The Socioecology of Territory Size and a "Work-Around" Hypothesis for the Adoption of Farming

This paper combines theory from ecology and anthropology to investigate variation in the territory sizes of subsistence oriented agricultural societies. The results indicate that population and the dependence of individuals within a society on “wild” foods partly determine the territory sizes of agricultural societies. In contrast, the productivity of an agroecosystem is not an important determinant of territory size. A comparison of the population-territory size scaling dynamics of agricultural societies and human foragers indicates that foragers and farmers face the same constraints on their ability to expand their territory and intensify their use of resources within a territory. However, the higher density of food in an agroecosystem allows farmers, on average, to live at much higher population densities than human foragers. These macroecological patterns are consistent with a “work-around hypothesis” for the adoption of farming. This hypothesis is that as residential groups of foragers increase in size, farming can sometimes better reduce the tension between an individual’s autonomy over resources and the need for social groups to function to provide public goods like defense and information.

本研究融合生态学与人类学理论，旨在探究以生存为导向的农业社会中领土规模的差异性。研究结果表明，人口规模以及个体在社会中对‘野生’食物的依赖程度，部分决定了农业社会的领土规模。相反，农业生态系统的生产力并非领土规模的重要决定因素。通过对农业社会与人类狩猎者的人口-领土规模动态比较，我们发现狩猎者和农民在扩大领土和加强领土内资源利用的能力上面临着相同的限制。然而，由于农业生态系统中食物密度较高，农民的平均人口密度相较于人类狩猎者要高得多。这些宏观生态模式与‘权宜之计假设’关于农业采纳的理论相一致。该假设认为，随着狩猎者的居住群体规模增大，农业有时能更好地缓解个体对资源自主权与社会群体为提供公共物品如防御和信息所需的功能之间的紧张关系。