ABSTRACT

The spread of agriculture is a major driver of social and environmental change throughout the Holocene, yet experimental and ethnographic data indicate that farming is less profitable than foraging, so why would individuals choose to adopt agriculture leading to its expansion? Ideal distribution models offer one framework to answer this question: Individuals should adopt less profitable subsistence strategies and occupy more marginal environments when local population density increases competition to the point where the suitability of the best strategies and habitats becomes equal to what can be gained in poorer strategies and habitats. Coupling radiocarbon-dated archaeological sites with a validated measure of agricultural suitability, we evaluate the emergence of farming in the Basin-Plateau region of North America. Our results show that farming first occurs in the more suitable Colorado Plateau physiographic region, and only spreads into the less suitable Great Basin after population density on the Plateau increases. This produces an approximate 300- to 400-year lag between the onset of farming on the Plateau and in the Basin. These findings support the ideal distribution hypothesis for the spread of farming, and suggest a general socioecological process that may help explain global patterns in the timing and tempo of agricultural expansions.

摘要

农业的传播是整个全新世社会和环境变化的主要驱动力，但实验和人种学数据表明，农业的利润低于觅食，那么为什么个人选择采用农业导致其扩张呢？理想的分布模型为回答这个问题提供了一个框架：当当地人口密度增加竞争到最佳策略和栖息地的适用性变得与贫困地区相同的程度时，个人应该采用利润较低的生存策略并占据更多的边缘环境。策略和栖息地。将放射性碳测年考古遗址与经过验证的农业适宜性测量相结合，我们评估了北美盆地-高原地区农业的出现。我们的研究结果表明，农业首先发生在更适合科罗拉多高原的自然地理区域，并且只有在高原人口密度增加后才会扩散到不太适合的大盆地。这在高原和盆地的农业开始之间产生了大约 300 到 400 年的滞后。这些发现支持了农业传播的理想分布假设，并提出了一个可能有助于解释农业扩张时间和速度的全球模式的一般社会生态过程。