Scavenging

SUMMARY: Chapter 7, in Renfrew & Bahn's textbook (Archaeology: Theories, Methods, and Practice), covers how to assess past subsistence and diet, including plant food (e.g., macro- and microbotanical remains; plant residues; seasonality; domestication), animal resources (e.g., macro-faunal remains; age, sex, and seasonality; domestication; small fauna; types of exploitation), and assessing diet from human remains (e.g., stomach contents; feces; teeth; isotopic methods; bone collagen).  A small case study is placed at the end of this ppt. lecture, emphasizing some aspects of subsistence.  In my view, this is one of the best college textbooks available, and is invaluable for students, archaeologists, and the public in general, to obtain a top notch overview of approaching and interpreting the archaeological record. UPDATED May 2023.

A major aim of paleoanthropology is to learn what ancient behaviors were related to the acquisition, processing, and consumption of meat and when these behaviors arose. For this reason, studies focusing on purported early hominid hunting and butchery sites are important if rigorous criteria for recognizing such sites are used. Different criteria currently used as evidence of hominid involvement with ancient bones are reviewed and it is concluded that the presence of cutmarks, verified by scanning electron microscope (SEM) inspection, is the most reliable. Successful application of this criterion depends upon a thorough knowledge of the normal variations in microscopic morphology of different types of marks that are found on bones. Therefore, variations in microscopic and gross morphology within and among a large sample of known stone tool cutmarks, carnivore tooth scratches, and rodent gnawing marks are documented. The effects of sedimentary abrasion, as caused by fluvial transport of bones, are also presented. Guidelines are presented for using microscopic criteria to identify unknown marks on fossils and possible applications of this approach are discussed. Further, it is suggested that evidence of hominid carcass-processing activities can be placed into one of three ranked categories of certainty according to the type of data used. Explicitly stating the category and type of evidence used to deduce hominid activities, and by extension to define site types (i.e., butchery, kill, base camp), may improve the clarity of hypotheses about and interpretations of early hominid behaviors.

İstanbul Planlama Ajansı'nın araştırmacılarının kaleme aldığı, ciddi bir saha çalışmasına dayalı 'İstanbul Geri Dönüşüm Sektöründe Katı Atık Toplayıcılarına Dair Rapor', megapolde sadece geçimi değil yaşamı bu alana bağlı on binlerce katı atık toplayıcısı emekçi ve ailesinin hayat koşullarını, ekolojik perspektif ile ele alma maharetini gösteriyor. Politika yönelimli bilgi üretim alanında ilham alınmasını umduğumuz bu ilişkisel emek-ekolojik perspektif, -sadece kat atık alanı ile kısıtlı kalmadan- ilişkisel veri bazlı mekansal politika önerilerini daha isabetli bir zemine yerleştirdiği için güçlü.  Bu açıdan Türkiye'nin en büyük belediyesinin entelektüel tink-tank'ı olan İstanbul Planlama Ajansı'nda hazırlanan bu çalışmanın anlamı, bu tekil raporun fayda ve isabetini de aşıyor...

...Beyoğlu, Ümraniye ve Kadıköy'de katı atık toplayıcıları, Beyoğlu'nda ara depo sahipleri ile ve alanın diğer paydaşları ile yapılan odak grup görüşmeleri ve saha çalışması, resmi, 'olması gereken' veya formel olana yoğunlaşıp, 'gerçekleşen' süreç ve ilişkilerin gözden kaçırılmamasını sağlamış. Bu çalışmadan ilk öğrendiğimiz katı atık işçilerinin İstanbul'a yakın veya uzak göç ile varmış olmak, kalıcı kentsel yoksulluk, toplumsal ve mekansal marjinalizasyon gibi ortaklıklarının yanında türdeş bir profil göstermediği. Kayıtsız ve 'kağıtsız' bırakılan yabancı göçmen işçilere, sokakta aile gelirine destek olmak için çalışan çocuk işçilere, depoları mesken edinmiş yetişkin erkek işçilere yönelik politika önerileri bu farklılaşmaları görebildiği ölçüde farklılaştırılabilmiş. 

