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Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304073030 Pyrodiversity and the anthropocene: the role of fire in the broad spectrum revolution Article in Evolutionary Anthropology Issues News and Reviews · May 2016 DOI: 10.1002/evan.21482 CITATIONS READS 6 178 3 authors, including: Douglas Bird Rebecca Bliege Bird Pennsylvania State University Pennsylvania State University 67 PUBLICATIONS 2,217 CITATIONS 53 PUBLICATIONS 2,840 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by Rebecca Bliege Bird on 11 July 2016. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file. Evolutionary Anthropology 25:105–116 (2016) ARTICLE Pyrodiversity and the Anthropocene: the Role of Fire in the Broad Spectrum Revolution DOUGLAS W. BIRD, REBECCA BLIEGE BIRD, AND BRIAN F. CODDING The Anthropocene colloquially refers to a global regime of human-caused environ- Binford10 was among the first to mental modification of earth systems associated with profound changes in patterns draw on Boserup to argue that diversi- of human mobility, as well as settlement and resource use compared with prior eras. fication in hunted resources, food Some have argued that the processes generating the Anthropocene are mainly asso- processing, and storage facilities may ciated with population growth and technological innovation, and thus began only in result from an intensified use of the the late Holocene under conditions of dense sedentism and industrial agriculture.1 environment that significantly pre- However, it now seems clear that the roots of the Anthropocene lie in complex proc- dates agriculture. Flannery’s11 hypo- esses of intensification that significantly predate transitions to agriculture.2,3 What thesis to account for such ‘‘broad intensification is remains less clear. For some it is increasing economic productivity spectrum revolutions’’ (BSR) then that increases carrying capacity, the drivers of which may be too diverse and too local paved the way for using intensification to generalize.4,5 For others using Boserup’s ideas about agrarian intensification, in an explanatory sense. For Flannery, increasing density in hunter-gatherer populationscanproducedeclinesinsubsist- the BSR was driven by an imbalance ence efficiency that increase incentives for investing labor to boost yield per unit area, between resources and populations, 6–8 9 which then elevates Malthusian limits on carrying capacity. As Morgan demon- resulting in an increase in labor and a strates in a comprehensive review, the legacy of such Boserupian intensification is decrease in foraging efficiency. Faced alive, well, and controversial in hunter-gatherer archeology. This is a result of its with diminishing returns, Epipaleo- potential for illuminating processes involved in transformations of forager socio- lithic populations in the Near East political and economic systems, including those dominated by harvesting more spread into less productive environ- immediate-return resources and high residential mobility as well as those character- ments, which necessitated increased ized by more delayed-return material economies with reduced residential mobility, a reliance on a wider array of more broader spectrum of resources, degrees of storage, and greater social stratification. labor-intensive, but more predictable, Here we detail hypotheses about the processes involved in such transitions and plants and animals. Flannery sug- explore the way that anthropogenic disturbance of ecosystems, especially the use of gested that this set the stage for (or landscape fire, could be fundamentally entangled with many broad-spectrum revolu- backed hunter-gatherers into) the tions associated with intensified foraging systems. social and technological processes that eventually lead to domestication and agriculture. Douglas Bird is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Penn State University. He has spent much of the last twenty-five years working in Indigenous communities in Australia. Recent publications of his research on the socio-ecology of human subsistence have been featured in Current Anthropology, Quaternary International, and American Antiquity. Email: [email protected] Rebecca Bliege Bird is Professor of Anthropology and the Inter-College Program in Ecology at Penn State University. She has published widely on gender and fire ecology in Indigenous societies, including recent articles in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B. Brian Codding is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Utah. His research is both ethnographic and archeological in nature, with a focus on present and past human-environment interactions in Australia and North America. Recent articles on his research in both regions have been published in venues such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Archaeological Science, and Human Ecology. Key words: intensification; behavioral ecology; disturbance ecology; Aboriginal Australia VC 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. DOI: 10.1002/evan.21482 Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). 106 Bird et al. ARTICLE This longstanding explanation for ity or patch, patch-residence time economic and socio-political inten- the conditions that lead to the ori- models15 provide solutions to foraging sification and changing patterns of gins of agriculture has been formal- and traveling trade-offs. These models mobility and colonization under a ized in behavioral ecological (BE) predict the threshold at which a forager broad range of circumstances. Recent models that allow for the generation should switch from foraging (searching examples illustrate how tests of model and testing of clear predictions tied and handling) for one suite of resour- predictions give new insight into clas- to the theory of evolution by natural ces and travel elsewhere to search for sic archeological problems.22–27 We selection.12,13 While many tests have and handle other suites of resources. suspect that processes of intensifica- been upheld, some have used theo- The more foragers are tethered to a tion illustrated in the logic of foraging retical and empirical exceptions to central place, the more salient are theory are important in many transi- challenge both the original formula- trade-offs in transporting resources. tions to domestication and the requi- 5 16 tion and its BE formalizations. Spe- Central-place foraging models pre- site social institutions of farming that cifically, these critics argue that the dict thresholds at which individuals have radically transformed earth classic BE models of resource use should move resources to their base or systems.28,29 ignore the development of social their base to the resources. Scaling up institutions necessary for the transi- to the landscape as a collection of hab- THE PROBLEM: PROPERTY AND tion to delayed return resources and itats, models of ideal distribution17,20 elements of niche construction neces- then generate expectations about how ANTHROPOGENIC HABITAT sary to account for habitat modifica- foragers should distribute themselves; CONSTRUCTION tion associated with agriculture. After that is, where they should be based Models in behavioral ecology have detailing the classic behavioral eco- and when they should move depend- proven useful in unveiling many of the logical approach and its critiques, we ing on the suitability of available habi- dynamics that likely accompany inten- show how these challenges can be tats in an environment and the density sification. However, recent work has incorporated into behavioral ecologi- of conspecifics already occupying those highlighted two issues. First, straight- cal frameworks to provide a compre- habitats. The models predict the order forward ideas about how decreasing in which habitats will be colonized and hensive model for broad-spectrum subsistence efficiency leads to intensi- relative differences in population den- revolutions that lead to agriculture. fication need to grapple with under- sity and despotic intensity. standing the development of the Taken together, foraging models THE BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY social institutions implicit in the transi- frame testable hypotheses about the OF INTENSIFICATION tion from immediate-return or public- potential processes of intensification. goods to delayed-return or private-goods In behavioral ecology, such ideas They generate expectations about the based economies. about intensification have been cast in direction of economic transformation Bowles and Choi30 have recently various formal models of prey choice, with shifts toward a reliance on a developed a model suggesting that patch use, central-place foraging, and broader spectrum of resources charac- shifts to a delayed-return economy ideal free distribution, which empha- terized by higher handling costs, how depend on the number of individuals size the trade-offs organisms face with resource depression may link with pat- variability in foraging efficiency and terns of mobility and residence, how in any social group who act on the link habitat quality. The models can be human populations are likely to spread between labor and product in such a thought of as tiered solutions to prob- and increase with greater reliance on way that those who labor have priority lems a hypothetical forager would face more costly but abundant resources, in controlling the distribution of mate- in finding and using resources across and how
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