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In this review article, Bird and O'Connell trace the history of behavioral ecology, its development and application to archaeology, and how useful this approach can be to addressing various research problems. The authors reject the idea that using a behavioral ecology approach pigeon-holes researchers to a specific line of inquiry; in fact, they assert behavioral ecology has been and can be used to consider a range of issues from hominin evolution to the origins of agriculture. Ultimately, the strength of human behavioral ecology is that it is empirically testable with models.

Cannon, M.D. and J. M. Broughton.
2008 Evolutionary ecology and archaeology: an introduction. In: Evolutionary Ecology and Archaeology: Applications to Problems in Human Evolution and Prehistory, ed. J. M. Broughton and M. D. Cannon, University of Utah Press (in press).

This article tackles the issue of whether Paleoindians were specialists or generalists with regard to prey choice. Byers and Ugan address two questions to focus their research: how often were large mammals encountered, and how often did Paleoindians have to take them in order to pass up smaller fauna. The authors take into account prey densities, search time, encounter rate, and handling time for mammoths in order to estimate return rate and overall effectiveness of mammoth hunting. They also construct a diet breadth model for early Paleoindians based on return rate. Byers and Ugan employ both prey choice and diet breadth models to suggest that Paleoindians probably utilized a variety of species to make up their diet, including (but not biased toward) mammoths.

This article is part of a themed issue of World Archaeology entitled Archaeology and Evolutionary Ecology. Broughton contributes a discussion of resource depression and the effects of diet breadth by using faunal data from the Late Holocene Emeryville Shellmound in the San Francisco Bay Area. He notes that resource depression can result in either decrease or increase in abundance and mean age of high-ranked species. Both of these changes occurred at Emeryville Shellmound: once local high-ranked species became depleted, people traveled further to obtain deer. The data indicate a much more complex picture of resource use and Broughton suggests taking this into account when testing models, as well as how this can be applied to modern conservation initiatives.

In the introductory chapter of Broughton and Cannon's forthcoming edited book, they state the purpose of this volume is to illustrate how evolutionary ecology (EE) has been used to address research questions in archaeology and how these apply to the big picture of hominin prehistory. They divide the book into topics including: Early Hominin Evolution and Behavior, Pleistocene Foragers and Colonists, Post-Glacial Adaptations, Food Production Strategies, and Cooperation and Competition in Complex Societies. Cannon and Broughton outline the strengths of an EE approach: it is comprehensive, integrative, and testable. They also address criticisms and misunderstandings of the EE approach, both directly and by referencing contributed works in this volume. The authors explain the criteria for papers included in the volume; they must:: "1) draw on formal EE models, and 2) incorporate empirical applications to the archaeological record."

This article is part of a themed issue in World Archaeology entitled Archaeology and Evolutionary Ecology. Elston and Zeanah explore what they call "prearchaic" foragers in the Great Basin of the United States; this term applies to those living during the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (10,500-8500 BP). They review diet breadth, patch choice, and Z-score models from the Great Basin to compare resource availability between Prearchaic and Archaic peoples. Differences in ecology between the Early and Middle Holocene suggest shifts in hunting intensity and perhaps an overlap in men's and women's diets and roles toward the Mid-Holocene when wetlands dried and game was encountered less often.

In this seminal work, Kelly makes the argument that hunter-gatherers cannot be stereotyped as depending on virtually the same diet, regardless of environment. In this "spectrum" of subsistence, Kelly describes how variable and complex human behavior and choice is in reality. In order to address this complexity, Kelly advocates using mathematical models adopted from economists and evolutionary ecologists. By modifying optimal foraging theory models (like diet breadth and patch choice) to include human behavioral factors, their application can be used to investigate human decision-making, assuming foragers have the goal of maximizing foraging efficiency. However, Kelly cautions: "foraging models do not claim to duplicate reality; instead, they claim to model reality at some level of specificity if hunter-gatherers are behaving according to a model's set of goals and conditions" (109). Ultimately, optimal foraging models can be used to investigate the evolution of foraging, diet, technology, and other economic factors that are part of hunter-gatherer lifeways.

Kelly, Robert L.
2001 Prehistory of the Carson Desert and Stillwater Mountains: Environment, Mobility, and Subsistence in a Great Basin Wetland. University of Utah Anthropological Papers, Number 123. The University of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.

In this report, and specifically in the third chapter entitled "The Foraging Model," Kelly applies the patch choice model to discuss available food resources in the Carson Desert and Stillwater Mountains and how foraging for either upland or marsh resources produced different return rates depending on whether a base camp was located in the uplands or the marsh. Based on return rates of various floral and faunal species, Kelly concludes residential foraging in the marsh (valley) produces a higher return rate than logistical foraging, while logistical foraging in the mountains provides a higher return rate than residential foraging there. Thus if hunter-gatherers were maximizing foraging efficiency, it would make sense for them to occupy the marsh and forage there residentially and then also logistically exploit resources in the uplands when necessary.

The subtitle of this book, "The first intensive survey of a single, crucial stage of human development--man's once universal hunting way of life," explains why it is considered a classic in behavioral ecology. Lee's article is a study of the subsistence of !Kung Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert where he examines the work involved in making a living in !Kung society. as well as how representative the !Kung are of other hunter-gatherers. Lee shows these people are not solely hunters, but also incorporate a wide variety of plant material into their diet. Importantly, this can apply to the archaeology of prehistoric hunter-gatherers: "certainly the absence of plant remains on archeological sites is by itself not sufficient evidence for the absence of gathering. Recently-abandoned Bushman campsites show a similar absence of vegetable remains, although this paper has clearly shown that plant foods comprise over 60 percent of the actual diet" (43). Lee's conclusion is particularly significant: we should consider different hunting and gathering adaptations instead of applying the "man as hunter" theme to all prehistoric cultures.

Surovell, Todd A. and Nicole M. Waguespack
2009. Human Prey Choice in the Late Pleistocene and Its Relation to Megafaunal Extinctions. In American Megafaunal Extinctions at the End of the Pleistocene, edited by Gary Haynes. Springer, pp. 77-105.

In this chapter of Haynes' book, Surovell and Waguespack expand on their previous work regarding Paleoindian prey choice (Waguespack and Surovell 2003) by combining this behavioral ecology approach with ethnographic and zooarchaeological data. The authors suggest hunter-gatherers in the terminal Pleistocene were likely megafaunal specialists, based on encounter and return rates, as well as species abundance in the archaeological record. Their results indicate humans were at least circumstantially involved in megafaunal extinctions, specifically with the Order Proboscidea, which has low reproduction rates and slow growth rates. They summarize their findings as: Paleoindians hunted large prey, whose populations are highly susceptible to predation, and these large animals went extinct.

The title of this article references Lee's chapter in Man the Hunter (1968). Waguespack and Surovell use faunal data from Clovis sites in order to test diet breath hypotheses focusing on specialization vs. generalization. They contend that Clovis hunter-gatherers tended toward specialization based on encounter rates since "Clovis hunter-gatherers often ignored opportunities to harvest smaller game species, likely in favor of obtaining a higher-ranked resource" (348). There are relatively higher handling costs for small prey, since the return rate is lower than that from large-bodied animals. The authors recognize possible errors or bias, such as differential recovery and preservation of faunal remains, but believe these will not alter their results to a large degree.