meyer argues for a re-direction of survey practices. We feel that several of his core arguments reflect an unbalanced view on the role of site and off-site data in Mediterranean surveys, conflating intensive and siteless surveys. Moreover, while these critiques seem to us unnecessaril…
African Islands
Survey Archaeology in the Mediterranean World
Issues in Meta-Analysis of Strontium Isotope Data
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Global Patterns in Island Colonization during the Holocene
Analysis of the spatial and temporal structure of global island colonization allows us to frame the extent of insular human cultural diversity, model the impact of common environmental factors cross-culturally, and understand the contribution of island maritime societies to big historical processes. No such analysis has, however, been undertaken since the 1980s. In this paper we review and update global patterns in island colonization, synthesizi…
The premise and potential of model-based approaches to island archaeology
In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology , John Terrell (2020) objected to the proposition that islands can offer model systems to study human behavior and ecodynamics (see Cherry and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli et al. 2018; Fitzpatrick and Erlandson 2018; Kirch 2007; McLaughlin, Stoddart, and Malone 2018; Pilaar Birch 2018). He argues that a review of insular model systems in the study of…
Process and Dynamics of Mediterranean Neolithization (7000–5500 bc)
The Bioarchaeology of Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is often regarded as characterized by high levels of human mobility and migration, which are in turn considered to have driven large-scale cultural effects. However, this supposition is problematic, in that it relies on various types of proxy for human movement, rather than on direct bioarchaeological evidence. Accordingly, in this study we attempt to quantify diachronic Mediterranean mobility and migration by undertaking the fi…
Anthropocene Dynamics in the Prehistoric Pacific
How will human societies evolve in the face of the massive changes humans themselves are driving in the earth systems? Currently, few data exist with which to address this question. I argue that archaeological datasets from islands provide useful models for understanding long-term socioecological responses to large-scale environmental change, by virtue of their longitudinal dimension and their relative insulation from broader biophysical systems.…
The Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project
Sardinia has played a vital integrative role in the Holocene Mediterranean, most notably—although not only—as a key locus in emergent maritime “Mediterraneanization” and as an object of contestation among mainland polities over the last three millennia. Yet, despite the florescence of Mediterranean survey archaeology, this standard method has only been sparsely employed in Sardinia, with a pronounced focus on large, urban, coastal sites. Accordin…
Settlement and Subsistence in the Remote Western Pacific
Small, remote islands were marginal environments for prehistoric human populations. We report archaeological and radiocarbon data from Alamagan, a small and isolated island in the northern part of the Mariana Islands archipelago. Challenging environmental conditions, including rugged terrain, active or recent volcanism, and uncertain freshwater availability posed significant challenges for permanent settlement throughout the Northern Islands. The…
Archaeological Perspectives on Scott's Against the Grain
James C. Scott's Against the Grain has immense relevance for how archaeologists view the dynamics of early states and complex polities. In this volume, Scott—already established as a leading theorist of states and statecraft (e.g. Scott 1997; 2009)—brings his analytic power and capacity to turn a phrase to bear on the topic of the ‘earliest states
Sr/86Sr data indicate human post-juvenile residence mobility decreases over time-elapsed since initial Holocene island colonization in the Pacific and Caribbean
Social Complexity and Social Inequality in the Prehistoric Mediterranean
The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500-3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patterning. Accordingly, the demographic weight borne by agrarian subsistence in these environments is causally associated with emergent social complexity. Yet other Old World contexts also witness the Mid-Late Holocene emergence of socially complex societies, c…
Islands as Model Environments
Islands have long been important locales for the study of ecology and evolution. This utility stems from several distinctive characteristics of islands, such as their inherent boundedness, relative
The Biophysical Effects of Neolithic Island Colonization
Does anthropogenic environmental change constrain long-term sociopolitical outcomes? It is clear that human colonization of islands radically alters their biological and physical systems. Despite considerable contextual variability in local specificities of this alteration, I argue that these processes are to some extent regular, predictable, and have socio-political implications. Reviewing the data for post-colonization ecodynamics, I show that …
Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)
