l- PAYSON SHEETS AND JAGO COOPER Burton, Ian, Robert Kates, and Gilbert'White 1978 Tlte Enoironrnent as Hazard. oxford universiry Press, New York. Crate, Susa¡ 2008 Gone the Bull of Winter? Grappling with úre Culrural Implications of ONE and Andrropologyt Role(s) in Global Climate Change. Current Antltro' pology 49:569-595. Hazards, Impacts, and Resilience among Grattan,John, and Robin Torrence, eds. ZOOT Liuing under the Shadou: Cultural Impacts of l/olcanic Eruptions. Left Hunter-Gatherers of the Kuril Islands Coast Press,'Walnut Creek, CA. Mauch, Christo{, and Cristia¡ Pfister, eds. Ben Fitzbuþ zooe a Gt'bat Enaï y::î::3-;;ii'::ig,::'i::i,' :i;X,1ï;:u'ard Rose, Villi¿m,Julian Bommer, Dina Lopez' Michael Carr' andJon Major ZOO4 Natur¿l Hazards in El Salaalor. Special Paper 375. Geological Sociery of America, Boulder, CO. Sheets, Payson 1980 Arcbaeohgical Studks of Disaster: Their Range and Value. Paper 38' lnsti tute of Behavioral Science, Universiry of Colorado, Boulder' 2008 Armageddon to the Ga¡den of Eden: Explosive Volca¡ric Eruptions arrd Societal Resilience in Ancient Middle America. ln El Nino, Catdstropb' ism, and Culnre Change in Anciznt America, ed. Daniel Sandweiss a¡rd Press, Cambridge' Jeffrey Qilter. Dumbarton Oaks, Ha¡vard Universiry - MA,pp.l68-186. ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACHES TO CATASTROPH IC van Buren, Mary EVENTS IN THE HUNTER-GATHERER CONTEXT 2001 The Archaeology of El Nino Events and Other'Natural" Dísasters.Jour- nal ofArchaeolnghal Metbod and. Tlteory 8(2): 129-149 ' This chaprer explores hunter-gatherer vulnerabiliry in dre context ofrelative 'White, Gilbert isolarion and a highly dynamic natural environment. The seming is the Kuril 1945 Human Adjustrnent to Flood. universiry of chicago Press, chicago. Isla¡ds ofthe Northwest Pacific, and the data set is a 4,000-year record ofhuman semlement and environmental history generated by the Kuril Biocomplexiry Project, alarge, interdisciplinar¡ and international research effort fielded Êom 2006 to 2008. The presupposition entering this project was rhat this relatively isolated, volcanic, eart'hquake- and tsunami-prone subarctic region should be among the more difficult habitats for hunter-gatherer populations to occuPy consisrendy and, as a result, that the archaeological record should refect peri- odic abandonments, at least in the most isolated (and smallest) central islands. The results of this study speak less ro rhis heuristic presupposition than to the idea of resilience in the face of ecological impoverishment, catastrophic events' and climare changes. The history we are uncovering highligha rhe importance oflinked social, economic, and demographic processes in condirioningvulner- abiliry and shapingpeople's resilience in the environment. Hazards a¡rd disasters ere rhe focus of increasing inrerest in natural and social science, scimulated by growing media attention to disasters a¡ou¡d the world. Calls for improved predicdon of catastrophic events have generated 19 18 -lF HAZARDS, IMPACTS, AND RESILIENCE AMONG HUNTER-GATHERERS BEN FITZHUGH enhaaced suppoft for rerrospective srudies ofhistorical pattern and periodiciry Sh umsh u in earthquakes, munamis, volcanic eruPdons, floods, drought, climate change, ,-a-"tn.rr;f and other natural hazards. Social science has en¡ered this a¡ena to better under- stand human responses to haza¡dous events and environmental change, most Sea of recently callingfor more integrated research into rhe socio-natural dynamics of Seqof - okhotsk ' disasters (Blafüe et al..1994: Oliver-Smith 1996: Oliver-Smith and Hoffman Okhotsk Jonetotan Ekarma D Torrence and Graman 20OZ). This latest turn recog- 2002; Sidle etal.2004: a) nizes that disasters are complex outcomes of linked social and environmental Sh¡ashkotan processes and that these histories ofren condition the severity of impaem on ."o"i'/ r.)1*: / events. Pociñc humans in the aftermath ofextreme Oceqn Rasshua ¡ dynamics of disasters have 'LJshishir Efforts ro undersrand the socio-environmenral a lslands tended to focus on agricultural and industrial sociedes (but see Saltonstall and Simush¡r / Cawer}}}Z; Sheets 1999). From a compararive archaeological study of socio- / ., ch¡rpo¡ ecological responses to explosive volca¡ric eruprions in Meso¿merica, Payson Sheets (1999) suggests r-har the impacts of such catasuophic events will scale with the degee of organizational complexiry and investment in "built envi- PacifrcOcean ronmenr." He argues that small-scale egalitarian sociedes, et least in Central America, had the most organizational resilience. If Sheets is correct in this con- clusion, we should expect ro see similar degrees of resilience in other contexts in which small-scale socieries were exposed to catastrophic events. The Kuril ,ã^^'^r"'7 Islands ofFer another case for investigating the resilience ofsuch sociedes. t.t. Tbe Ifuril Isknds. Illustration by Ben Finbuþ, based on cartograpbic projection b1 Adam Freeburg THE KURIL ISLANDS The Ku¡il Islands provide a semi-conrrolled seming for investigating the his- taxa limited in their abilicy to disperse across torical impacts of