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Forager Mobility in Constructed Environments.
- Source :
- Current Anthropology; Aug2019, Vol. 60 Issue 4, p499-535, 37p, 1 Black and White Photograph, 1 Diagram, 2 Charts, 7 Graphs, 1 Map
- Publication Year :
- 2019
-
Abstract
- As obligate tool users, humans habitually reconfigure resource distributions on landscapes. Such resource restructuring would have played a nontrivial role in shaping hunter-gatherer mobility decisions and emergent land-use patterns. This paper presents a model of hunter-gatherer mobility in which the habitual deposition of material resources at places on landscapes biases the future mobility decisions of energy-optimizing foragers. Thus foragers effectively construct the environments to which they adapt. With the aid of an agent-based model, this simple niche-construction model is used to deduce four predictions for emergent structure in hunter-gatherer settlement patterns. The predictions are tested against archaeological data from a hunter-gatherer settlement system in the Lake Titicaca Basin, Peru, 7,000–5,000 cal BP. Good agreement is found between the predicted and empirical patterns, demonstrating the model's efficacy and suggesting a behavioral explanation for structural properties of hunter-gatherer settlement systems. The niche-construction behavior and its self-organized properties may have been key components in the emergence of socioeconomic complexity in human societies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
Details
- Language :
- English
- ISSN :
- 00113204
- Volume :
- 60
- Issue :
- 4
- Database :
- Complementary Index
- Journal :
- Current Anthropology
- Publication Type :
- Academic Journal
- Accession number :
- 138097424
- Full Text :
- https://doi.org/10.1086/704710