Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Current
Archaeological Perspectives on the
Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Economies
Christopher Morgan
ISSN 1059-0161
J Archaeol Res
DOI 10.1007/s10814-014-9079-3
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DOI 10.1007/s10814-014-9079-3
Christopher Morgan
C. Morgan (&)
Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada, Reno, 1664 N. Virginia St, Reno,
NV 89557-0096, USA
e-mail: ctmorgan@unr.edu
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Introduction
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gather intensification is particularly well established are (5) the northwestern Pacific
coast (hereafter ‘‘Pacific Northwest’’), and (6) California. The final category
examines (7) theoretical and quantitative models (Fig. 1).
I derived three main results from this review. First, the main debates regarding
intensification, as relevant now as ever, are implied in much of the recent literature.
One of the original debates regarding intensification was whether or not increasing
population was required to initiate the process (Cowgill 1975). This subject is either
addressed directly or implied in the diversity of opinion as to whether increasing
population, climate change, or changes in social behavior drove intensification in
the TPEH and especially along the western coast of North America, where long-
running debates over whether abundance or scarcity drove the development of these
societies speaks to this fundamental population-pressure issue. Second, other
debates also are alive and well, with little evidence of resolution. Specifically, there
is a long-running but often overlooked schism regarding the fundamental definition
of intensification. One side of this divide uses intensification in a descriptive sense,
where it is simply taken to mean any increase in economic productivity. The other
uses intensification in an explanatory sense, where it is employed to explain how
people solved population-resource imbalances by the addition of more labor to
increase economic output, resulting in a net decrease in foraging efficiency. As my
review indicates, this is much more than a semantic disagreement; rather it is a
fundamental theoretical divergence with important implications for the roles that
labor, capital, specialization, diversification, and innovation play in the development
of increasingly complex hunter-gatherer economic systems. Lastly, significant
headway has been made over the last decade in terms of how we think about and
model foraging efficiency (much of it based on how to interpret zooarchaeological
data) that shows potential to resolve some of the longer-running theoretical debates
over population pressure and efficiency, the critical components of the intensifi-
cation argument, at least as initially conceived. A synthesis of this material indicates
that there are multiple pathways to increased productivity in hunter-gatherer
economies—specialization, diversification, intensification, and innovation—each
entailing differential effects on efficiency, a critical and at times overlooked
component of intensification research since the concept was first elucidated by
Boserup.
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North Canada
(N. America)
Mediterranean (Paleolithic)
Mesolithic
Northwest Coast (TPEH)
Northern California Epipaleolithic
East Coast & Woodlands
Northwest China
(N. America)
Hawaii (Paleolithic & TPEH)
(Coast) Texas (N. America)
Great Basin
(N. America) Australia
(Coast)
large part on Cowgill’s (1975) criticism that intrinsic rates of population increase
cannot be assumed and that increases in productivity may result by seizing ‘‘new
opportunities’’ (Hassan 1977). Building on this criticism, others saw environmental
characteristics (mainly abundance) and innovations (mainly technological but also
social) as means of increasing productivity without necessarily decreasing
efficiency (Bender 1978, 1981, 1985; Kirch 1994). In the realm of hunter-gatherer
studies, this type of thinking is antedated by the early evolutionary idea that
increasing efficiency characterized the development of Archaic lifeways in the
eastern woodlands (Caldwell 1958) and desert west of North America (Jennings
1968). Debate also centered on whether intensification was a ‘‘top-down’’ approach
driven by elite leadership (e.g., Carneiro 1970; Hayden 2001; Wittfogel 1957) or
whether it was driven from the ‘‘bottom-up’’ by small landholders and householders
who initiated increased productivity (Erickson 1993; Thurston and Fisher 2007b).
These debates clearly prefigure many of those associated with intensification and its
applications to hunter-gatherer archaeology today.
The roots of intensification’s application to hunter-gatherer archaeology began in
earnest with research focusing on the antecedents to plant and animal domestication
in the terminal Pleistocene (Binford 1968; Flannery 1969) and on the recognition of
‘‘complex’’ hunter-gatherers in the late 1970s and 1980s (Price and Brown 1985).
Flannery’s (1969) ‘‘broad spectrum revolution’’ (BSR) model served as a counter to
Braidwood’s (1963) ‘‘settling-in’’ hypothesis for domestication. Flannery argued
that it was the Epipaleolithic budding off of populations into less productive habitats
in the Near East that challenged environmental carrying capacities, forcing such
groups into exploiting a wider array of abundant, predictable, but also smaller-
bodied prey and plants. Critical to this argument is the idea that population pressure
ultimately drove subsistence diversification, if not outright intensification (Earle
1980). In the second case, and counter to the arguments of Lee (1968), was the
acknowledgment that hunter-gatherers in places like the Pacific Northwest,
California, Japan, and Mesolithic Europe stored food, were at least semisedentary,
had higher-than-expected population densities, and sometimes exhibited
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hierarchical social structures (Arnold 1996; Binford 1980; Price and Brown 1985).
This recognition culminated in a fundamental rethinking of hunter-gatherers, in
large part because these behaviors were more commonly thought to be associated
with agriculturalists and, critically, entailed food production that matched or
exceeded that of some agricultural societies (Baumhoff 1963; Smith 2001). Further
reevaluation of the very utility of hunter-gatherers as an analytical type has led to
observations that the only legitimate difference between hunter-gatherers and
farmers was their subsistence base (Morrison 1994; Sassaman 2004; Terrell et al.
2003). The analytical trope has persisted and even flourished in light of this essential
criticism, but the intrinsic linkage between complex hunter-gatherers and intensi-
fication had been made (Arnold 1993).
In light of these developments, collectors, processors, chieftainships, and other
forms of ‘‘intensified,’’ complex hunter-gatherers were identified and added to
global hunter-gatherer research agenda (Bettinger 1991; Kelly 2013). Much of this
work was geared to resolving the Braidwood–Flannery debate by reconstructing
Mesolithic, Epipaleolithic, and Natufian settlement and subsistence strategies in
Europe and the Near East (Bar-Yosef 1998; Bar-Yosef and Belfer-Cohen 1989;
Gould 1985; Jochim 1976), much of it incorporating optimal foraging models.
Many indeed found evidence for increased diet breadth and sedentism at the dawn
of the Holocene (e.g., Henry 1985), but the extent to which this truly represented
intensification (in the Boserupian sense) or even association with the development
of agriculture is currently in doubt as much now as ever (Zeder 2012).
The extension of the concept of intensification into the realm of Holocene
hunter-gatherer archaeology soon developed in places like Australia (Lourandos
and Ross 1994; Smith 2013) but became particularly well established in western
North American (Bettinger 2001). In the Pacific Northwest, for example,
archaeologists used intensification to explain burgeoning populations, intensive
salmon exploitation, storage, and the development of mostly sedentary, hierarchi-
cal societies (Ames 1981, 1994; Croes and Hackenberger 1988; Matson 1992).
Disagreement developed (and continues to this day) as to whether these
phenomena hinged on environmental abundance or population increase, whether
intensive storage economies developed before or after population increases, and on
whether social rather than ecological factors were the prime movers behind these
phenomena (Ames 2003; Fitzhugh 2003b; Hayden 2001; Matson 1992).
