Customer Reviews

Behavioral Ecology and the Transition to Agriculture (Origins of Human Behavior and Culture)

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This book presents eleven case studies that apply optimal foraging theory and other ecological models to early agriculture. It also contains an excellent introduction and two really superior final chapters analyzing the cases.
The studies are solid, sensible, and well done. The advantage of ecological theory seems to be that it makes scholars take serious account of large, comprehensive data sets, and provides tools to analyze these. Conclusions are properly modest, being usually confined to particular regions and time frames. One problem tackled by several writers is the very long delay--typically thousands of years--between the origins of deliberate cultivation and the coming of actual dependence on agriculture for staple food. This is a perfect problem for optimal foraging theory. It can model the ways in which people can intensify their hunting, gathering, and foraging. Typically, people could do this more quickly and easily than they can domesticate a new crop or invent a new cultivation technology.
The problem with this book is that it focuses too narrowly on immediate needs for food. Storage is not much discussed, yet a major difference between agriculture and foraging is that agriculture requires extensive storage--at least of seeds for future planting. We know that agriculture, wherever well documented, has provided luxuries and status goods, feast foods, ceremonial foods, fibres, and even furry pets. Above all, it has always provided valuable goods for trade. Agriculture originated in precisely those areas of the planet that were most central to great trade routes, and that farming spread along those routes. Surely, one reason to farm was to have a handy and defensible supply of foods for trade.
All these matters can be modeled within behavioral ecology, or closely related microeconomic frameworks, so there is no excuse for oversimiplifying. One hopes that future work will develop along such lines, expanding the models given herein.
That said, this is an excellent book that makes many valuable contributions. The wonderful summaries of regional archaeological findings, the challenging models, and the eminent common sense of most articles and above all the two commentaries, make the book well worth reading for anyone interested in early agriculture.