Hazırlayan: Aysel Öztürk;
İçerik Sorumluları: Esra Huri Bulduk, Murat Şeker, Zelal Yalçın;
Araştırma Ekibi: Anıl Gencelli, Aysel Öztürk, Elanur Aksakal Demir, Erdal Bülbün, Şehide Zehra Keleş Yüksel;
Editör: Suat Hayri Küçük;
Katkı Sunan Kişi ve Uzmanlar: Ali Mendillioğlu, Doç. Dr. Sedat Gündoğdu, Elif Avcı, Nilgün Çallı, Prof. Dr. Ayşen Erdinçler

Interactions among species, which range from competition to facilitation, have profound effects on ecosystem functioning. Large carnivores are of particular importance in shaping community structure since they are at the top of the food chain, and many efforts are made to conserve such keystone species. Despite this, the mechanisms of carnivore interactions are far from understood, yet they are key to enabling or hindering their coexistence and hence are highly relevant for their conservation. The goal of this review is thus to provide detailed information on the extents of competition and facilitation between large carnivores and their impact in shaping their life histories. Here, we use the example of spotted hyaenas (Crocuta crocuta) and lions (Panthera leo) and provide a comprehensive knowledge of their interactions based on meta-analyses from available literature (148 publications). Despite their strong potential for both exploitation and interference competition (range and die...

La vente à la sauvette de produits alimentaires rassemble des produits récupérés dans leur majorité, parmi les déchets et invendus des grandes surfaces commerciales. Elle est généralement pratiquée par des femmes âgées dans le but de fournir un complément de revenu. Nous verrons que ces activités sont menées dans une opposition aux aides sociales institutionnalisées et dans l'idéal, à toutes formes de revenus non directement issues du travail.
Si ces activités viennent se greffer inopinément aux échanges marchands d'un marché aux légumes municipal, elles ne disposent pas moins d'un système d'honorabilité et de règles spécifiques. Au-delà de l'infraction des règles légale et sanitaire, elles révèlent les dispositions communes qui lient les revendeuses à leurs acheteurs et le sentiment de mise en concurrence qui reflète les rapports aux autres systèmes de revente (biffins, vendeurs de contrefaçons, cigarettes et autres « produits de base »...)

This dissertation is an ethnographic study of urban practices related to the salvaging of discarded food from supermarkets and markets as undertaken by members of a squatting community in Lyon, France. In the context of 2014 designated as 'European Year Against Food Waste', my dissertation seeks to account for the different ways in which food discarded by supermarkets and markets is collected, consumed, and occasionally redistributed by the scavengers. In doing so, I analyse whether these actions are undertaken as means of subsistence for the food insecure, and/or subversion against a wasteful system.

* Please note that I am in the process of editing my dissertation (- hastily - submitted as part of my UCL MSc examination in Sept 2014), I therefore apologise for any typos, half-written bibliographical notes, partly missing references etc... . Notes and feedback welcome!

Thanks for reading

Shit collection (scavenging) is a ‘Spiritual Experience’? according to Narendra Modi when he was CM of Gujarat. This story was broken by Rajiv Shah in The Times of India, December 1, 2012. [With thanks to The TOI]
This is not Modi's individual opinion but a belief which RSS holds strongly. This is corroborated by the fact that RSS wants to replace Indian Constitution by Manu Laws which denigrate Dalits and women.

The objectives of this background paper are to review past and current experiences in community-based solid waste management and its integration into the formal government system of solid waste management. Many projects have been funded by various organizations, donors and the Government of Indonesia (GOI) and the successes of these in terms of economic benefits and improved environmental health, and for the GOI, will examine. This paper will cover the following aspects: a) information relating to market potential for recycled goods and compost; and b) trends over time and the costs and benefits of changes. Chapter two provides a brief overview of the respective roles played by the formal and informal sector service providers. In chapter three, a chronological presentation is given of the significant initiatives that have facilitated community-based involvement in solid waste management in Indonesia. Chapter four identifies the success and failures, provides an overview of the lesso...

