Food Production and Domestication Produced Both Cooperative and Competitive Social Dynamics in Eastern North America

ABSTRACT

Recent research emphasises the importance of both within-group cooperation and between-group competition for human sociality, past and present. We hypothesise that the shift from foraging to food production in eastern North America provided novel socioecological conditions that impacted interpersonal and intergroup interactions in the region, inspiring both greater cooperation as well as competition. We predict that (1) successful exploitation of this indigenous crop complex encouraged greater cooperation leading to site aggregation in high-quality locations as expected by an ideal free distribution with an Allee effect, and (2) continued population growth driven by the domestication and adoption of the crop complex eventually inspired a shift from positive to negative density dependent settlement dynamics, driving declines in site suitability. Our results demonstrate that there was an increase in both site clustering and site location quality coincident with crop management and domestication in the Middle Holocene, and that territorial violence appears at this time as well. Site quality later declined after c. 3000 cal BP, also as predicted. These results indicate that managing and domesticating plants inspired an Allee effect and led to greater within-group cooperation, but was also related to the rise of territorial between-group competition in the region.

KEYWORDS:

• origins of agriculture
• ideal free distribution
• Allee effect
• positive density dependence
• returns to scale
• territoriality

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Robi Bagchi and Morgan Tingley for advice and discussions on the statistical analysis of the relationships herein during their course on Ecological Modelling. Additionally, thank you to the Canadian Archaeological Radiocarbon Database for permission to use their data and to Natalie Munro and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on this research.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Elic M. Weitzel

Elic M. Weitzel is a PhD student at the University of Connecticut with an M.S. in anthropology from the University of Utah and a B.A. in archaeology from Dickinson College. His research centres on understanding the population and behavioural ecology of past humans, particularly in eastern North America. He has worked on topics ranging from Pleistocene megafauna extinctions to the origins of domestication to the ecological consequences of European settler-colonialism.

Brian F. Codding

Brian F. Codding is Associate Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Archaeological Center at the University of Utah. His research examines human-environment interactions in the past and present through the lens of behavioural ecology. Current research is focused on explaining the dynamics structuring subsistence and land use decisions, and the feedbacks these decisions have on social and ecological systems and across western North America.

Stephen B. Carmody

Stephen B. Carmody is an anthropological archaeologist who specialises in paleoethnobotany. His research interests include hunter/gatherer subsistence patterns, the transition to food production, and the use of ritual plants. He currently serves as Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Troy University in Troy, Alabama.

David W. Zeanah

David W. Zeanah is Professor of Anthropology at California State University, Sacramento. He received his BA from the University of Alabama Anthropology in 1982, and Ph.D. from the University of Utah in 1996. His areas of specialisation are in Human Behavioral Ecology, Great Basin prehistory, and prehistory and ethnoarchaeology of Western Australia. Recent research projects include investigations of Paleoindian occupations of Grass Valley, Nevada, and Pleistocene occupation of Barrow Island, Western Australia.