Bruce Winterhalder: UC Davis Anthropology & Graduate Group in Ecology

My topic is the evolution of despotism and oligarchies in prehistoric societies. I begin by covering ground that is theoretically well understood, the novelty rests in the empirical analysis and methods. Prehistoric settlement of the Northern Channel Islands (Santa Barbara) follows a pattern predicted by the Ideal Free Distribution (IFD). I establish this by comparing the resource suitability of 46 watersheds to a well-studied archaeological record using a Gibbs sampler to assess model fit. As population on the islands grew, habitat quality in settled sites declined and sites of decreasing desirability were colonized. The second part of the talk is more theoretical and speculative. Reproductive skew models make the prediction that opportunities for socio-economic exploitation would expand concurrently with habitat in-fill. This hypothesis is consistent with the archaeological data, in that Late Prehistoric Chumash residents of the region were characterized by hereditary chiefdoms, wide-ranging economic exchange, declines in stature and endemic conflict. But, it is not yet well understood in model form. Acknowledging the influences of both Boserup and Carneiro, I conclude by describing briefly our effort to develop population ecology models focused directly on the evolution of despotism.
papers/WinterhalderPaper1.pdf