David Webster

Bio: David Webster is an academic researcher from Pennsylvania State University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Maya & Population. The author has an hindex of 25, co-authored 57 publications receiving 2066 citations.

Myths of the Archaic State: Evolution of the Earliest Cities, States, and Civilizations , by Norman Yoffee. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-81837-0 hardback £45 & US$75; ISBN 0-521-52156-4 paperback £19.99 & US$34.99, 291 pp.

Abstract: For more than a century, archaeologists have frequently been drawn to understand the human past in broadly evolutionary terms, applying Darwinian thinking to the development of human societies. The unilinear models of human development that often result typically regard the state as the culmination of human progress, the end-point of a journey through intervening stages of bands, tribes and chiefdoms. Neo-evolutionary thinking was especially prevalent from the 1940s onwards, in the work of Julian Steward and others writing on the origins of the state. In the volume reviewed, Norman Yoffee challenges the former dominance of the neo-evolutionary approach, arguing that over the past half century it has stifled rather than stimulated our understanding of early state development.Yoffee contests the idea that states develop through a series of programmatic stages from less complex kinds of society. Instead, he stresses the diversity of the archaic state, drawing heavily on his specialist knowledge (drawn from texts as well as archaeology) of early Mesopotamia. Here we see city-state societies in which heterarchies play a role alongside hierarchies, and in which the varieties of lived experience varied considerably from place to place, even though all may at some level be considered to have been part of a shared Mesopotamian civilization.Yoffee's book is not, however, concerned solely with Mesopotamia; far from it, he draws comparative evidence from Egypt, South and East Asia and Central and South America to demonstrate the diversity and fluidity of the entities he is describing. Few of them conform to models that might be drawn from ethnography, and each state may in many ways be considered unique. Yet in a broader perspective, all states arise through a widespread pattern of change that has taken place in human society since the end of the Pleistocene in which individuals and groups have competed for control of resources.Yoffee concludes that ‘The central myth about the study of the earliest states ... is that there was something that could be called the archaic state, and that all of the earliest states were simply variations on this model’. The methodological alternative is to consider each society (of whatever type) as individual and unique, and constantly in a state of flux. In this review feature we invite a series of archaeologists specializing in the study of early states to address this and other issues raised by this important book. We begin, however, with an opening statement from the author himself.

The Mesoamerican Urban Tradition

Abstract: The process of preindustrial urbanization is an important archeological issue because of its association with the emergence of early complex societies. There is considerable debate among Mesoamerican archeologists concerning both the evolutionary nature of the process itself and the configurations and functions of the centers that might be called “urban.” Part of this debate is caused by the variation that clearly exists among such Mesoamerican centers, as well as the distinctive nature of urbanization in the culture area, which differs in important respects from similar processes in the Old World. Components of a model proposed by Richard Fox are used to set the Mesoamerican urban tradition into a wider, multilineal evolutionary framework. Copan, Teoti-huacan, Tenochtitlan, and other Mesoamerican centers provide comparative examples.

Warfare and the Evolution of the State: A Reconsideration

Abstract: Warfare is seen as an adaptive ecological choice under conditions of population growth and resource limitation. Its major significance in the formation of the state lay in its ability to negate evolutionary constraints inherent in ranked societies. The evolutionary significance of warfare is discussed in terms of processes of cultural change which are largely internal.

The Fall of the Ancient Maya: Solving the Mystery of the Maya Collapse

Abstract: This title provides the most satisfying and convincing analysis yet produced of the downfall of the New Worlds greatest ancient civilization.

The Not So Peaceful Civilization: A Review of Maya War

Abstract: The first Maya encountered by Europeans in the early sixteenth century were exceedingly warlike, but by the 1940s the earlier Classic Maya (AD 250–1000) were widely perceived as an inordinately peaceful civilization. Today, in sharp contrast, conflict is seen as integral to Maya society throughout its history. This paper defines war, reviews the evidence for it in the Maya archaeological record, and shows how and why our ideas have changed so profoundly. The main emphasis is on the Classic period, with patterns of ethnohistorically documented war serving as a baseline. Topics include the culture history of conflict, strategy and tactics, the scope and range of operations, war and the political economy, and the intense status rivalry war of the eighth and ninth centuries AD that contributed to the collapse of Classic civilization. Unresolved issues such as the motivations for war, its ritual vs. territorial aims, and sociopolitical effects are discussed at length.

