This article examines the quality of forager habitats to determine whether agriculturalists occupy the most productive areas while modern forager groups are relegated to poor habitats. Findings indicate that there are slight but insignificant differences in the net primary productivity of foragers’ land and agriculturalists’ land. Further analysis of types of agriculturalists suggest that horticulturalists live in the most productive habitats, followed by intensive agriculturalists and finally pastoralists.

This article explores the sexual division of labor among foragers, focusing on resource availability and constraints on women’s foraging activities. The authors conclude that “there is a greater division of foraging labor in more seasonal habitats where less gathering is possible and more extractive, tool-based foraging is required” (191).

Researchers investigated the variation of land tenure systems across forager societies using the economic defensibility model. The study attempted to explain the variation in tenure systems across 30 hunter-gatherer societies. Using data on defense and sharing of resources among groups, and indicators of resource density, resource predictability, and competition for resources, the researchers were unable to explain the variation. This study highlights the vast range of diversity and complexity of foragers subsistence strategies, and proposes that it may be more telling to conceptualize tenure systems among hunter-gatherer societies as assemblages of multiple property regimes. While there was no overall evidence that environmental variables of resource density and predictability explain variation in tenure systems, researchers did find that increasing population density, and greater competition for resources leads to greater territoriality.

The author expands on the findings of Barry, Bacon, and Child (1959), hypothesizing that type of environment is an intervening variable in the relationship between subsistence type and child training. A multiple classification analysis is used.

The authors present a bioeconomic model of hunter-gatherer foraging effort to quantitatively represent forager intensification. Using cross-cultural data, the model is evaluated as a means to better understand variation in residential stability and resource ownership.

The article discusses the role of land ownership in natural resource management and social-ecological resilience, and explores the factors that determine ownership norms in human societies. The study tests long-standing theories from ecology, economics, and anthropology regarding the potential drivers of land ownership, including resource defensibility, subsistence strategies, population pressure, political complexity, and cultural transmission mechanisms. Using cultural and environmental data from 102 societies, the study found an increased probability of land ownership in mountainous environments and societies with higher population densities. The study also found support for the idea that neighboring societies might influence land ownership. However, there was less support for variables associated with subsistence strategies and political complexity.

Finger millet, pearl millet, and sorghum are important drought-tolerant crops used as primary staple crops in drylands. Despite their long history, they have received less attention in recent years and their production has decreased. New models show that annual precipitation is not the only factor affecting their agriculture, but other variables like growing cycle duration, soil water-holding capacity, and soil nutrient availability also play a crucial role, as evidenced by ethnographic data. The traditional cultivation practices of these crops can be a sustainable response to the increasing aridity levels worldwide and can contribute to the resilience of dryland agriculture.

This article examines cooking strategies and cooking containers cross-culturally. Focusing on stone boiling and direct fire cooking, the authors find that geographic location and climate (particularly temperature, rainfall, and evapotranspiration) will be associated with cooking strategy. Container fabric type was also examined, and was found to be associated with cooking strategy, climatic variables, and subsistence type.

Using t-test, generalized linear models (GLMs) and Bayesian regression models in a sample of 1188 pre-industrial societies, this study explores the research question: Why have foraging, horticulture, and pastoralism persisted into the 20th and 21st century? The authors test the marginal hypothesis and the oasis hypothesis of agricultural intensification. The first hypothesis suggests that foragers persisted because foragers predominantly inhabited marginal habitats that were typically unsuitable for agricultural purposes. The second hypothesis suggests that intensive agriculture emerged in regions characterized by limited biodiversity and a dependable water supply not reliant on local rainfall. In addition, the authors test whether specific kinds of biodiversity (elephants, malaria, and tsetse flies) correlate with agricultural intensification in African societies. The results support the marginal and oasis hypotheses, but only marginally support the African hypothesis, since only tsetse fly has a significant negative correlation to agricultural intensification.

This study tests the common belief that hunter-gatherers suffer more famine than other subsistence types. Controlling for habitat quality, authors examine the relationship between famine and subsistence type and find that hunter-gatherers actually experience significantly less famine than other subsistence types.