Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-21-2017

Publication Title

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

Department

Department of Biological Sciences

Additional Department

Department of Anthropology

Abstract

The residential mobility patterns of modern hunter-gatherers broadly reflect local resource availability, but the proximate ecological and social forces that determine the timing of camp movements are poorly known. We tested the hypothesis that the timing of such moves maximizes foraging efficiency as hunter-gatherers move across the landscape. The marginal value theorem predicts when a group should depart a camp and its associated foraging area and move to another based on declining marginal return rates. This influential model has yet to be directly applied in a population of hunter-gatherers, primarily because the shape of gain curves (cumulative resource acquisition through time) and travel times between patches have been difficult to estimate in ethnographic settings. We tested the predictions of the marginal value theorem in the context of hunter-gatherer residential mobility using historical foraging data from nomadic, socially egalitarian Batek hunter-gatherers (n = 93 d across 11 residential camps) living in the tropical rainforests of Peninsular Malaysia. We characterized the gain functions for all resources acquired by the Batek at daily timescales and examined how patterns of individual foraging related to the emergent property of residential movements. Patterns of camp residence times conformed well with the predictions of the marginal value theorem, indicating that communal perceptions of resource depletion are closely linked to collective movement decisions. Despite (and perhaps because of) a protracted process of deliberation and argument about when to depart camps, Batek residential mobility seems to maximize group-level foraging efficiency.

DOI

10.1073/pnas.1617542114

Original Citation

Hunter-gatherer residential mobility. Vivek V. Venkataraman, Thomas S. Kraft, Nathaniel J. Dominy, Kirk M. Endicott. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Mar 2017, 114 (12) 3097-3102; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1617542114

Download

Included in

Anthropology Commons

Share

COinS