Suchergebnisse

Archeologists have long assumed that transport considerations have been important in structuring various aspects of the archeological record. An optimality model, derived from the principles of evolutionary ecology, is presented to investigate the trade‐off between field processing and transport for central place foragers. The model implicates (1) the time required to make a round‐trip and (2) the relationship between time spent field processing and increase in the utility of the transported load as the two critical factors determining what parts of resources are likely to be returned to a residential camp.

This innovative volume is the first collective effort by archaeologists and ethnographers to use concepts and models from human behavioral ecology to explore one of the most consequential transitions in human history: the origins of agriculture. Carefully balancing theory and detailed empirical study, and drawing from a series of ethnographic and archaeological case studies from eleven locations—including North and South America, Mesoamerica, Europe, the Near East, Africa, and the Pacific—the contributors to this volume examine the transition from hunting and gathering to farming and herding using a broad set of analytical models and concepts. These include diet breadth, central place foraging, ideal free distribution, discounting, risk sensitivity, population ecology, and costly signaling. An introductory chapter both charts the basics of the theory and notes areas of rapid advance in our understanding of how human subsistence systems evolve. Two concluding chapters by senior archaeologists reflect on the potential for human behavioral ecology to explain domestication and the transition from foraging to farming