Agricultural intensification

We explore the relationships among the development of status differentiation, the shift to wet-rice cultivation, and ceramic specialization in the Old Kiyyangan Village (OKV), Ifugao between 900 CE and 1800 CE. Recent archaeological investigations at the OKV have established the intensification of status differentiation associated with the introduction of wet-rice cultivation in the region. Previous models suggest that wet-rice cultivation in the region was at least 2000 years old, but current research establishes that the shift to wet-rice farming occurred soon after the arrival of the Spanish colonizers at ca. 1650 CE in the northern Philippines. For elsewhere in the Philippines, Junker (1994, 1999) argued that the emergence of social differentiation in Tanjay, Negros, in the central Philippines coincided with increases in the pottery specialization, which also signified elite control of craft production and distribution. In addition, Stark (1995) viewed agricultural intensification as one of the conditions for the emergence of craft specialization in Dalupa, Kalinga. This paper explores the models proposed by Junker and Stark to investigate ceramic standardization, agricultural intensification, and status differentiation in the OKV. Our analyses of the dimensions of utilitarian earthenware ceramics from OKV suggest low degrees of specialization in pottery production, even when there were increases in social differentiation and agricultural intensification.

Land change science has demonstrated that rural livelihoods around the world both drive and reflect changing environmental regimes and political economic/structural transformations. This article explores the relationship between increasingly globalized rural livelihoods and in-place land change, assessing results from social surveys of smallholding households in the southern Yucatán region. We examine evidence for a transition in agricultural livelihood strategies as smallholders adjust to changing political economic and institutional conditions, and link these transitioning strategies to land use changes. Based on household surveys in 1997 and 2003, we comparatively assess both changes in the selection of livelihood strategies and in the land use and cover impacts of those strategies. Our results indicate that although impacts of given strategies have changed little over this period, there are increasing proportions of households pursuing two divergent adjustment paths—one of agricultural withdrawal and one of agricultural intensification and commercialization. We investigate what sociodemographic characteristics differentiate the groups of households following distinct livelihood strategies. Our findings point to the possibility of simultaneous and contradictory land change outcomes as smallholders adjust in different ways to their intensified incorporation into global economies.

Mitchell Springs provided the central Montezuma Valley of southwestern
Colorado a rare and reliable water source that has been used by ancients for millennia. People began to settle near the springs in the middle of the AD seventh century and by the twelfth century a sprawling watershed-wide community with large-scale architectural and agricultural works had formed. Using a combination of data from surveys and recent excavations, this article explores the ties between the rise of elite groups in the watershed and the use of innovative methods to enhance agricultural production. Food abundance appears to have been the
primary engine that drove the formation of these groups whose presence was symbolized by a greathouse and other monumental creations. Excavations have revealed evidence that suggests one such group was tied to the same physical space at the center of the community for at least 400 years. Agricultural production at a scale that is demonstrably greater than what could be generated by a few households or extended households is suggested by repeated feasting at this location, room suites with unusually large storage capacities, and the presence
of rooms and features that were created and used principally for the preparation and consecration of food for these events. The earliest architectural footprints of this group consisted of two physically linked but distinctly separate adobe block houses in the early ninth century. Over time, elements of these entities became associated with, or evolved into, a greathouse and tri-wall building that appear to have served similar functions as the earlier houses and features that underlie those buildings. They symbolized success, power, past ancestors, and revered space, and they were enshrined and deliberately protected over the course of centuries.

Most archaeological discussion of intensification has centered around identifying the conditions under which it emerges — that is, around problems of cause. Secondarily, disciplinary effort has focused on the consequences of intensification, most notably its supposed undergirding of complexity, by which we often simply mean institutionalized inequality. In part, this dual focus on cause and effect reflects basic archaeological biases about what the major issues of the field are, or ought to be. If we consider intensification to be a process rather than a thing, as such, it may seem curious that its causes and consequences rather than the process itself should have become the focus of archaeological attention. I briefly discuss issues of cause and consequence below; however, the majority of this paper is concerned with neither cause nor effect, but process.