The archaeo-paleontological site of Pilauco (southern Chile) has one of the richest Late Pleistocene mammal records of the northern chilean Patagonia, with at least nine forms dominated by gomphothere remains. This site has a complex taphonomic history due to postdepositional processes that affected the integrity, frequency, and distribution of the fossil bones. One of these processes is the action of large carnivores, indicated by tooth marks recorded exclusively in gomphothere bones. In this paper, we describe Gomphotheriidae fossil remains and give a detailed description of carnivore tooth marks detected in the sample. The absence of diagnostic fossil specimens does not allow genus or species assignment. The type, location, intensity, and dimensions of the tooth marks are compatible at least with a large felid, which probably scavenged a partially exposed carcass. The record of this taphonomic feature is important in order to understand the postdepositacional history of the Pilauco site, in which natural and cultural agents are involved.

Municipal Solid Waste Management (MSWM) is major responsibility of local government. It is a complex task which requires appropriate organizational capacity and cooperation between numerous stakeholders in the private and public sectors. Although it is essential to public health and environmental protection, solid waste management in most cities of developing countries is highly unsatisfactory. The Conceptual Framework provides brief definitions of the main concepts of MSWM and identifies the goals and principles that normally guide MSWM system development. It discusses key objectives and issues which should be addressed by MSWM strategies with regard to political, institutional, social, financial, economic and technical aspects.

In internal combustion engines, the chemical composition of the trapped fuel-air-residual gas mixture controls the nature of combustion, which, in turn, determines the characteristics of the ensuing emissions and work production processes. Therefore, knowledge of the trapped mixture’s composition is critical for reliably predicting and controlling engine performance, emissions, and efficiency. A good index of the overall trapped mixture composition is the trapped equivalence ratio. Unfortunately, in two-stroke engines, it is unfeasible to accurately determine the trapped equivalence ratio using traditional intake flow measurements and exhaust emissions data. This limitation arises from the simultaneous occurrence of intake and exhaust processes in two-stroke engines, which causes: (1) exhaust emissions to be diluted by excess fresh air that was supplied for achieving effective gas exchange, that is trapping inefficiencies and (2) a significant fraction of combustion products to stay...

... likelihood of colonization of the small intestine by ingested bacteria that are the cause of gastrointestinal ... body and brain size of the earliest humans and the anatomy and kineticcharacteristics of the ... of gut differentiation of 0.62 (N = 6, range 0.37-1.15) in six modem urban ...

In present study, A spark ignition and a compression ignition engine with uniflow valve scavenging of the cylinder and a transfer valve in the piston crown have been described. A great disadvantage of two-stroke engines is ports which are made in the cylinder bearing surface. Under the heat which is realised during the combustion, the thermal extension of the range in proximity of the ports and other parts of the cylinder is different and so the distortion of the geometry of the cylinder liner surface force the designer to make the clearance between the piston and the cylinder liner bigger. This paper presents the critical review to study the effect of fuel injection timing and scavenging using diesel on the combustion and emission characteristics of a single cylinder, two stroke, air cooled direct injection diesel engine. It is well known that injection strategies including the injection timing and pressure play the most important role in determining engine performance, especially in scavenging emissions. However, the injection timing and pressure quantitatively affect the performance of the diesel engine.

This article discusses scavenging and dumping as alternative approaches to deriving value from rubbish at a large Michigan landfill. Both practices are attuned to the indeterminacy and power of abandoned things, but in different ways. Whereas scavenging relies on acquiring familiarity with an object by getting to know its particular qualities, landfilling and other forms of mass disposal make discards fungible and manipulable by stripping them of their former identities. By way of examining the different ways in which people become invested in the politics of value at the landfill, whether as part of expressions of gender and class or for personal enjoyment, different comportments toward materiality are revealed to have underlying social and moral implications. In particular, it is argued that different approaches to the evaluation of rubbish involve competing understandings of human and material potential.