Overlooked in these debates was the fact that intensification began to be defined
in an explicitly non-Boserupian sense, meaning it was applied to any means or
evidence for increased production (diversification, specialization, storage, etc.),
whether this entailed declining efficiency or not (Ames 1985; Matson 1983).
Essentially, increased productivity became conflated with increased efficiency in
some of the Northwest Coast literature, in direct contrast to the Boserupian model
(see also Binford 2001, p. 188; Morrison 1994, p. 130).
Similarly, in California archaeology, concepts of intensification were applied
throughout the 1980s and 1990s to explain not only the development of intensive
acorn and small-seed processing in the mid-to-late Holocene (Basgall 1987; Beaton
1991; Bouey 1979, 1987; Wohlgemuth 1996) but also the development of
chiefdoms on the southern California Bight (Arnold 1991, 1992b; Arnold et al.
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1997). The degree to which this was the result of population increase, environmental
decline (both entailing population pressure), or the environmental abundance of
California was never resolved (e.g., see the dichotomy between King 1990 and Raab
and Larson 1997). Also never resolved was the degree to which intensification was a
‘‘top-down’’ process initiated by entrepreneurial chiefs taking advantage of periodic
environmental downturns (Arnold 1992a) or whether it was a ‘‘bottom-up’’
progression affiliated more with household economic decision making in light of
resource stress (Raab and Larson 1997). A substantial portion of research in the
region explicitly used optimal foraging models (i.e., diet breadth/prey choice) to
equate declining prey size with declining foraging efficiency over time and hence
Boserupian intensification, especially in the San Francisco Bay region (Broughton
1994a, b, 1997).
In sum, intensification became linked to hunter-gatherer archaeology mainly
through its potential utility for explaining the BSR and ‘‘complex’’ hunter-
gatherers. In many instances, this linkage came to incorporate aspects of
behavioral ecology (Bird and O’Connell 2006), especially the diet breadth/prey
choice optimal foraging model (MacArthur and Pianka 1966) as a means to
model declining foraging efficiency. The meaning of the term itself became
conflated with both a strict Boserupian definition that entails declining foraging
efficiency (hereafter ‘‘intensification sensu stricto [s.s.]’’) or alternatively as any
means of increasing productivity (e.g., diversification, specialization, innovation),
including those that ostensibly increased efficiency (hereafter ‘‘intensification
sensu lato [s.l.]’’). When applied in the Boserupian sense, its application has been
vexed by the chicken-or-the-egg problem of whether environmental productivity
results in opportunities for intensification, or whether environmental perturbations
or increasing population densities (i.e., scarcity) leads to intensification processes.
Further, a dichotomy developed regarding the social means associated with
intensification processes and whether it was more often mediated by leaders or
by intensifying populations at large. These latter two issues hinge on the subject
of process and whether intensification, like cultural evolution more generally,
entails unilinear versus multilinear trajectories (Boone and Smith 1998; Morrison
1994). All of these issues are well expressed in the literature of the last decade,
with little progress made in identifying the drivers of intensification (unless they
are indeed as multilinear as Morrison [1994] proposes) and the oftentimes
unsystematic and even contradictory uses of the concept of intensification. But
significant progress has been made in how we model and think about process and
in ways to identify declining foraging efficiency in the hunter-gatherer
archaeological record. The evidence for these assertions is reviewed under the
subheadings below.
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(ca. 50,000–40,000 cal BP), the origins of intensification, and the degree to which
these transitions were associated with anatomically modern humans. Research
mainly focuses on the Mediterranean region and Africa, with regional summaries
provided Stiner et al. (2000) and Stiner and Munro (2002) for the Mediterranean and
by Steele and Klein (2009), Steele (2012), and Klein and Steele (2013) for Africa.
Most of this research attempts to determine when exactly human and hominin diets
expanded using zooarchaeological datasets.
In East Asia, for example, Prendergast et al. (2009) present evidence for Late
Upper Paleolithic (ca. 18,000–14,000 BP) faunal intensification from Yuchanyan
Cave, in the Yangtze River basin of South China. Using standard zooarchaeological
quantitative measures—minimum number of individuals (MNI) and number of
identified specimens (NISP)—they show that diet breadth increased to include
freshwater fish, turtles, smaller mammals, and especially aquatic birds, along with
more common Paleolithic prey like cervids. They argue, like many, that
diversification such as this indicates a shift to including lower-ranked resources
in the diet and thus declining hunting efficiency. Less conclusively, based on bone
breakage patterns, they argue bone greasing and marrow extraction in the cervid
assemblage provides yet another marker of more labor input used to extract
diminishing caloric returns, a common marker of declining efficiency. The relative
dearth of cut marks on and crushing of the bones, however, may suggest otherwise.
In South Africa, Klein et al. (2004) use data from Ysterfontein rockshelter and
data from other nearby sites on the Atlantic coast to argue that subsistence practices
between premodern, Middle Stone Age (MSA, ca. 300,000–50,000 cal BP) people
and modern, Late Stone Age (LSA, after ca. 50,000 cal BP) people where
qualitatively different. Pre-50,000-year-old MSA sites like Ysterfontein are
dominated by large tortoise and larger shellfish, whereas LSA sites like Eland’s
Bay contain fish, seabirds, and smaller-bodied shellfish and tortoise. They take this
to represent ‘‘more effective’’ (Klein et al. 2004, p. 5708) exploitation of the local
resource base and more intensive use of previously used resources. Steele and Klein
(2005) and Steele (2012) come to similar conclusions, the former making the claim
that as LSA population densities increased, prey size diminished on South Africa’s
Atlantic and Indian Ocean coasts as functions of predation and harvest pressure (the
latter in the case of shellfish). Steele (2012) tracks similar patterns on the coast, but
notes a MSA–LSA switch from hunting mostly eland to larger (but also more
dangerous) animals like buffalo and pig, which she attributes to innovations in
projectile weaponry. If true, there appears to be evidence for increasing intensity of
marine resource exploitation along the coast, marked by a trend to exploiting
smaller-bodied prey (following Broughton et al. 2011). But inland technological
innovations allowed successful hunts of larger-bodied prey, arguably increasing
returns and hunting efficiency in the face of ostensibly burgeoning LSA human
populations.
In the Mediterranean region, similar patterns pertain. At Vale Boi, an UP site in
Portugal with a faunal record extending from the Gravettian through the
Magdalenian, Manne et al. (2011) and Manne and Bicho (2009) argue that
targeting marine resources (especially shellfish) and rabbits signals diversification
and evidence for greasing large mammal bones (e.g., Equus spp.) signals
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intensification, which they apply in its strictest sense, marked by increased labor
input and decreased efficiency. They contend that the evidence for greasing, at ca.
28,000 BP, is the earliest yet for intensification in Europe.
In Spain, Cortés-Sánchez et al. (2008) and Bicho and Haws (2008) come to
similar conclusions: that increasing dietary diversity and the addition of ‘‘low-
ranked’’ prey like shellfish, fish, birds, and rabbits to Paleolithic diets around
30,000 cal BP signals the initiation of intensification processes in Europe (see
Starkovich 2009 for a similar pattern in Greece). Similarly, Stiner and Munro (2002)
pool data from well-stratified and dated caves and rockshelters throughout the
region to track changes in diet breadth over the course of the last 200,000 years.