In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic …
Maritime hominin dispersals in the Pleistocene
To what extent is there spatial and temporal patterning in the spread of our genus around the planet, and what environmental and behavioural factors specify this patterning? The prevailing model of Pleistocene dispersals of Homo holds that this process was essentially terrestrial, with oceans and seas inhibiting and directing the movement of hominins out of Africa (e.g. Mellars 2006; Dennell & Petraglia 2012; Gamble 2013), although some scholars …
Between Deterministic and Random Process in Prehistoric Pacific Island Abandonment
The cause or causes of prehistoric island depopulation in the Pacific remain a subject of debate. Explanations have tended either to focus on the inherent environmental limitations of the ‘Mystery Islands,’ or the unviability of small populations. It is argued in this paper that these factors are functionally related (low carrying capacity drives exaggerated demographic stochasticity), but that this recognition cannot account for why some small, …
Adaptive Responses to Demographic Fragility
Passive Dispersal versus Strategic Dispersal in Island Colonization by Hominins
It has been argued recently that artifacts from islands in the Mediterranean and Island Southeast Asia are representative of deliberate maritime colonization by archaic hominins. This runs contrary to the more usual understanding of seas and oceans as barriers to rather than enablers of dispersal in Homo. This paper advances the debate beyond an impasse between maximalist and minimalist interpretations of these data by suggesting that passive swe…
Maritime hominin dispersals in the Pleistocene
To what extent is there spatial and temporal patterning in the spread of our genus around the planet, and what environmental and behavioural factors specify this patterning? The prevailing model of Pleistocene dispersals of Homo holds that this process was essentially terrestrial, with oceans and seas inhibiting and directing the movement of hominins out of Africa (e.g. Mellars 2006; Dennell & Petraglia 2012; Gamble 2013), although some scholars …
Modeling the Impacts of Mediterranean Island Colonization by Archaic Hominins
It has been suggested that the islands of the Mediterranean were first settled during the Pleistocene. Attention has in particular been paid to recent claims that the occupation of Crete by hominins dates to the Middle Pleistocene. This paper examines what—if Lower Palaeolithic pre-modern hominins did indeed colonize the Mediterranean islands—environmental and evolutionary impacts this would have had, what forms these impacts would have taken, an…
Mobility and migration in the Early Neolithic of the Mediterranean
The spread of the Neolithic throughout Mediterranean Europe involved, at least to some degree, the physical movement of farmers westwards. This mobility has often been attributed to demographic or climatic factors, and long-term environmental changes of this type surely provided the backdrop against which subsistence practices and behavioral strategies developed. However, changing environmental parameters, while posing challenges to established E…
Survey Archaeology in the Mediterranean World
Social Complexity and Social Inequality in the Prehistoric Mediterranean
The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500-3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patterning. Accordingly, the demographic weight borne by agrarian subsistence in these environments is causally associated with emergent social complexity. Yet other Old World contexts also witness the Mid-Late Holocene emergence of socially complex societies, c…
Islands as Model Environments
Islands have long been important locales for the study of ecology and evolution. This utility stems from several distinctive characteristics of islands, such as their inherent boundedness, relative
The Evolution of Modern Behaviour and its Implications for Maritime Dispersal During the Palaeolithic
Oceans and seas are more frequently thought to have been barriers to than enablers of movement for archaic hominins. This interpretation has been challenged by a revisionist model which suggests that bodies of water facilitated the dispersal of pre-moderns. This paper addresses the revisionist model by defining maritime dispersal as a series of cognitive and organizational problems, the capacity to solve which must have arisen during the evolutio…
Experimental archaeology and the earliest seagoing
Experimental voyaging, of the type made famous by the Kon-Tiki and the Hōkūleʻa, is often considered to provide a means of modelling the performance of ancient seacraft, a relevant variable if we are to understand patterning in prehistoric island colonization and maritime interaction. Recently, in order to bolster claims otherwise dependent on contentious data, some proponents who argue for maritime colonisation as an evolutionarily ancient behav…
Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)
In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic …
