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Niche Construction and the Toolkits of Hunter–Gatherers and Food Producers

  • Thematic Issue Article: Cultural Niche Construction
  • Published:
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Abstract

In the study reported here we examined the impact of population size and two proxies of risk of resource failure on the diversity and complexity of the food-getting toolkits of hunter–gatherers and small-scale food producers. We tested three hypotheses: the risk hypothesis, the population-size hypothesis, and a hypothesis derived from niche construction theory. Our analyses indicated that the toolkits of hunter–gatherers are more affected by risk than are the toolkits of food producers. They also showed that the toolkits of food producers are more affected by population size than are the toolkits of hunter–gatherers. This pattern is inconsistent with the predictions of both the risk hypothesis and the population-size hypothesis. In contrast, it is consistent with the predictions of the niche construction hypothesis. Our results indicate that niche construction has affected the evolution of technology in small-scale societies and imply that niche construction must be taken into account when seeking to understand technological variation among food producers and the technological changes that occurred in association with the various transitions to farming that have occurred over the last 10,000 years.

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Notes

  1. www.climatetemp.info/; www.weatherbase.com/weather/countryall.php3?refer; www.wrcc.dri.edu/CLIMATEDATA.html; www.tutiempo.net/en/Climate.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Kevin Laland for his help with improving the original manuscript and for many conversations about NCT over the years. We also thank Melody Galen for drafting the figures.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Human Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Mark Collard, Briggs Buchanan & April Ruttle

  2. Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, USA

    Briggs Buchanan & Michael J. O’Brien

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  1. Mark Collard
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  2. Briggs Buchanan
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  3. April Ruttle
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  4. Michael J. O’Brien
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Correspondence to Mark Collard.

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Collard, M., Buchanan, B., Ruttle, A. et al. Niche Construction and the Toolkits of Hunter–Gatherers and Food Producers. Biol Theory 6, 251–259 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0034-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13752-012-0034-6

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