They find that MP, ostensibly Neanderthal populations preyed mainly on slow-
moving, slow-growing tortoises and mollusks while UP, ostensibly modern human
populations, increasingly exploited faster-moving, faster-maturing, smaller-bodied
prey like birds (and in the later UP, hares and rabbits), implying that population-
mediated intensification began earlier than the Natufian in the UP. Hockett (2009)
comes to similar conclusions in Portugal—that anatomically modern humans had
more diverse diets than Neanderthals, but argues instead that the greater nutritional
value of these diets gave modern humans a competitive adaptive advantage (see also
Haws and Hockett 2004; Hockett and Haws 2003, 2005). Implied in this latter,
nutritional ecology perspective is that intensification plays at best a subsidiary role
in explaining increased dietary diversity in the UP.
This runs counter to others who see different temporal contexts for intensification
in Europe and the Near East. Speth (2004), for example, uses MNI, NISP, tooth
eruption and wear, and utility indices from Kebara Cave near modern Israel’s coast
to argue that transgressive of the late MP, Neanderthal hunting pressure forced a
shift to eating smaller species (gazelle and fallow deer in response to declining
numbers of red deer and auroch) and younger and smaller gazelle. Evidence of
increased transport distance, marked by high-utility body parts in later deposits,
shows hunters traveling farther to obtain prey through time; both lines of evidence,
Speth argues, mark intensification in the MP. At the other end of the temporal
spectrum, Álvarez-Fernández (2011) and Gutiérrez-Zugasti et al. (2013) agree there
is indeed evidence for increasing exploitation of marine resources, especially
shellfish, in Spain during the UP. But these behaviors, Álvarez-Fernández argues,
represent bead manufacture by anatomically modern humans rather than a
fundamental change in subsistence orientation. Both sets of researchers argue,
however, that intensification of marine and other resources did not occur until the
Mesolithic (early Holocene), in association with increasing population densities (see
also Aura Tortosa et al. 2002a, b; González-Sainz and González-Urquijo 2007).
This sentiment is more or less in agreement with Piperno et al. (2004), who
recovered evidence for processing wild barley (Hordeum spontaneum), perhaps
emmer wheat (Tritium dicoccoides), and other wild cereals ca. 23,000 cal BP at
Ohalo II in Israel, in the very late UP. They also identified a burned feature they
claim resembles an earth oven that may have been used for baking bread made from
processed cereal grains. If so, this would be the earliest direct evidence not only for
wild cereal processing but also for the type of cooking that increases cereal’s
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glycemic index, the energetic value of the food, and perhaps such food’s net return
rate.
Either directly or indirectly, applications of the concept of intensification in
Paleolithic research reveal several consistencies with intensification in hunter-
gatherer archaeology more generally. In nearly all cases, increasing diversity in
zooarchaeological assemblages (measured by frequency [MNI and NISP] and
large to small-bodied abundance indices [AI]) tends to be seen as a marker of
increases in animal exploitation (intensification s.l.), if not outright intensification
(s.s.). Increased effort may be marked by taking either smaller fauna, where
reduced package size is equated with lower caloric return per unit of hunting
effort, or by taking faster prey (like rabbits), which require more effort to catch.
The exception to this is work by Hockett (2009), who focuses rather on the
nutritional ecology of diverse diets, obviating their association with intensification,
at least in the strictest sense. Second, there is a fundamental disagreement as to
when intensification processes began. To many, it did not appear until the
Epipaleolithic or Mesolithic. For many others, however, it is associated with
anatomically modern humans and the latter portion of the Aurignacian (ca.
30,000 cal BP). Resolving this latter conflict of course relies to some degree on
refining ways to identify intensification, both in terms of modeling and
zooarchaeological quantification; it also hinges on being explicit with regard to
whether intensification entails simply quantitative increases in yield or whether it
also requires declining hunting efficiency. It also must take into account the
possibility that the qualitative differences Klein (2008), for instance, sees between
anatomically modern humans and Archaic Homo (sensu Dennell 2009) may entail
fundamentally different species behaviors, with anatomically modern humans
exhibiting a marine focus that was at best dabbled in by Neanderthals and other
Archaic peoples (Álvarez-Fernández 2011; Gutiérrez-Zugasti et al. 2013; Jones
2013, Figs. 2–4; Klein et al. 2004; Mannino and Thomas 2002). If this were the
case, increased faunal diversity marked in large part by a marine focus may be
less a sign of Boserupian intensification (where population pressure drives the
exploitation of lower-return resources) but rather difference in ecological niche
between two different species.
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were thus marked by increasing mobility and decreasing diet breadth, a far cry from
the ostensibly more intensive economies that might be expected to prefigure
domestication.
Jones (2006, 2009), for Europe, and Elston et al. (2011), for East Asia, make
similar arguments: that the YD forced a shift toward more intensive subsistence
practices but not necessarily intensification in its strictest sense (see Eren 2012 for
discussions about the YD’s effects on global hunter-gatherers). Jones presents
faunal evidence that populations in southern France shifted to eating a high
number of intensively processed rabbits (Oryctolagus cuniculus) during that time.
She argues, however, that though climate forced the shift, the mass capture of
rabbits from warrens likely increased rather than decreased hunting efficiency. In
China, Elston and colleagues argue that technology can indicate intensification,
with microliths (for hunting), pottery (used for bone greasing), and milling tools
(signaling plant food intensification) as examples. They argue that microliths,
which are nonquantitatively assessed to represent large investments in lithic
procurement and tool manufacture, actually ‘‘enhance hunting efficiency.’’
Similarly, they argue that pottery ‘‘increases the efficiency of bone grease
extraction’’ (Elston et al. 2011, pp. 405–406). Both are hypothesized to represent
ways of increasing caloric yield in response to the reduced and less predictable
resource base of northeast Asia during the YD. This provides a thought-provoking
case where increased rather than decreased efficiency marks intensification as a
response to environmental stress.
Clear in the preceding is that TPEH intensification, as with the Paleolithic, is
most often associated with diversification and, when linked to optimal foraging
models, to increased diet breadth. Per the TPEH literature, intensification can thus
arguably be marked by increased bone fragmentation and carcass processing
(signaling increased labor), by greater taxonomic diversity, and by increasing
exploitation of smaller-bodied prey. Unlike research associated exclusively with the
Paleolithic, however, there also is a critique of the application of optimal foraging
theory to studies of TPEH intensification. Zeder (2012) makes this clear in her
recent review of the BSR, arguing that differential and gendered foraging goals
(Hawkes 1991), risk and uncertainty (Winterhalder et al. 1999), problems linking
diversification with intensification (Broughton and Grayson 1993; Grayson and
Cannon 1999), and different currencies (e.g., using overall nutritional value rather
than calories [see Hockett and Haws 2005]) all result in different interpretations of
BSR subsistence data and, by association, whether intensification is truly identified
in the zooarchaeological record (see also Hockett and Haws 2003). There is more
variability in the causes and results of TPEH intensification; some attribute
widening diets and more intensive processing to population increase, others to
climate change during the YD. Even more important is that researchers like Munro
and Atici (2009a) see intensification in the Boserupian sense of declining efficiency,
whereas others (Elston et al. 2011) argue that technological innovations, though
entailing their own new costs, may actually increase net efficiency. These issues
play out in greater detail in the global hunter-gather record, especially during the
Holocene.
