The Archaeology of Property Regimes

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Archaeology of Property Regimes" at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Under what conditions do property regimes come to be defined? What precipitates their emergence, transformation, or collapse? What kinds of property regimes facilitate sustainable resource management? Under which kinds is sustainability unachievable? Here we engage with a wide body of work on property regimes (including themes of land tenure, property rights, common pool resources, etc.) and leverage the archaeological record to facilitate a comparative perspective on, and to productively theorize, long-term histories of resource governance. Property regimes are arrangements that define rules, distribute rights, and delineate roles with respect to particular goods. These arrangements are often formalized through key institutions responsible for the management of resources, whether lineages, councils, communities, or more complex forms of government and bureaucracy. Variability in the management of resources can be measured across (1) the resources or goods being managed (e.g., abundance, distribution, labor requirements) and (2) the characteristics of key institutions through which rules, roles, and rights are determined. Through these two dimensions, property regimes can be formally assessed and compared. How open or closed are they? What are their degrees of flexibility, stringency, durability? Are they structured from the top down or bottom up? What are the ecological contexts? How are regimes enforced?