Alternative adaptive regimes for integrating foraging and farming activities

作者：Freeman Jacob^*

来源：Journal of Archaeological Science, 2012, 39(9): 3008-3017.

DOI：10.1016/j.jas.2012.04.039

• Agricultural change
• Low-level food producers
• Adoption of agriculture
• Agricultural niche
• Southwest archaeology

There are two distinct forager-farmer adaptive regimes evidenced in the ethnographic record: an ancillary and surplus cultivation regime. Societies characterized by these different regimes define different systems for allocating time to the production of domesticated plants. Cross-cultural patterns support the proposition that two socioecological conditions are logically necessary in order for an ancillary cultivation regime to develop and persist within a population of foragers. Wild resources must be sufficiently available, and farmers who produce a surplus of crops must be available to exchange with, live with or raid to redistribute crops after an episode of crop loss. The cross-cultural presence of two empirically distinct regimes for integrating foraging and farming is a useful frame of reference for evaluating how prehistoric foragers first integrated foraging and farming activities in archaeological contexts of secondary crop acquisition. A preliminary examination indicates that the ethnographic patterns are most consistent with the interpretation that the earliest farmers to inhabit the American Southwest produced at least a minimal surplus of domesticated plants. It is postulated that the adoption of a surplus cultivation regime by a population creates the adaptive opportunity for ancillary cultivation to develop and persist on a landscape.

• 出版日期2012-9