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prehistory toward more terrestrial gardening (which would have required staying
closer to fields and therefore more shellfish exploitation nearshore, as opposed to the
more distant coral reef) may account for this pattern as much as population-
mediated resource intensification. In Tierra del Fuego, Zangrando (2009) presents
ichthyoarchaeolofaunal evidence for widening diet breadth between 6500 BP and
150 BP, with the most clear evidence after 1000 BP. He makes this conclusion
based on evenness, diversity, and indices of land mammal: pinniped: marine fish
abundance to show resource diversification occurred while terrestrial mammal
exploitation remained static. Zangrando argues this may have been due to increases
in population farther inland driving, via circumscription, intensification on the coast,
rather than coastal population increase (see Kennedy 2005 for a similar example
from California). While presenting another clear case of subsistence shifts
consistent with the definitions of intensification s.l and arguably s.s., he indicates
that ‘‘increased foraging efficiency’’ (Zangrando 2009, p. 590) is a hallmark of this
process, in clear refutation of the Boserupian perspective.
In sum, Holocene intensification in global coastal contexts reflects several
semantic and methodological problems common to hunter-gatherer intensification
research in general and brings up new issues—settlement and circumscription—that
play important roles in understanding hunter-gatherer intensification elsewhere. In
applying the concept of intensification, most researchers tend toward the optimal
foraging perspective that increased labor is a marker of declining foraging efficiency
(i.e., in the Boserupian sense), but that at least in some cases increased efficiency
may be affiliated with intensification (s.l.) as well. In terms of method, as in all the
research reviewed thus far, standard zooarchaeological quantification applies (e.g.,
NISP, evenness, and AI) but arguably more attention is paid to taphonomic process
and recovery techniques as problems facing the identification of intensification in
coastal settings (not surprising given the size of many fish bones and such active
geomorphic contexts). Lastly, Holocene-focused coastal researchers add to the
intensification debate the dimension of how subsistence articulates with settlement
patterns (but see Stiner et al. [2000] on mobility’s effect on diet during the TPEH)
and intergroup relations, noting that changes in the former may result in increased
dietary diversity or other markers of intensification. In terms of the latter, by the
time the Holocene rolled around, coastal hunter-gatherers (as elsewhere) operated in
less uncircumscribed vacuums than in continua of competing and cooperating
groups both along the coast and farther inland.
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identifying the presence, causes, and effects of declining foraging efficiency in the
continent’s hunter-gatherer archaeological record.
Starting in the east, Raber (2010) employs intensification in its widest sense,
presenting evidence for and exploring the causes of increasing rockshelter use in the
Late Prehistoric (AD 900–1650) in Pennsylvania. Looking specifically at Mykut
rockshelter, he argues that these increases, rather than simply marking increased
population densities, instead indicate a diversified approach to managing risk
associated with increased climatic and environmental variability during the Little
Ice Age (LIA; 650–150 cal BP) (see also Morgan 2009 for a similar perspective
from California). Hunter-gatherers facilitated the shift to foraging and especially
deer hunting as an alternative or supplement to farming by operating out of upland
rockshelters in and near deer hunting grounds. In contrast to the broad focus of
Raber, White (2013) analyzes a temporally controlled database of house sizes over
time in the eastern woodlands. He uses these as a proxy for household size, finding
that size peaked between the Late Archaic and Middle Woodland periods (3800
BC–AD 500). He attributes this increase to population-level intensification marked
by the lower age at which children began to make substantive contributions to
household economies, mainly by gathering low-yield, costly to process, but also
abundant wild plant resources. This labor, in turn, helped support larger populations.
For Raber, hunting intensification simply means increase (as a way to reduce risk),
with rockshelters’ proximity to deer hunting grounds increasing net returns on
hunting due to decreased carcass transport costs (see also McGuire et al. 2007;
Morgan et al. 2012). For White, intensification is mediated by increased population
density, which requires additional work by children to offset population-resource
imbalances.
Two studies in Texas point to how mortuary data can be used in Boserupian-type
intensification studies and how such studies speak to the conditions under which
agriculture should or should not be adopted by hunter-gatherers. For the former,
Hard and Katzenberg (2011) present isotopic data from 198 human skeletons
recovered from 16 coastal mortuary sites and from faunal bone that dates between
7000 and 300 BP. Carbon signatures remain more or less stable through most of the
Holocene, save for at three sites with post 2500 BP components. These show
increases in the exploitation of C3 and C4 plants after that time, which Hard and
Katzenberg, in Boserupian (and Binfordian) mode, attribute to population packing
that forced a switch to lower-ranking plant resources. Johnson and Hard (2008)
build on Hard and Katzenberg’s work using expectations derived from Binford’s
(2001) Frames of Reference to explain why maize agriculture never really took
hold, despite being well established nearby in the American Southwest, Southeast,
and Mexico. Binford (2001) indicates that when population growth leads to
densities that constrain mobility (really just circumscription, at about 9 people/
100 km2) and when environmental characteristics (measured unsurprisingly by
effective temperature) entail high resource productivity, hunter-gatherers should
shift from hunting large fauna to aquatic resources (where available) or, in the
absence of aquatic resources, low-return plant foods. In their analysis, Johnson and
Hard (2008) show that distinct hunter-gatherer populations were constrained mainly
to specific ecological niches (coasts, rivers, inland areas) and that coastal and river-
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oriented people focused in the Late Prehistoric on lower-return but abundant aquatic
resources, as expected. The frequency of large cemeteries, they argue, attests to
reduced mobility, population packing, and intensification (Ricklis and Weinstein
2005). Inland, a focus on low-return plant foods is identified mainly by the ubiquity
of earth ovens used to process these costly-to-process resources. They touch on but
never really develop the idea that intensive hunting and gathering can support
population densities as high as some prehistoric agriculturalists, which could
explain why maize was not adopted there, an idea first explicitly formulated by
Baumhoff (1963; but see Bettinger 2015) as an explanation for why maize
agriculture failed be adopted in prehistoric California.
On the Plateau, Lepofsky and Peacock (2004) develop an alternative ranking
system to the diet breadth model and compare the expectations of this model to
direct (i.e., macrobotanical) and indirect (i.e., technological) markers of plant food
use over the last 4500 years. The model ranks plant foods in terms of their
availability, abundance, palatability, and persistence, the latter a measure of
resistance to overharvesting. They conclude that most roots, many types of greens,
and a variety of berries would most likely be subject to ‘‘intensification.’’ Seeds and
nuts rank very low. Their strongest archaeological dataset comes in the form of the
frequency of earth ovens used to process roots, which first appeared around
4500 BP. Their use peaked at 2400–1500 BP and after 800 BP, which the authors
claim marks intensification of geophyte exploitation. They define intensification in
its broadest sense as ‘‘the process of increasing plant food production (i.e., increased
output) via various mechanisms that may or may not involve increased energy
costs,’’ or as intensification s.l.