Citation classic - optimal foraging - a selective review of theory and tests

Abstract: Beginning with Emlen (1966) and MacArthur and Pianka (1966) and extending through the last ten years, several authors have sought to predict the foraging behavior of animals by means of mathematical models. These models are very similar,in that they all assume that the fitness of a foraging animal is a function of the efficiency of foraging measured in terms of some "currency" (Schoener, 1971) -usually energy- and that natural selection has resulted in animals that forage so as to maximize this fitness. As a result of these similarities, the models have become known as "optimal foraging models"; and the theory that embodies them, "optimal foraging theory." The situations to which optimal foraging theory has been applied, with the exception of a few recent studies, can be divided into the following four categories: (1) choice by an animal of which food types to eat (i.e., optimal diet); (2) choice of which patch type to feed in (i.e., optimal patch choice); (3) optimal allocation of time to different patches; and (4) optimal patterns and speed of movements. In this review we discuss each of these categories separately, dealing with both the theoretical developments and the data that permit tests of the predictions. The review is selective in the sense that we emphasize studies that either develop testable predictions or that attempt to test predictions in a precise quantitative manner. We also discuss what we see to be some of the future developments in the area of optimal foraging theory and how this theory can be related to other areas of biology. Our general conclusion is that the simple models so far formulated are supported are supported reasonably well by available data and that we are optimistic about the value both now and in the future of optimal foraging theory. We argue, however, that these simple models will requre much modification, espicially to deal with situations that either cannot easily be put into one or another of the above four categories or entail currencies more complicated that just energy.

Europe and the People without History

Abstract: The intention of this work is to show that European expansion not only transformed the historical trajectory of non-European societies but also reconstituted the historical accounts of these societies before European intervention. It asserts that anthropology must pay more attention to history.

Abandonment of agricultural land: an overview of drivers and consequences

Abstract: Agricultural activities and their complex effects on nature conservation, and the services that ecosystems deliver to humans are controversial. We present an overview of land abandonment, its driving forces and its consequences for landscape, biodiversity and humans. A descriptive metaanalysis of independently published studies highlighted the fact that the abandonment of agricultural land is a phenomenon mostly driven by socio-economic factors such as immigration into areas where new economic opportunities are offered to rural people. Ecological drivers such as elevation and land mismanagement leading to soil erosion are of secondary importance. We identified the major problems related to abandonment of agricultural land and quantified their relative importance. In order of decreasing importance, they were biodiversity loss, increase of fire frequency and intensity, soil erosion and desertification, loss of cultural and/or aesthetic values, reduction of landscape diversity and reduction of water provision. The impacts of these problems were not equally relevant in all regions of the world. The abandonment of agricultural land may also benefit humans. The benefits include passive revegetation and active reforestation, water regulation, soil recovery, nutrient cycling and increased biodiversity and wilderness. In a world that is becoming less natural and more intensively exploited by humans, we suggest that (1) farmland must be viewed in a context of multi-functionality to take advantage of ecosystem goods and services, (2) at the global scale, the abandonment of agricultural land is mostly positive for humans and (3) there is a need for the implementation of policies based on the payments for environmental services that encourage human societies to reconcile agricultural use, nature conservation and ecological restoration.

Coming into the Country: Early Paleoindian Hunting and Mobility

Abstract: Hunter-gatherer adaptations to long-term fluctuations in regional resource structure require mechanisms to cope with periodic subsistence stresses. Among documented groups, a common response to such stress is temporary movement into adjacent occupied areas-moving in with "relatives" when things go wrong. However, in the case of early (ca. 12,000-10,000 B.P.) Paleoindian groups in the Americas, the availability of neighboring groups with a detailed knowledge of local resource geography could not be relied upon. Post-Pleistocene environmental changes and the low initial population of the New World are important factors conditioning a lifeway characterized by a dependence on hunting (though not exclusively of megafauna), and by high residential, logistical, and range (territorial) mobility. Early Paleoindian groups had to adopt a subsistence technology that could be employed regardless of the specific resource microstructure. In some regards, Paleoindians seem to have behaved like tropical foragers while in others like arctic collectors. Use of high quality lithic raw materials from large quarry sources, reliance on a bifacial technology, limited use of caves and rockshelters, and a low level of processing of food products for storage all may be indicative of such a subsistence technology, which would have been unlike that of any modern hunter-gatherers.