Carrion consumption by scavengers is a key component of both terrestrial and aquatic food webs. However, there are few direct comparisons of the structure and functioning of scavenging communities in different ecosystems. Here, we monitored the consumption of 23 fish (seabream Sparus aurata) and 34 bird (yellow-legged gull Larus michahellis) carcasses on a small Mediterranean island (Isla Grosa, southeastern Spain) and surrounding waters in summer to compare the structure of the scavenger assemblages and their carrion consumption efficiencies in terrestrial and shallow water habitats. Scavenging was highly efficient both in marine and terrestrial environments, especially in the presence of a highly abundant vertebrate scavenger species, the yellow-legged gull. The vertebrate scavenger community was richer in the marine environment, whereas the invertebrate community was richer on land. The scavenger network was usually well-structured (i.e., nested), with the exception of the community associated with fish terrestrial carcasses, which were almost monopolized by yellow-legged gulls. In contrast, gulls left conspecific carcasses untouched, thus allowing longer persistence of gull carcasses on land and their exploitation by a diverse insect community. Our study shows important differences in the scavenging process associated with environment and carcass type. Promising avenues for further eco-evolutionary and applied research arise from the comparison of scavenging processes in terrestrial and marine ecosystems, from small islands to continents.

Gas exchange processes in two-stroke internal combustion engines, i.e. scavenging, remove exhaust gases from the combustion chamber and prepare the fuel-oxidizer mixture that undergoes combustion. A non-negligible fraction of the mixture trapped in the cylinder at the conclusion of scavenging is composed of residual gases from the previous cycle. This can cause significant changes to the combustion characteristics of the mixture by changing its composition and temperature, i.e. its thermodynamic state. Thus, it is vital to have accurate knowledge of the thermodynamic state of the post-scavenging mixture to be able to reliably predict and control engine performance, efficiency and emissions. Several simple-scavenging models can be found in the literature that-based on a variety of idealized interaction modes between incoming and cylinder gases-calculate the state of the trapped mixture. In this study, boundary conditions extracted from a validated 1-D predictive model of a single-cylinder twostroke engine are used to gauge the performance of four simple scavenging models. It is discovered that the assumption of thermal homogeneity of the incoming and exiting gases is a major source of inaccuracy. A new non-isothermal multi-stage single-zone scavenging model is thus, proposed to address some of the shortcomings of the four models. The proposed model assumes that gas-exchange in cross-scavenged two-stroke engines takes place in three stages; an isentropic blowdown stage, followed by perfect-displacement and perfect-mixing stages. Significant improvements in the trapped mixture state estimates were observed as a result.

Dillenia  pentagyna Roxb.  is  a  medium  sized  tree  belonging  to  the
family Dilleniaceae. It is commonly known as Kaihzawl in Mizoram.
Traditionally,  a  decoction  prepared  by  boiling  the  bark  of  Dillenia
pentagyna Roxb.  is  used  for  various  stomach  ailments  and
inflammatory  diseases.  Preliminary  phytochemical  screening  and
evaluation  of  in-vitro  antioxidant  activity  were  carried  on  the
methanolic  extract  obtained  from  the  bark  of Dillenia  pentagyna
Roxb.  The  presence  of  flavanoids,  triterpenoids,  tannins,  alkaloids,
glycosides,  steroids  and  carbohydrates  was  indicated  by  the  tests
conducted.  The  in-vitro  antioxidant  activity  was  evaluated  using
DPPH radical scavenging activity, Reducing power, Hydroxyl radical
scavenging  activity  and  determination  of  total  phenolic  and
flavanoids  content.  Ascorbic  acid,  BHA,  Gallic  acid and  Quercetin
were used as reference standards. The methanolic extract of the plant
shows strong antioxidant activity camparable to that of the reference
standards.