Thoms (2009) takes the analyses of geophyte exploitation one step farther in his
overview of the evolution of hot rock cookery across North America. Drawing in
large part on his prior work (Thoms 1989, 2003, 2008), he begins with the bias that
increases in hot rock cookery signal ‘‘population packing’’ and ‘‘land-use
intensification,’’ clearly conceiving of intensification in the Boserupian sense. He
then provides a wide range of data to show that cooking with hot rocks started
around 10,000 cal BP, was common by 8500 cal BP, increased sharply at
4000 cal BP, and in most areas increased thereafter. Due to the reduced efficiency
of cooking with hot rocks relative to open fires (Thoms 2003), he argues this process
is a clear case of population-meditated declining foraging efficiency and thus
intensification s.s.
Yu (2006) extends the analysis of geophytes and pit cooking with an eye to
identifying commonalties in the intensification process across the American West.
Like Johnson and Hard (2008), Yu draws on the ecologically and ethnologically
derived expectations for hunter-gatherer subsistence developed in Binford’s (2001)
Frames of Reference to analyze the causes behind variability in frequency of earth-
oven cooking in the American Southwest, Basin and Range, and Pacific Northwest.
In her diachronic analyses of pit frequency and morphology across these regions,
she concludes that (1) prehistoric hunters who used pits, like those in the Basin and
Range, were unlikely to adopt cultivars without first intensifying their use of wild
plants (predicated on the greater returns of hunting); (2) gatherers who intensively
used pits, like those in the pre-Puebloan Southwest, were prone to adopting cultivars
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because the returns on pit-processed foodstuffs were so low; and (3) aquatically
oriented groups who used pits, like those in the Pacific Northwest, were less likely
to adopt cultivars until their mobility became constrained by circumscription.
Though clearly an example of using the concept of intensification s.s (it explains
how declines in foraging efficiency affiliated with behavioral shifts toward the
adoption of cultivars helped mediate population-resource imbalances in groups that
operated in the gray zone between foraging and farming), Yu is equivocal about
what intensification entails, opting for Binford’s (2001, p. 188) simple definition of
intensification as ‘‘any practice(s) that increase food productivity per unit area,’’
implying that decreasing efficiency is not necessary for intensification (s.l.) to occur.
Finally, Betts and Friesen (2004) use specialization, diversification, and
investment to analyze diachronic subsistence change from roughly 700 BP and
into very early historic times on the Mackenzie River delta in Canada’s Northwest
Territories. They base their analysis on faunal assemblages from three sites—Cache
Point, Pond, and Kuupak—which together contain six different components. Using
evenness indices (Reitz and Wing 1999) as proxies for specialization, they argue the
Thule/Inuit specialized in the pursuit of Beluga whale (Delphinapterus leucas) in all
components. Using richness indices, however, they note greater diversification in
the subsistence economy in the latest components, with increases in birds and fish
driving the change. Lastly, by looking at investment through the lens of netted vs.
non-netted fish and seasonality data as proxies for occupational intensity, they argue
investment (both technological and settlement) increased very late in the sequence
as well, particularly at the onset of the historic period. They mostly avoid discussion
of the historically mediated context of culture contact and disruption, however,
choosing instead to focus on population pressure as a causal mechanism for this
change. They do, however, conflate increased productivity with increased
efficiency, which may or may not be the case given the difference between
intensification s.s. and s.l.
Great Basin
Outside the west coast, the Great Basin has arguably generated the greatest amount
of literature on hunter-gatherer intensification in North America, the result, like
Australia, of the region’s long history of contributions to hunter-gatherer theory
(and, like Australia, a somewhat surprising circumstance given the region’s
relatively low aboriginal population densities). Recent research not surprisingly runs
the gamut from using intensification in its broadest sense, as simply entailing doing
more of something (even if this entails increased foraging efficiency) to drawing
into the archaeological fold the confounding factor of differential foraging goals and
their effect on interpreting the behavioral proxies usually used as markers for
intensification.
Recent research that identifies intensification s.l. is rampant in the region. For
instance, Garfinkel et al. (2007) use the term in its broadest sense, as simply
signifying increase. They argue that increases in the quantity of petroglyphs during
AD 600–1300 and pictographs in historic times in the deserts of southeastern
California occurred during periods of resource and cultural stress. Morgan et al.
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‘‘hot spots’’ for herring, and habitat preference for different shellfish species, she
argues, all can result in overrepresentation of these taxa in archaeofaunal
assemblages. In other words, local environmental context and environmental
productivity matter.
Cannon and Burchell (2009) deal with this problem in a manner prescribed by
Moss, by looking at shellfish mortality profiles to account for human rather than
environmental shell midden formation processes (sensu Schiffer 1987). They
provide convincing evidence that coastal hunter-gatherers in British Columbia
actively managed their shellfish resource base by only harvesting senile clams at
main residential bases, though younger (but still ‘‘mature’’) clams were harvested
at less-intensively used camps. This counterintuitive scenario is explained as
representing a rare instance of controlled harvest and management of resources
affiliated with privatization of the resource base at larger, more permanent sites.
This incentivized ensuring sustainable harvests from year to year, hence avoiding
the ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ (Smith and Wishnie 2000). In this case the
behavior of larger human populations resulted in increases in prey size, in
contrast to the way Broughton et al. (2011) and many others interpret markers of
intensive resource exploitation. If true, this is quite notable in that manage-
ment—deliberately forfeiting maximal immediate returns to ensure long-term
sustainability—might be able to support larger populations over the long haul,
more in accordance with risk-sensitive, satisficing economic decision making
than optimization.
In the Pacific Northwest then, the key to understanding the economic basis for
how large, complex, sedentary populations developed hinges mainly on the idea of
efficiency. Work in southern Alaska and on the Columbia River points to the
stressing effect large populations had on the Pacific Northwest resource base and
focuses on the labor required to make large-scale, delayed-return subsistence
economies work. In contrast, on the western Plateau, Hayden argues it was
aggrandizing behaviors that led to surplus production and that these behaviors,
once entrenched, resulted in a positive feedback loop that resulted in increasingly
intensive work, storage, and redistributive behaviors. Broader regional perspec-
tives suggest the early adoption of intensive, salmon-based systems and the
development of technologies to more effectively exploit the abundant resource
base of the region led to the large, arguably sustainable population densities of the
late Holocene. To this end, it is quite clear that Butler and Campell (2004) are
correct in their assertion that there is a fundamental theoretical and methodolog-
ical divide between seeing intensification in the Boserupian sense—as entailing
declining efficiency—and the broader perspective that it also may entail increased
efficiency. The former predicts not only predation/harvest pressure but also greater
demands on labor to increase yield. The latter implies that innovation, risk-
sensitive management, and other behavioral changes might offset or even reduce
demands on labor while still supporting large and even increasing populations.
The end result, as Ames (2003) claims, might indeed be the same, but the process
and explanation for how increasing economic yield was accomplished is anything
but.