The Bioarchaeology of Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is often regarded as characterized by high levels of human mobility and migration, which are in turn considered to have driven large-scale cultural effects. However, this supposition is problematic, in that it relies on various types of proxy for human movement, rather than on direct bioarchaeological evidence. Accordingly, in this study we attempt to quantify diachronic Mediterranean mobility and migration by undertaking the fi…
Process and Dynamics of Mediterranean Neolithization (7000–5500 bc)
Global Patterns in Island Colonization during the Holocene
Analysis of the spatial and temporal structure of global island colonization allows us to frame the extent of insular human cultural diversity, model the impact of common environmental factors cross-culturally, and understand the contribution of island maritime societies to big historical processes. No such analysis has, however, been undertaken since the 1980s. In this paper we review and update global patterns in island colonization, synthesizi…
The premise and potential of model-based approaches to island archaeology
In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology , John Terrell (2020) objected to the proposition that islands can offer model systems to study human behavior and ecodynamics (see Cherry and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli et al. 2018; Fitzpatrick and Erlandson 2018; Kirch 2007; McLaughlin, Stoddart, and Malone 2018; Pilaar Birch 2018). He argues that a review of insular model systems in the study of…
Sr/86Sr data indicate human post-juvenile residence mobility decreases over time-elapsed since initial Holocene island colonization in the Pacific and Caribbean
Similarity and Diversity in the Prehistoric Colonization of Islands and Coasts by Food-Producing Communities
The colonization of the Pacific, Caribbean, and Mediterranean by food-producing communities in prehistory has rarely been considered in an explicitly comparative perspective. This article suggests that, despite evident human and environmental diversity, these insular colonization episodes have certain formal and processual similarities, especially in terms of the rate and dynamics of the colonization episodes. Specifically, in all three cases, co…
Adaptive Responses to Demographic Fragility
The Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project
Sardinia has played a vital integrative role in the Holocene Mediterranean, most notably—although not only—as a key locus in emergent maritime “Mediterraneanization” and as an object of contestation among mainland polities over the last three millennia. Yet, despite the florescence of Mediterranean survey archaeology, this standard method has only been sparsely employed in Sardinia, with a pronounced focus on large, urban, coastal sites. Accordin…
Multi-Period Landscape Survey and Site Risk Assessment on Montserrat, West Indies
Following a series of devastating and ongoing volcanic eruptions, the archaeological record of Montserrat (West Indies) has been exposed to the dual threats of destructive pyroclastic volcanism, and the construction of new infrastructure and settlements to accommodate those displaced as a result. Yet, with the exception of contributions from a handful of site-based research projects, the scope of prehistoric and historical archaeology of Montserr…
Settlement Organization and Distribution in Bronze Age Sardinia
Nuraghi are ubiquitous in the Bronze Age Sardinian landscape, but the reasons for their distribution and wider function remain poorly understood. Here, we evaluate the argument that these megalithic fortified towers were situated for visual control and thus represent nodes of political or coercive power. Using a dataset of 102 nuraghi, we perform a normalized cumulative viewshed to quantify nuraghe visibility in southwestern Sardinia. We analyze …
Archaeological Perspectives on Scott's Against the Grain
James C. Scott's Against the Grain has immense relevance for how archaeologists view the dynamics of early states and complex polities. In this volume, Scott—already established as a leading theorist of states and statecraft (e.g. Scott 1997; 2009)—brings his analytic power and capacity to turn a phrase to bear on the topic of the ‘earliest states
Current Mediterranean Island and Coastal Archaeology
I am indebted both to John and to Christina Giovas for insightful and helpful suggestions on a first draft of this essay. I would finally like to thank Christina and the other two editors of the Journal for encouraging me to write such a review in the first place. Clearly, none of the former are implicated in any of the opinions expressed here
Discussion and Debate
Within a 48-hour period during January 2014, the JMA co editors received two papers—those of Curtis Runnels and Thomas P. Leppard printed above—that, quite fortuitously, each addressed the topic of Mediterranean island colonization by archaic hominins, albeit from radically different perspectives. Neither author was aware of the other’s paper, nor has either article subsequently been revised to take account of the other. Realizing the widespread …
Multi-Period Landscape Survey and Site Risk Assessment on Montserrat, West Indies
Following a series of devastating and ongoing volcanic eruptions, the archaeological record of Montserrat (West Indies) has been exposed to the dual threats of destructive pyroclastic volcanism, and the construction of new infrastructure and settlements to accommodate those displaced as a result. Yet, with the exception of contributions from a handful of site-based research projects, the scope of prehistoric and historical archaeology of Montserr…
