Late Woodland Period “Waste” Reduction in the Ohio River Valley

Bet-hedging strategies, agricultural change, and unpredictable environments: historical development of dryland agriculture in Kona, Hawaii

“…270-271). The results suggest that cultural elaboration is most likely to appear and persist in unpredictable environments and that populations practising elaboration under such conditions will experience enhanced fitness relative to those who do not (see also Dunnell and Greenlee, 1999 and other papers in this volume; also Hunt and Lipo, 2001). The cultural elaboration model developed by Dunnell (1989) and elaborated by Madsen et al (1999) is only one example of how these kinds of contrastive behavioural strategies can differentially affect long and short-term reproductive success.…”

“…In the absence of environmental perturbations, production maximization strategies would be expected to result in population increases (assuming surplus is not directed to other variance minimizing strategies), while variance minimization ones should stabilise or lower population size. As the simulations of Madsen et al (1999; see also Dunnell and Greenlee, 1999;Hunt and Lipo, 2001) illustrate, both production maximizing and variance minimizing strategies potentially have implications for population age structures as well, with juvenile mortality rates and adult-to-juvenile ratios varying in predictable ways. In unpredictable environments an emphasis on agronomic variance minimizing strategies would be expected to correlate with a higher geometric mean fitness and an equal ratio of adults to juveniles, while an emphasis on productive maximizing strategies would result in a comparatively lower geometric mean fitness, a higher birth rate, and a higher rate of juvenile mortality.…”

Hopewell Archaeology: A View from the Northern Woodlands

“…The archaeological expectations of a collapse do not appear for Hopewellian societies. Neither evidence of widespread diseases nor heightened death rates have been recovered (Dunnell and Greenlee 1999). Similarly, the data for environmental decline are limited, although the warming episode c. A.D. 400 (Baerreis et al 1976;Loehle 2007) encourages a greater investigation of dynamic environmental trends.…”

“…Similarly, Dunnell and Greenlee (1999) argued that earthwork construction and long-distance exchange were eventually selected against by Hopewellian societies when reclassified as dysfunctional, or wasteful. Clearly more ecological and settlement data are needed to better define the regional variability of the transformation of Hopewellian societies if we are going to then explain this important historical process.…”

“…However, lineages fission and subgroups often move locally into less productive locales or join other riverine polities as attached lineages. In this sense, large and conspicuous earthen monuments may serve as evidence of some emic notion of wealth, their presence a signal of sorts of economic prosperity (Abrams 1989;Dunnell and Greenlee 1999).…”