Analyzing adaptive strategies: Human behavioral ecology at twenty‐five

Abstract: Human behavioral ecology (HBE) began in the mid-1970s with the application of optimal foraging models to hunter-gatherer decisions concerning resource selection and land use. In the 25 years since, the field has developed and successfully adapted evolutionary ecology theory and methods to a wide range of topics important to archaeology and to anthropology generally. In this review we examine the basic theory and its extensions to children’s foraging, conservation biology, demographic transitions, domestication and agricultural origins, the evolution of menopause, field processing and central place foraging, life history, male-female division of labor, mating tactics and fertility decisions, and resource intensification. Work on resource acquisition continues, but has been extended from foragers to pastoral and agricultural production systems. Studies of resource distribution, and especially intragroup processes of resource competition and transfers, now supplement and enrich those of resource production. Demographic and life history analyses have begun to show how ecological factors of production and distribution relate to those of mortality, fertility, and life course. Besides providing a comprehensive view of the field, we hope to demonstrate that HBE has established itself as a progressive research tradition,1 a question we take up in our conclusion. We note that this review supplements others. Two edited collections summarized the state of HBE in the early 1980s2 and early 1990s;3 shorter reviews have appeared as well.4–6 A pending collection carries us to the late 1990s.7 Reviews of HBE generally,8,9 as well as life history and demography,10–12 maturation,13 primate life span and litter size,14 mating strategies,15,16 reproductive ecology,17,18 resource transfers,19 resource conservation,20 and division of labor21 have appeared previously in this Journal. Evolutionary ecology studies “evolution and adaptive design in ecological context.”22 As a distinct field, evolutionary ecology emerged in the 1960s with the work of Charnov and Orians,23 Hutchinson,24,25 Lack,26 MacArthur and Pianka,27 MacArthur and Levins,28 MacArthur,29 Orians,30,31 and others. Textbooks on evolutionary ecology appeared in the 1970s, covering topics from the structural and behavioral traits of organisms to the organization of ecological communities. Evolutionary ecology shares fuzzy boundaries with evolutionary genetics, community ecology, animal behavior, and decision theory. When applied to the analysis of behavior, evolutionary ecology is conventionally termed “behavioral ecology.” Behavioral analyses have been an integral element of evolutionary ecology from the beginning, treating topics such as foraging strategies,27 mating systems,30 and spatial organization and competition.32 The first textbooks on behavioral ecology appeared in late 1970s33 and early 1980s.34 There now is a voluminous literature, including monograph series, dedicated journals (e.g., Evolutionary Ecology, and Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology), and a widely read, state-of-theart series of volumes,35–38 each edition with a new set of papers. Human behavioral ecology applies evolutionary ecology models and concepts to the study of human behavioral diversity. HBE began in the mid1970s with a small set of interpretive papers39–41 and independent dissertation projects. Initially centered on foraging theory and hunter-gatherer studies, HBE has expanded over the last 25 years to encompass diverse topics and subsistence systems (Fig. 1). Although a second generation of HBE researchers is now in academic positions, the field is young enough that its initiators remain the majority of those publishing in it. HBE’s early goals were to set the cultural ecology of Steward,42 particularly as developed in his hunter-gatherer work43 and as represented in later studies such as those by Lee,44 on a sounder theoretical footing by allying it to emerging, neo-Darwinian approaches to behavior. From the start, the proposed alliance was a somewhat wary and selective one. To varying degrees, there were attempts to distance this anthropological effort (sometimes termed “socioecology”2) from the sociobiology of Wilson,45 and Bruce Winterhalder is Professor of Anthropology and Chair of the Curriculum in Ecology at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. He currently is working on a booklength analysis of the microecological bases of the hunter-gatherer mode of production. E-mail: winterhalder@unc.edu Eric Alden Smith is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Graduate Program in Environmental Anthropology at University of Washington, Seattle. He is currently engaged in studies of marine foraging, reproductive strategies, and social status among Torres Strait Islanders in collaboration with Rebecca Bliege Bird and Douglas W. Bird. E-mail: easmith@u.washington.edu