Environmental Stress and the Spread of Agriculture

This project investigates the motivations for humans to adopt farming as a livelihood strategy. The development of lifeways centered on farming represent the most important economic transition in human history. For over a century, scholars have debated the relative costs and benefits of this transition with ramifications that include the advent of private property, the scale and structure of human communities, and the division of labor among different groups in society.

One view holds that groups were pushed into farming with its higher labor demands due to environmental downturns or demographic pressure. An alternative view is that groups were drawn to farming due to its overall greater productive potential, more predictable yields, and increased potential for producers to control surplus production. These discussions are clouded by assumptions about the level of intentionality and foresight held by the earliest people to adopt of farming.

This project addresses these issues by focusing on a context in which the spread of agriculture paused for an extended period of time before rapidly accelerating coincident with environmental change. The people responsible for the further spread of agriculture had ample opportunity to observe long term ramifications. Reconstructing the ecological contexts of this spread clarifies whether adoption of farming occurred under duress or by choice when it was ecologically viable.

The project includes broader impacts through training opportunities provided in STEM fields to students, the fostering of scientific partnerships, and planned outreach activities in host communities.

Three primary research sites are being investigated, these span diverse ecological contexts and correspond to the first known sites of farmers in the region. Archaeological excavations, assess the relative commitment to domesticated plants and their wild forerunners as evidenced by plant processing equipment. Excavations also clarify the pace of the spread of farming by analysis of radiocarbon dated plant material.

Another focus of the project is to reconstruct the environmental conditions during the adoption of farming with an emphasis on seasonal rainfall patterns. This is accomplished through studies of carbonate minerals with isotopic ratios reflecting the source of rainfall and the water temperature in which the carbonate formed. Additional environmental reconstructions methods include paleobotany, pollen, and sediment analysis.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.