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small sample of shellfish from a midden on Santa Cruz Island, the largest of the
northern Channel Islands. She shows that the quantity of Tivela stultorum (Pismo
clam) decreased but size increased over a very brief period ca. 1100 BP. Because
Tivela establish themselves infrequently and sporadically, Thakar counterintuitively
argues that this change shows intensive harvest of a single colonization/establish-
ment event, with younger, smaller clams exploited first, and then the remaining,
more difficult to procure (because they move to deeper water with age), larger clams
exploited later, perhaps over a century-long period. The gist here is that large,
semisedentary, and sociopolitically complex Chumash groups mapped onto and
intensively exploited Pismo clams whenever and wherever they became established
and available, resulted in more of a short-term intensification than a long-term
diachronic trend (and a potential ‘‘tragedy of the commons’’ that contrasts with the
management of shellfish patches that Cannon and Burchell [2009] identified in the
Pacific Northwest).
On the other end of the marine exploitation spectrum, important contributions
have been made regarding shifts toward the taking of larger-bodied fish and sea
mammals in the late Holocene. In this vein, Erlandson et al. (2009) review extant
data from shell middens on the northern Channel Islands through most of the
Holocene, finding that Santa Barbara Channel populations fished ‘‘up the food
web,’’ in contrast to modern fishery practices, which have tended toward exploiting
smaller-bodied prey as populations of larger species have declined (Reitz 2004).
Erlandson and colleagues show a dominance of shellfish early on, beginning around
8000 BP, but a shift toward preying on pelagic finfish and pinnipeds in the late
Holocene. They attribute this in part to technological innovations such as the tomol
(sewn plank canoe) and more sophisticated fishhooks. Braje (2010), Erlandson et al.
(2008), and Rick (2011) make similar assertions about long-term trends in the
development of Channel Islands marine economies, couching their analyses in the
perspective that expanding human populations drove expanding diet breadth. What
is significant about this expansion is that it was based on catching bigger-bodied and
therefore, by common measures, higher-return fish (Broughton 1997). But pelagic
species were caught in tomols, which represent large technological investments
(Arnold 2007). They also were a critical part of a sophisticated, trans-channel,
beads-for-terrestrial resources exchange system (Arnold 1991, 1992a; Fauvelle
2013), so pelagic fishing was embedded with other economic (as well as probably
social and political) pursuits. The question of fishing returns and efficiency is thus a
complex one given the costs of the technological investments required to intensively
exploit pelagic fish and the degree to which these investments were offset by
embedding fishing with other activities such as trade.
A similar boat-based pattern developed in late Holocene central and northern
California. Here Hildebrandt and Jones (2002) present ethnographic and archae-
ological evidence that aboriginal coastal California populations intensified their
exploitation of marine resources in the late Holocene by preying more on pinnipeds
who hauled out on offshore islands and sea stacks. This hunting practice required
not only canoes that were costly to manufacture but also entailed a particularly risky
hunting practice, which can be a cost in and of itself (Winterhalder et al. 1999). On
central California’s Monterey Bay, Whitaker and Byrd (2012) focus specifically on
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At the local scale, Whitaker (2008) uses data from Punta Gorda Rockshelter on
California’s northwest coast to argue that shellfish reproductive behavior and
harvest technique are critical to midden formation processes. Among the two
methods of harvesting mussels, which reproduce more like r-selected plants than
animals, plucking only large-bodied mussels yields greater immediate returns; this
is a function of body size. But stripping entire populations (which results in a higher
frequency of smaller shells in middens) nets a higher caloric yield over the course of
multiple seasons and is thus a better way to maximize returns over the long run (see
Jones [2003] and Jones and Richman [1995] for more information on mussels,
mussel size, plucking versus stripping, and the relationship of these phenomena to
human population size in coastal California). Key here are three ideas: that prey size
may not indicate decreasing foraging efficiency over the long term, that optimal
immediate returns might be suboptimal when averaged over multiple seasons, and
that population-mediated intensification might entail tactics, like stripping, that
maximize long-term rather than immediate returns.
In a related subject, what drives intensification can be mediated by factors other
than simple population increase. Tushingham (2009; see also Tushingham and
Bettinger 2013) makes this clear in her revisionist analysis of the development of
intensive fishing and foraging systems on California’s northwest coast. Using flaked
and ground stone tool, macrofloral, and faunal data controlled for time by
radiocarbon dates, obsidian hydration measurements, and diagnostic point types, she
postulates that settlement and subsistence changed quite late, around 1250 BP,
marked in part by a shift to people living in semipermanent plank houses and eating
more salmon compared to earlier occupations. She argues that the shift to intensive
exploitation of salmon, a front-loaded resource (it has to be processed before
storage), occurred after northwest California groups had earlier intensified their use
of a back-loaded resource, acorn (which is processed after being stored). Acorn,
though lower return than salmon, was less risky, stored better, and helped contribute
to the development of a system of resource ownership that prevented the
entrenchment of elites who might have appropriated labor associated with large-
scale salmon procurement and storage, in a manner akin to processes seen much
earlier on the Pacific Northwest coast (Bettinger 2015). If she is correct, her
conclusions point to what might be interpreted as de-intensification given the
extremely high costs of processing acorn (McCarthy 1993) and the late switch to
higher-return salmon. This elicits a situation where subsistence choices were
predicated on something of a historical ‘‘founder effect’’—northwest coast
California groups intensified their use of acorn by about 5000 BP, much like the
rest of California (Basgall 1987; Bouey 1987; Wohlgemuth 1996). But the norms
associated with this subsistence focus, hinging in large part on viewing acorn as
private property, prevented the wholesale, intensive adoption of what was likely a
higher-return, more efficient subsistence focus—salmon—at least from a strict
optimal foraging perspective.
Finally, in a somewhat anomalous vein, Todt (2007) surveys the ethnographic
distribution of tobacco (Nicotiana attenuata and N. quadrivalvis) using groups
along the Shasta River in the border country between southern Oregon and
California. He quantifies labor invested in managing and obtaining tobaccos, from
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Ugan and Bright (2001) directly address this latter question. They develop a way
to use AI as initially generated by Bayham (1979) to actual, experimentally derived
return rates using multi-iterative computer simulations to see if more diverse AI
truly represent the declining foraging efficiencies predicted by Boserupian
intensification models. They suggest that the relationship between AI and return
rate is complex, nonlinear, and very difficult to model and conclude that (1) declines
in the abundance of high ranking prey have only modest effects on overall return
rate, and (2) taphonomic bias and how archaeofauna are quantified can have
significant effects on the curves describing the relationship between AI and return
rate (see also Cannon [2013], Codding et al. [2010], and Lupo [2007] for
discussions regarding AI). Evident in their analysis is the fact that both measures
(AI and return rate) generate marginal returns over multiple iterations, which is not
surprising, and that increased labor input always results in diminishing returns over
time. Their main contribution, other than showing that it is much harder than it
looks to legitimately quantify declines in hunting efficiency per the prey choice
model, is that they reiterate the fact that when using this model, larger-bodied prey
remain in the diet even when human populations undergo resource stress because
larger-bodied, higher-return items are always taken when encountered. If the faunal
record shows a shift to smaller-bodied prey at the expense of large-bodied prey, then
something else has to be going on, such as local extirpation.