Response
Current Mediterranean Island and Coastal Archaeology
I am indebted both to John and to Christina Giovas for insightful and helpful suggestions on a first draft of this essay. I would finally like to thank Christina and the other two editors of the Journal for encouraging me to write such a review in the first place. Clearly, none of the former are implicated in any of the opinions expressed here
Similarity and Diversity in the Prehistoric Colonization of Islands and Coasts by Food-Producing Communities
The colonization of the Pacific, Caribbean, and Mediterranean by food-producing communities in prehistory has rarely been considered in an explicitly comparative perspective. This article suggests that, despite evident human and environmental diversity, these insular colonization episodes have certain formal and processual similarities, especially in terms of the rate and dynamics of the colonization episodes. Specifically, in all three cases, co…
Discussion and Debate
Within a 48-hour period during January 2014, the JMA co editors received two papers—those of Curtis Runnels and Thomas P. Leppard printed above—that, quite fortuitously, each addressed the topic of Mediterranean island colonization by archaic hominins, albeit from radically different perspectives. Neither author was aware of the other’s paper, nor has either article subsequently been revised to take account of the other. Realizing the widespread …
Modeling the Impacts of Mediterranean Island Colonization by Archaic Hominins
It has been suggested that the islands of the Mediterranean were first settled during the Pleistocene. Attention has in particular been paid to recent claims that the occupation of Crete by hominins dates to the Middle Pleistocene. This paper examines what—if Lower Palaeolithic pre-modern hominins did indeed colonize the Mediterranean islands—environmental and evolutionary impacts this would have had, what forms these impacts would have taken, an…
Mobility and migration in the Early Neolithic of the Mediterranean
The spread of the Neolithic throughout Mediterranean Europe involved, at least to some degree, the physical movement of farmers westwards. This mobility has often been attributed to demographic or climatic factors, and long-term environmental changes of this type surely provided the backdrop against which subsistence practices and behavioral strategies developed. However, changing environmental parameters, while posing challenges to established E…
Adaptive Responses to Demographic Fragility
The Evolution of Modern Behaviour and its Implications for Maritime Dispersal During the Palaeolithic
Oceans and seas are more frequently thought to have been barriers to than enablers of movement for archaic hominins. This interpretation has been challenged by a revisionist model which suggests that bodies of water facilitated the dispersal of pre-moderns. This paper addresses the revisionist model by defining maritime dispersal as a series of cognitive and organizational problems, the capacity to solve which must have arisen during the evolutio…
Experimental archaeology and the earliest seagoing
Experimental voyaging, of the type made famous by the Kon-Tiki and the Hōkūleʻa, is often considered to provide a means of modelling the performance of ancient seacraft, a relevant variable if we are to understand patterning in prehistoric island colonization and maritime interaction. Recently, in order to bolster claims otherwise dependent on contentious data, some proponents who argue for maritime colonisation as an evolutionarily ancient behav…
Passive Dispersal versus Strategic Dispersal in Island Colonization by Hominins
It has been argued recently that artifacts from islands in the Mediterranean and Island Southeast Asia are representative of deliberate maritime colonization by archaic hominins. This runs contrary to the more usual understanding of seas and oceans as barriers to rather than enablers of dispersal in Homo. This paper advances the debate beyond an impasse between maximalist and minimalist interpretations of these data by suggesting that passive swe…
Between Deterministic and Random Process in Prehistoric Pacific Island Abandonment
The cause or causes of prehistoric island depopulation in the Pacific remain a subject of debate. Explanations have tended either to focus on the inherent environmental limitations of the ‘Mystery Islands,’ or the unviability of small populations. It is argued in this paper that these factors are functionally related (low carrying capacity drives exaggerated demographic stochasticity), but that this recognition cannot account for why some small, …
The Biophysical Effects of Neolithic Island Colonization
Does anthropogenic environmental change constrain long-term sociopolitical outcomes? It is clear that human colonization of islands radically alters their biological and physical systems. Despite considerable contextual variability in local specificities of this alteration, I argue that these processes are to some extent regular, predictable, and have socio-political implications. Reviewing the data for post-colonization ecodynamics, I show that …
