Agriculture, Group Size, and Resource Richness

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This poster presents data on the area, group size, and prey/plant richness of agricultural and pastoral societies. We test the hypotheses that (1) the richness of prey harvested by human groups correlates with the well-known species richness-latitude gradient; (2) that as groups increase their commitment to agriculture, they increase the richness of prey harvested; and (3) that as a group’s population size and area increases, the richness of harvested prey also increases. We examine potential feedback between group size, area, and prey species richness, and we discuss implications for understanding the formation and persistence of agricultural communities in the archaeological record.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36799.0