Geared more to identifying cause than the presence or absence of intensification are
formal ecological models, most based on Binford’s (2001) Frames of Reference.
Hamilton et al. (2007), for example, use Binford’s compilation of hunter-gatherer
ethnological data to assess home range size with reference to metabolic demand,
environmental productivity, and social behaviors. They find that home ranges sizes
vary allometrically rather than isometrically, even when accounting for the effects
of temperature, historical relationships, and other factors that might affect such
ranges. The thrust of this study is that hunter-gatherers with relatively high
population densities live in smaller areas than might be expected of other predators
and omnivores with similar metabolic requirements. They do so because they
critically ‘‘are more efficient [italics added] at extracting materials, energy, and
information from the environment and redistributing those resources to individuals
within societies’’ (Hamilton et al. 2007, p. 4768).
Johnson (2013) extends this perspective. Most of this work is a summary of
conclusions made by Binford: that population density and effective temperature
correlate strongly and predict critical aspects of hunter-gatherer lifeway (especially
storage), that population packing requires some form of increased energetic
extraction from the environment beyond terrestrial hunting, and that increased
extraction can take various pathways (e.g., turning to lower-return terrestrial flora or
shifting to aquatic and marine resources, where available), depending on local
environmental characteristics (see also González-Insuasti and Caballero [2007] for
how this might work for terrestrial plants). In doing so, she notes recent advances in
modeling prehistoric population densities using methods like summed radiocarbon
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Technological investment
Technological investment models are in many ways akin to what the FEM predicts
with regard to when investments should be made in resource management rules as
ways of increasing resource extraction efficiency. Ugan et al. (2003) take the initial
stab at this, modeling technological investment as a decision variable akin to how
long to spend in a resource patch per Charnov’s (1976) marginal value theorem.
Their model produces functions describing the marginal return rates for developing
new technologies for fishing, with everything from hook and line (low investment,
low return) to large gill nets (high investment, high return) plotted on the x-axis and
benefit, measured in kg of caught fish, plotted on the y. Though the graphs have little
utility other than making it clear that returns are always marginal, the take-home
message, well taken, is that to offset the time and effort put into larger and more
complex technologies, large technological investments require long handling times.
It only pays to construct a large gill net if it is going to be used often and/or if it will
have a long use life. So Ugan and colleague’s model is really about describing
economies of scale—it really does not pay to make large technological investments
unless one wants to capture a lot of resources or plans on using the technology
repeatedly. Another implication is that some resources have only one or two optimal
solutions. These are depicted by very steep marginal rate curves implying that one
either invests in the technology to capture the resource or one does not; it is all or
nothing, and incremental increases in technological investment cannot increase
returns. This at first appears counterintuitive but indeed makes perfect sense; some
prey like pelagic fish can be obtained only with large technological investments in
seafaring technology (e.g., canoes on the California coast) to bring the predator to
the resource.
The problem with Ugan et al.’s (2003) model is that it lumps multiple technological
investments, each with its own marginal rate of return, into a continuum of marginal
resource return rates. This has the potential to overestimate use times required to make
a technology optimal relative to other alternatives because it pools the cost of
preceding technologies with the additional costs of adding a new technology.
Recognizing this, Bettinger et al. (2006) generate a marginal value model that instead
predicts when switching to another technological class is optimal, again borrowing
from Charnov’s (1976) marginal value theorem. In their model, each technology gets
its own, unique cost-benefit curve rather than being placed on the same curve with
different technologies. Switching to a more costly technology (e.g., a bow and arrow
over an atlatl) will occur when use time is great enough to generate the substantially
higher marginal returns made possible by the new technology. The implication here is
similar to that of Ugan et al. (2003): technological investments are predicted only
when long tool use lives result in qualitatively different— more efficient—but also
temporally extended rates of return (Bamforth 1986; Torrance 1989; but see Fitzhugh
2001). This is critical as both models imply that technological investments may
increase resource extraction efficiency but only when an economy of scale is applied.
Of course, the only time such scales apply is when there is a large enough market (in the
case of hunter-gathers, enough mouths to feed) to make such large capital investments
worth their cost.
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I draw four main points from the preceding. First, there is a dearth of recent
return-rate studies. This limits any discussion and quantitative analysis of
investments in labor, capital, and the economic benefits of such investments. We
have only a vague understanding of the range of variability of return rates using
different technologies for even the most basic hunter-gatherer resources. Second,
although declines in the frequency of large fauna in zooarchaeological assemblages
may indeed indicate overpredation as a function of increasing human population
densities, this generalization is also contingent on taphonomy, differential foraging
goals, and prey response to predation (Emlen 1966). For example, given the
resilience of key prey such as deer (Odocoileus hemionus) to predation (Whitaker
2009), it might be expected that deer encounter rates, and thus the presence of such
fauna in archaeofaunal assemblages, would increase as a function of more hunters
present on the landscape. Third, macroscale ecological models based on population
density and resource abundance, though taking advantage of recent improvements in
reconstructing past population densities and growth rates using radiocarbon summed
probability distributions, are more descriptive than processual, falling into the
circular argument of increasing populations leading to increased resource extraction
but also increased resource extraction leading to increased population density. This
ultimately results in deterministic theory where degrees of environmental produc-
tivity are the sole predictors of the main aspects of hunter-gatherer economic
behavior. Lastly, technological investment models show that innovations can result
in increased efficiency, but only in the context of population densities large enough
to generate the economies of scale necessary to pay for such investments. The
implication is that population may mediate both increases and decreases in overall
economic efficiency in the broader context of increased production but also that
increased efficiency based on capital investments provide the wherewithal for a
portion of increasingly large populations to be freed from solely subsistence-related
pursuits.
Discussion
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and Hard 2008; Kennedy 2005). The development of models linking zooarchae-
ological quantification with actual return rates is equally significant (Ugan and
Bright 2001), but doing so is hampered by how little experimental data there are on
resource return rates (Broughton et al. 2011). Though not reviewed at length here,
there has been some progress made in the identification of the other side of the
population pressure equation, where past population densities are estimated using a
variety of proxies—diachronic changes in site or feature frequencies (Eerkens 2008;
Eerkens and Rosenthal 2002; Jerardino 2012; Thoms 2009), environmental
productivity (Binford 2001), and especially summed radiocarbon probability
distributions (Williams 2012).
More important, however, is the recognition that foraging goal variability, prey
habitat preference, prey behavioral characteristics, and environmental change can
all affect archaeofaunal assemblages, by far the most common metric of prehistoric
subsistence. These factors can either mimic population-mediated declining foraging
efficiency or, especially in the context of prestige-related foraging goals, occlude the
effects of population pressure and its effect on the zooarchaeological record. What
this means is that subsistence diversification, most often linked to population-
mediated intensification, and subsistence specialization, sometimes seen as an
alternative means to increase yield (Munro and Atici 2009b; Thurston and Fisher
2007a, b), may be caused by circumstances other than burgeoning human
populations. Most zooarchaeologists, however, appear quite cognizant of these
confounding factors and account for many of them, especially environmental
characteristics, environmental change, and taxa behavior in their analyses. In these
contexts, the resource side of the population pressure equation necessitates not only
strict measures of zooarchaeological quantification but also interpretation of these
measures per relevant social and environmental contexts.