Patterning and Its Causation in the Pre-Neolithic Colonization of the Mediterranean Islands (Late Pleistocene to Early Holocene)
In 1981 one of us (Cherry) first attempted to identify spatial and temporal patterning in the human colonization of the Mediterranean islands. Since the 1980s, slowly accumulating evidence has suggested that the Mediterranean islands were sporadically inhabited by hunter-gatherers during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene. Here we seek to establish whether or not these data exhibit regularity. We suggest that evidence for Upper Palaeolithic …
Maritime hominin dispersals in the Pleistocene
To what extent is there spatial and temporal patterning in the spread of our genus around the planet, and what environmental and behavioural factors specify this patterning? The prevailing model of Pleistocene dispersals of Homo holds that this process was essentially terrestrial, with oceans and seas inhibiting and directing the movement of hominins out of Africa (e.g. Mellars 2006; Dennell & Petraglia 2012; Gamble 2013), although some scholars …
Islands as Model Environments
Islands have long been important locales for the study of ecology and evolution. This utility stems from several distinctive characteristics of islands, such as their inherent boundedness, relative
Anthropocene Dynamics in the Prehistoric Pacific
How will human societies evolve in the face of the massive changes humans themselves are driving in the earth systems? Currently, few data exist with which to address this question. I argue that archaeological datasets from islands provide useful models for understanding long-term socioecological responses to large-scale environmental change, by virtue of their longitudinal dimension and their relative insulation from broader biophysical systems.…
The Landscape Archaeology of Southwest Sardinia Project
Sardinia has played a vital integrative role in the Holocene Mediterranean, most notably—although not only—as a key locus in emergent maritime “Mediterraneanization” and as an object of contestation among mainland polities over the last three millennia. Yet, despite the florescence of Mediterranean survey archaeology, this standard method has only been sparsely employed in Sardinia, with a pronounced focus on large, urban, coastal sites. Accordin…
Settlement and Subsistence in the Remote Western Pacific
Small, remote islands were marginal environments for prehistoric human populations. We report archaeological and radiocarbon data from Alamagan, a small and isolated island in the northern part of the Mariana Islands archipelago. Challenging environmental conditions, including rugged terrain, active or recent volcanism, and uncertain freshwater availability posed significant challenges for permanent settlement throughout the Northern Islands. The…
Archaeological Perspectives on Scott's Against the Grain
James C. Scott's Against the Grain has immense relevance for how archaeologists view the dynamics of early states and complex polities. In this volume, Scott—already established as a leading theorist of states and statecraft (e.g. Scott 1997; 2009)—brings his analytic power and capacity to turn a phrase to bear on the topic of the ‘earliest states
Sr/86Sr data indicate human post-juvenile residence mobility decreases over time-elapsed since initial Holocene island colonization in the Pacific and Caribbean
Social Complexity and Social Inequality in the Prehistoric Mediterranean
The complex urban polities developed in the Old World (5500-3500 BP) had several structural features in common, particularly their scale, their cereal agrarianism, and their environmental patterning. Accordingly, the demographic weight borne by agrarian subsistence in these environments is causally associated with emergent social complexity. Yet other Old World contexts also witness the Mid-Late Holocene emergence of socially complex societies, c…
The premise and potential of model-based approaches to island archaeology
In a recent paper published in The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology , John Terrell (2020) objected to the proposition that islands can offer model systems to study human behavior and ecodynamics (see Cherry and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli and Leppard 2018; DiNapoli et al. 2018; Fitzpatrick and Erlandson 2018; Kirch 2007; McLaughlin, Stoddart, and Malone 2018; Pilaar Birch 2018). He argues that a review of insular model systems in the study of…
Process and Dynamics of Mediterranean Neolithization (7000–5500 bc)
The Bioarchaeology of Migration in the Ancient Mediterranean
The Mediterranean is often regarded as characterized by high levels of human mobility and migration, which are in turn considered to have driven large-scale cultural effects. However, this supposition is problematic, in that it relies on various types of proxy for human movement, rather than on direct bioarchaeological evidence. Accordingly, in this study we attempt to quantify diachronic Mediterranean mobility and migration by undertaking the fi…
Archaeology (29 obras) · Geography (29 obras) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (26 obras) · History (17 obras) · History (15 obras) · Ecology (14 obras) · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies (14 obras) · Mediterranean climate (13 obras) · Biology (12 obras) · Sociology (12 obras)