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Explaining variation in hunter-gatherer livelihoods hinges on our ability to predict the tradeoffs and opportunities of pursuing different kinds of prey. Central to this problem is the commonly held assumption that larger animals provide higher returns upon encounter than smaller ones. However, to test this assumption, actualistic observations of hunting payoffs must be comparable across different social, technological, and ecological contexts. In this meta-analysis, we revisit published and unpublished estimates of prey return rates (n = 217 from 181 prey types) to assess, first, whether they are methodologically comparable, and second, whether they correlate with body size. We find systematic inter-study differences in how carcass yield, energetic content, and foraging returns are calculated. We correct for these inconsistencies first by calculating new estimates of energetic yield (kcals per kg live weight) and processing costs for over 300 species of terrestrial and avian game. We then recalculate on-encounter returns using a standardized formula. We find that body size is a poor predictor of on-encounter return rate, while prey characteristics and behavior, mode of procurement, and hunting technology are better predictors. Although prey body size correlates well with processing costs and edibility, relationships with pursuit time and energetic value per kilogram are relatively weak.

AbstractThis article presents outcomes from a Workshop entitled “Bioarchaeology: Taking Stock and Moving Forward,” which was held at Arizona State University (ASU) on March 6–8, 2020. Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the School of Human Evolution and Social Change (ASU), and the Center for Bioarchaeological Research (CBR, ASU), the Workshop's overall goal was to explore reasons why research proposals submitted by bioarchaeologists, both graduate students and established scholars, fared disproportionately poorly within recent NSF Anthropology Program competitions and to offer advice for increasing success. Therefore, this Workshop comprised 43 international scholars and four advanced graduate students with a history of successful grant acquisition, primarily from the United States. Ultimately, we focused on two related aims: (1) best practices for improving research designs and training and (2) evaluating topics of contemporary significance that reverberate through history and beyond as promising trajectories for bioarchaeological research. Among the former were contextual grounding, research question/hypothesis generation, statistical procedures appropriate for small samples and mixed qualitative/quantitative data, the salience of Bayesian methods, and training program content. Topical foci included ethics, social inequality, identity (including intersectionality), climate change, migration, violence, epidemic disease, adaptability/plasticity, the osteological paradox, and the developmental origins of health and disease. Given the profound changes required globally to address decolonization in the 21st century, this concern also entered many formal and informal discussions.

© 2016 Ramsey et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. 'Neolithization' pathway refers to the development of adaptations that characterized subsequent Neolithic life, sedentary occupations, and agriculture. In the Levant, the origins of these human behaviors are widely argued to have emerged during the Early Epipaleolithic (ca. 23 ka cal BP). Consequently, there has been a pre-occupation with identifying and modeling the dietary shift to cereal and grains during this period, which is considered to have been a key development that facilitated increasing sedentism and, eventually, agriculture. Yet, direct evidence of plant use in the form of macrobotanical remains is extremely limited at Epipaleolithic sites and the expected 'Neolithization' pathway has not been robustly demonstrated. However, new direct microbotanical phytolith evidence from the large aggregation site of Kharaneh IV, in the Azraq Basin, suggests that increasingly settled occupation was not the result of wild grass and cereal use, but rather the result of a typical hunter-gatherer balance, based on the use of mostly reliable resources supplemented by some risky resources. Moreover, and illustrating this balance, the direct botanical evidence emphases the importance of the wetlands as an under-recognized reliable plant resource. Significantly, the use of these reliable wetland plant resources at Kharaneh IV represents an unexpected 'Neolithization' pathway.