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Demography, Environment, and Human Behavior

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Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology

Abstract

Archaeology’s broad engagement with the long-term evolution of human subsistence systems and social forms hinges on understanding relationships among environment, demography, production, and society. Semiquantitative narrative accounts of interactions among these factors by Malthus and later by Boserup currently are being updated with more explicitly quantitative analytical and simulation models. We describe one of these approaches, food-limited demography, and present examples of how it is being used to interpret archaeological data on subsistence, settlement, and the sociopolitical evolution of Pacific and North American societies. We note that dynamic modeling can reveal system properties that run counter to commonly held beliefs about population ecology. In agrarian societies the weight of Malthusian constraints on population develop not gradually, but abruptly, with severe consequences for human welfare; inter-annual food storage mitigates some instances of famine but makes others more severe; the potential for surplus production is greatest when populations are relatively small; low tax rates applied to a large population of producers are more stable than a high rate applied to a smaller population; and, at population equilibrium, a tax on labor may be more efficient than one on agrarian goods. These and other insights from contemporary modeling of linkages among human demography, behavior, economy, and environment allow us to examine the consequences of assumptions about rates of birth and death, the allocation of wealth and power, and how resources and labor are utilized in the evolution of early agricultural societies.

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Data Sharing Statement

The data sets (R code) generated and/or analyzed during the current study are available at github.com/puleston/spacelim.

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  1. Department of Anthropology (Evolutionary Wing), University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, USA

    Cedric Puleston & Bruce Winterhalder

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  1. Cedric Puleston
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Correspondence to Cedric Puleston .

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  1. Department of Anthropology, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA

    Anna Marie Prentiss

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Puleston, C., Winterhalder, B. (2019). Demography, Environment, and Human Behavior. In: Prentiss, A. (eds) Handbook of Evolutionary Research in Archaeology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-11117-5_16

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