Far less headway has been made in explaining intensification; the majority of
research either addresses the topic indirectly or falls into the trap entailed by the
very long running debates over whether environmental productivity, innovation, or
population increase initiate increases in economic output. What came first:
innovation or increased labor leading to increased population densities; intrinsic
rates of population increase that eventually challenged environmental carrying
capacities, necessitating some sort of adaptive response; or social factors such as
changes in the conception of private property or competitive gift giving that led to
efforts to increase yield?
In the Paleolithic, these questions hinge on whether a greater focus on marine
niches gave anatomically modern humans an adaptive advantage over Archaic
Homo (Hockett and Haws 2005) and whether intensification occurred during the UP
or later in the terminal Pleistocene. Similar questions pertain during the TPEH and
the BSR, with recent evidence for Late Natufian population decline during the YD
calling into question the notion that population pressure led to plant and animal
domestication at the dawn of the Holocene (Munro 2004). Research across North
America not only points to how increasing human population densities may have
driven economic intensification (Eerkens 2008; Eerkens and Rosenthal 2002;
Johnson 2013; Thoms 2009; Yu 2006) but also how mediating risk and satisficing-
based decision making might have resulted in similarly intensive economic
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C
B
A
Time
Fig. 2 Intensification of same resource or patch given marginal return rates. After Time A, which
represents a hypothetical pre-intensified economy, diminishing returns are indicated by all times to the
right of ‘‘A’’ (the shaded area below the curve). Past this point, the per-unit cost (in time) of each
additional unit of benefit is greater than per-unit cost prior to Time A, indicating declining efficiency
Search + handling
Search + handling (dashed)
Time per unit of energy acquired
Optimal
point
)
lid
Optimal so
point e(
tim
g
lin
nd Se
Ha arc
ht
im
e
e
tim
g
lin
nd
Sea
rch Ha
tim
T1 T2
e
Higher
ranked A B Lower Higher
ranked ranked A B Lower
ranked
Ranked resources Ranked resources
Fig. 3 Intensification of new resource or patch. Per the diet breadth model (MacArthur and Pianka 1966;
see also Bettinger 1991, fig. 4.1), the graph on the left (‘‘T1’’) depicts a strategy where only higher-ranked
resources (Resource A) are taken because they optimize the amount of time per unit of energy acquired.
The graph on the right (‘‘T2’’) depicts the inclusion of lower-ranked resources (‘‘B’’) in the diet, which
increases search time and moves the optimal solution to the right of the graph. Note the increase in time
per unit of energy acquired to include Resource B in T2, an indicator of reduced efficiency
bow and arrow) and that evolutionary trajectories toward different adaptive peaks
(say between agriculture and the intensive foraging systems in aboriginal
California) are arguably resistant to piecemeal change (Bettinger 2009). In short,
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i
B
Increase in
switching to
A
Tech. B at UT1
Switching
point
UT1
socioeconomic systems work as a package deal, where shifting from one package to
another has potentially deleterious costs and where changes in one part of the
system, for instance to a storage economy, necessitates not only technological and
behavioral shifts but also fundamental reorganization of work strategies, social
norms, and conceptions of private property (Bettinger 2015).
The diversity of opinions, however, as to what exactly causes increased
productivity in hunter-gatherer economies is informed by (and may be resolvable by
addressing) the critical disjuncture in the very definition of what intensification
entails. On the one side is the strict Boserupian perspective that labor investment
drives the engine of economic output, but that this comes at a cost of declining
efficiency. From this viewpoint, continuing to exploit the same set of resources with
more labor results in increasingly marginal returns (Fig. 2). Adding new, lower-
return resources or resource patches to the foraging itinerary also results in reduced
net returns, though by definition, increased gross returns (Fig. 3). From this
perspective, value is generated via increased labor investment, in general accord
with both classical and Marxist economic perspectives (Marx 2010; Smith 2009).
This is intensification in its strictest sense, driven by population-resource
imbalances.
Providing contrast (and increasingly common in the archaeological literature on
hunter-gatherers) is the perspective that intensification entails any means (special-
ization, diversification, innovation, etc.) that increases economic output, including
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Table 1 Modes of increases in productivity, postulated changes in efficiency, and hypothesized contexts
in hunter-gatherer economies
Mode Change in Ecological context Social context
efficiency
those that increase efficiency. This is the schism Butler and Campell (2004) allude
to, seen often in research in the Pacific Northwest (Ames 2003; Matson 1983) but
present or implied in much of the literature reviewed here. As I have shown,
specialization, diversification, and innovation—all means of increasing productiv-
ity—can result from different social, demographic, and ecological contexts and may
not necessarily have to arise only in the context of population pressure. As Bettinger
et al. (2006) and Ugan et al. (2003) convincingly show, however, investments in
technology—i.e., capital investments—can result in qualitative increases in return
and increased efficiency as long as there are the requisite economies of scale
(meaning more people) present to offset the costs of the initial investment (Fig. 4).
The fundamental question then is whether investments in labor or capital drive
increases in economic output in hunter-gatherer societies and what contexts drive
these different types of investments. On the one hand, Ames (2005) is right: both
investments in capital and labor can result in increased productivity. But each also
entails very different processes, each with its own costs, returns, and contexts under
which it might succeed or fail (Table 1). Technological investments only increase
net efficiency when an economy of scale is applied. Do large populations already
have to be in place to provide this context? Diversification may represent means of
mediating risk in light of uncertainty as well as outright intensification s.s. Absent
technological change or changes in work strategies, simply working harder or longer
necessarily entails marginal return rates over time and thus declining efficiency.
What are the economic and perhaps social incentives behind accepting diminishing
returns? In economic and evolutionary contexts, the question then becomes under
what contexts do increased investments in labor versus capital provide an adaptive
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advantage to their practitioners? The problem that has to be dealt with before we
turn attention to the environmental, demographic, or social causes behind increases
in hunter-gatherer economic productivity is that of identifying the means by which
increased yield was accomplished. Conflating fundamentally different behaviors
that result in either increased or decreased efficiency as ‘‘intensification’’ thus
occludes process and the contexts under which different pathways to increased
productivity occur (Thurston and Fisher 2007a, b). The concept of efficiency is thus
critical to the goal of understanding process, meaning specifying exactly what type
of pathway led to increased economic output in specific cases is the essential first
step toward untangling the long-running circular debates over hunter-gatherer
economic evolution.
Conclusion
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taken to mean any method used to increase economic yield, it has very little
descriptive and almost no explanatory power. If it is employed in its Boserupian
sense, as entailing declining efficiency, this opens up the floor to much more
nuanced thinking about process, where diversification, specialization, and innova-
tion are alternative and perhaps fundamentally different means of increasing output
in evolving hunter-gatherer economies.
Acknowledgments I thank Robert Kelly, Brian Codding, Virginia Butler and three additional
anonymous reviewers for their insightful and extremely valuable commentary on the draft of this article.
Likewise I thank Gary Feinman for his editorial suggestions and guidance through the entire process,
from proposal to press. Any errors or omissions, however, are my own.
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