On Population Structure in Generalized Hunting and Collecting Populations

Birdsell, Joseph Benjamin

doi:10.1111/j.1558-5646.1958.tb02945.x

Cited by 75 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 2 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Birdsell argues that huntergatherer mating pools seem to encompass at least 500 people (Birdsell 1958(Birdsell , 1968, whereas Binford (2002:224-226) documents the regular occurrence of larger groups, depending on environmental circumstances. In any case, extreme sex ratio imbalances would clearly be more likely to be found among smaller, low-density, and often-isolated groups that tend to be egalitarian, such as those reported in this study.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry

Starkweather

Hames

2012

Hum Nat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry

Starkweather

Hames

2012

Hum Nat

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…Anthropologists have long been interested in the interplay of social structure, environmental conditions, and cultural factors on hunter-gatherer population size and demography (7)(8)(9)(10). Here we investigate how the complex social networks of huntergatherer societies reflect the spatial and temporal scaling of rates of exchange of energy, matter, and information among individuals and how these interactions result in nonlinearities between human societies and their resource base.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Nonlinear scaling of space use in human hunter–gatherers

Hamilton¹,

Milne

Walker

et al. 2007

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

100

107

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Use of space by both humans and other mammals should reflect underlying physiological, ecological, and behavioral processes. In particular, the space used by an individual for its normal activities should reflect the interplay of three constraints: (i) metabolic resource demand, (ii) environmental resource supply, and (iii) social behaviors that determine the extent to which space is used exclusively or shared with other individuals. In wild mammals, there is an allometric scaling relation between the home range of an individual and its body size: Larger mammals require more space per individual, but this relation is additionally modified by productivity of the environment, trophic niche, sociality, and ability to defend a territory [Kelt DA, Van home range ͉ macroecology ͉ scaling theory ͉ social networks T he ecology of all organisms is powerfully constrained by the exchange of energy and matter with the environment to meet metabolic resource demands. The ecology of human huntergatherers is particularly interesting, because social organization influences the uptake of energy, materials, and information from the environment and the distribution and transformation of these commodities within societies. Elsewhere we used HortonStrahler network theory to show how individual huntergatherers self-organize into social groups that facilitate the flow of fitness-related commodities among individuals at different hierarchical levels. The result is a complex social structure in which resources flow through social networks, which exhibit self-similar or fractal-like hierarchical scaling (M.J.H., B.T.M., R.S.W., and J.H.B., unpublished work) and are strikingly similar, quantitatively, to the hierarchically branched vascular networks that distribute metabolic resources within the bodies of plants (2, 3) and mammals (4, 5) and water within river drainage basins (6).Anthropologists have long been interested in the interplay of social structure, environmental conditions, and cultural factors on hunter-gatherer population size and demography (7-10). Here we investigate how the complex social networks of huntergatherer societies reflect the spatial and temporal scaling of rates of exchange of energy, matter, and information among individuals and how these interactions result in nonlinearities between human societies and their resource base. Well established macroecological scaling relations based on the first principles of physics, chemistry, and biology can account for much of the variation in the use of space by wild mammals. Here we ask how this framework must be modified to apply to traditional human societies.Like all biological species, human hunter-gatherers harvest energy and material resources from the environment to meet their metabolic requirements. For all mammals, including humans, energy requirements are set by whole-organism metabolic rate, B (in W), which scales with body size, M (in kg) as given by the following:where B 0 is a normalization constant. The scaling relation described by Eq. 1 holds greater than e...

show abstract

“…He suggested complementing the existing correlation between land tenure and social category systems with an additional materialist foundation (see the critique by McKnight 1981), suggesting that types of social organisation are modes of adaptation to different kinds of environment. This additional factor is related to Birdsell's (1953Birdsell's ( , 1973 theory, for whom the notion of 'equilibrium' between population size, group size and environmental conditions (in particular, mean annual rainfall [Birdsell 1958]) was intrinsic to huntergatherer 'patrilineal-band' societies in general, and Aboriginal Australians in particular. For Birdsell (1973, p. 337), just like Radcliffe-Brown, the patrilineal local group (in contrast to Radcliffe-Brown, Birdsell used the word 'horde') underpins Australian society in general and provides the basis for a possible extension of this Australian model to understand a wider range of hunter-gatherer societies:…”

Section: The Organic Period: From Mapping a Model To Mapping Typologiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Systems in Geography or Geography of Systems? Attempts to Represent Spatial Distributions of Australian Social Organisation

Dousset

2018

Skin, Kin and Clan: The Dynamics of Social Categories in Indigenous Australia

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

On Population Structure in Generalized Hunting and Collecting Populations

Cited by 75 publications

References 2 publications

A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry

A Survey of Non-Classical Polyandry

Nonlinear scaling of space use in human hunter–gatherers

Systems in Geography or Geography of Systems? Attempts to Represent Spatial Distributions of Australian Social Organisation

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About