volca¡ism, tsr:namis, and climate change on maritime of land-based plant and animal marine currents. As a result, the islands from Iturup hunter-gatherers over the past 4,000 years. As-a group of ecologically simple wide cha¡rnels with fast have relatively low terrestrial biodiversiry and are dom- and geographically small volcanic isla¡rds scretched across 1,100 km of stormy' northeast to Onekota¡ inated by tundra meadow and alpine ecosystems and a few terresrial mammals subarctic ocean, these islands would seem to epitomize an extremelyvulnerable at colonizing new la¡rds, such as fox and vole. Birds, environment for human setdement. The relative isolation of the central Kurils uncharacteristically good are abundant and diverse in the absence ofmost predators, and the may explain why drey were Ieft unoccupied-until roughly 4,000 years ago, a by contrast, Kurils support dozens of species of resident seabirds and migratorywaterfowl barrier radrer than a bridge between theJapanese archipelago and Kamchatka (Hacker mammals are also well represented today aror¡nd the (figure 1.1). 1951). Marine many of the Kuril Isla¡ds. Sea lions, fu¡ seals, In biogeographical terms, the Kuril Islands* are "stepping stone islands" shores and nea¡-shore waters of seals are the most common species today, especially in the cenral between Hokkaido and the Kamchatka Peninsula-serving as both potential and harbor in large numbers and raise pups in t-he summer. conduit and filter for the movement of plants, animals, and people berween islands, where they haul out are abunda¡t in some areas-especially around the northern and these larger landmasses. The islands serve largely as a fi.lter to the expansion Sea otters southern islands-while absent in others. Their disribudon seems to reflect the ecological differences in shellfish and fish producdviry and diversiry, which * 'Greatcr Kuril" island chain linking Hokkaido In this chapter'Kurils? refers to rhe are also highest in the northern and soudrern ends of the chain compared to ro Kamchatka. A shorter string of islands, known as the 'Lesser Ku¡ils," stretches rhe center. The resuldngecologicalpicture is one ofhigher taxonomic diversiry approximately 100 km northeast Êom Hokkaido's Nemura Peninsula. These islands in both terrestrial and marine resources in the southernmost and northernmost are nor discussed in this chapter. 21 20 HAZARDS, IMPACTS, AND RESILIENCE AMONG HUNTER.GATHERERS BEN FITZHUGH to 2500'BC). The next oldest radiocarbon dates, also from southern islands, begin to appear around 2500 BC a¡rd correlate with apparent stabilization of the local climate and vegetation (Anderson et aI. 2009). Between 1900 and 1400 BC we start to see evidence for settlement on many ofthe central and northern islands. This expansion conceivably relates to the spread of a more efFecdve seafaring cechnology into theJapanese archipel- ago that would have facilitated greater movement into the Kurils, as it appar- endy did in the previous millennium in Isla¡d Southeast Asia (Oppenheimer and Richards 2001). ln this very earþ phase of Kuril occupation, it is possible that people from southern Kamchatka might have colonized the northern- most islands of Shumshu and Paramushir. In general, however, all diagnostic culrural traia (predominandy decorated pottery) in this time and during the drawn from the United States, Russia, and Japan. The tlree summers from rest ofhistory suggest southern origins, either starting in or passing through Hokkaido to get to dre Kurils. Our radiocarbon database indicates an abrupt jump in Kuril occupation beginning around 500 BC. This surge represents the leading edge of almost 1,500 years ofmore orless continuous settlement duringthe Epi-Jomonperiod, with substandal pit-house villages established on many of the Kuril Islands. The Epi-Jomon were a maritime-oriented hunting and tshingpeople who lived in the Kurils in small pit houses roughly 3-5 m in diameter and left behind cord-marked pottery, a variety of stone tools, and-in rare, well-preserved deposic-disdncdve bone and wood artifacts, including barbed and toggling harpoon heads. The Epi-Jomon represent the continuity ofJomon hunting- and-gathering lifeways in Hokkaido and the Kurils at a time when Yayoi rice farmers had assimilated and displacedJomon lifestyles in more southerþJapan peat samples from almost every island. Project teams are working from these (Habu 2004; Hudso n 1999 Imamura 1996). ã"r" .o cånclusions and combining forces to bemer understand the integrated ; of this emerging syn- . ln the mid-first millennium AD a new culture, known as the Okhotsk, Lare Holocene history of r¡e Kurils. It is in the _context swept the southern shores of the Okhotsk Sea from origins in the Lower Amur' thesis r.hat we ,..k to á."* preliminary conclusions about the hazards affecting Sakhalin Island, or both (Amano 1979; Ono 2008). The Okhorck culture colo- human setdement andlifesryle in ¡åe Ku¡ils. nized the Kurils sometime around AD 800, more or less replacing a waning Epi-Jomon population. From about AD 800 to 1300 the Okhotsk dominated KURII- ISLAND ARCHAEOLOGICAL HISTORY the Kurils from south to norch.