Behavioral Ecology and the Emergence of Sedentism and Agriculture

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

More than a decade after Niche Construction Theory was proposed as an alternative to behavioral ecological models in the study of agricultural origins, many misconceptions about behavioral ecology and its contribution to the study of the emergence of sedentism and agriculture remain. Here, I address some of these misconceptions and consider some new ideas and explanations that have entered the literature over the past 10 years through a behavioral ecological lens. In particular, I unpack the use of the term “opportunism,” that humans settled down because resources were plentiful, in explanations of sedentism. In doing so, I discuss topics such as progressivism, agency, and niche construction, and highlight the power of fundamental concepts from the prey, patch, and ideal free distribution models to explain the conditions under which sedentism and, ultimately, early agricultural communities emerged.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36718.0