In the Lake Titicaca Basin of the Andes, narratives of agricultural change have focused exclusively on a single innovation: raised fields. In this article, I examine macrobotanical remains and other archaeological datasets to elucidate a wider range of past farming practices that contributed to processes of agricultural change on the Taraco Peninsula, Bolivia, during the Formative Period (1500 B.C.E.–C.E. 500). This analysis reveals strong continuities in crop selection through time, with farmers gradually diversifying a basic set of cultigens—quinoa and tubers—but never abandoning them. Patterns in wild plant species indicate continuity in agropastoral land use up to the Late Formative Period (second century C.E.) when the unintended consequences of long-term tilling and camelid grazing transformed the botanical landscape into one that required a new set of practices to remove weeds and replenish nutrients to the soils. Examining how these practices and the farmers enacting them articulated with broader processes of demographic, environmental, and sociopolitical change reveals dynamic, multivariate courses of agricultural change even before the inclusion of raised fields. [agricultural practices, ethnobotany, archaeobotany, Lake Titicaca Basin, Andes]

This chapter explores the long-term processes whereby settlers moving into Central Eastern Polynesia (CEP) adapted to new island environments and social landscapes. Over a thousand-year period, CEP societies instigated environmental change and subsistence intensification, in addition to developing localized styles of material culture and affecting great change in their sociopolitical complexity. In comparing the cultural sequences from three CEP archipelagoes (Society Islands, Marquesas Islands, Austral Islands), the chapter demonstrates shared patterns in demographic change and
shifts in subsistence and exchange, while at the same time highlighting inter-archipelago variation in terms of pathways to emerging elite power. Trends in CEP regional variation provide broad support for models positing a relationship between the evolution of social complexity in CEP chiefdoms, and the effects of island size/age and the availability of natural resources.

Résumé :
Cet article consiste en la critique de synthèses récentes sur la démographie antique et en la présentation de réflexions alternatives. Est donc présenté le schéma historiographique, d’inspiration néo-malthusien, selon lequel l’accroissement démographique des sociétés antiques aurait été bloqué par l’archaïsme et l’immobilisme de l’agriculture et la « loi » des rendements décroissants. Entravées par le « piège malthusien » que font peser sur elles l’accroissement de la population, elles seraient demeurées à un état stationnaire, déterminé par leur niveau technologique et l’optimum de peuplement des territoires. Pour ce modèle économique, la capacité productive des terroirs est souvent considérée comme une donnée exogène, dépendant essentiellement de leurs caractéristiques naturelles.
Il lui est opposé les idées d’Esther Boserup qui considère que la pression démographique peut être à l’origine de l’intensification agricole et de la mise en culture de nouveaux terroirs. Ce paradigme est mobilisé pour analyser les conquêtes agricoles de quatre terroirs du nord des Gaules. Elles ont en commun d’être réalisées par des exploitations familiales, au moyen d’aménagements de l’ager et de l’amélioration des capacités agricoles des sols. En conclusion, on s’interroge sur les conditions sociales et économiques de ces processus et sur les capacités des sociétés gallo-romaines à « fabriquer des terres agricoles ».


Abstract :
This article is a critical reappraisal of recent syntheses on ancient demography and it aims at presenting some alternative reflexions. First, the neo-Malthusian historiographic outline, according which the demographic growth of ancient societies would have been blocked by the archaic and non-evolving character of the agriculture and by the law of diminishing returns, is presented. These societies, because they were hampered by the low equilibrium trap, would have remained at a steady state determined by their technological level and by their carrying capacity. According to this economic model, the production capacity of the land is often considered as an exogenous factor and is thought to be determined mainly by its natural characteristics.
To this outline are opposed the ideas of Esther Boserup, who considers that the demographic pressure may be the cause of the agricultural intensification and of the exploitation of new land. This paradigm is used to analyze the expansion of agriculture in four areas of northern Gaul. In these four cases, family farms are responsible for the expansion, by means of adjustments of the ager and improvements of the soil agricultural capability. In conclusion is offered a reflexion on the social and economic circumstances of these processes and on the capacity of the Gallo-Roman societies to « make agricultural lands ».

Recent literature describing the process and pathways of the agrarian transition in Southeast Asia suggests that the rise of agricultural intensification and the growth of commodity markets will lead to the demise of swidden agriculture. This paper offers a longitudinal overview of the conditions that drive the agrarian transition amongst indigenous swidden cultivators and migrant paddy farmers in central Palawan Island, the Philippines. In line with regional agrarian change, we describe how a history of conservation policies has criminalized and pressured swidden farmers to adopt more intensive “modern” agricultural practices. We examine how indigenous swidden cultivators adjust their practice in response to recent changes in policies, security of harvests, and socio-cultural values vis-à-vis intensification. Rather than suggest that this transition will lead to the demise of swidden, results reveal that farmers instead negotiate a shifting ground in which they lean on and value swidden as a means of negotiating agrarian change.

We consider the causes and timing of maize (Zea mays)
intensification in the central Illinois River valley and argue that
an understanding of changes in maize production requires a
consideration of changes occurring in the entire plant
subsistence system. To this end, we explore trends in the
collection and production of plant foods from the Late
Woodland (A.D. 600–1100) to Early Mississippian periods
(A.D. 1100–1200). The plant data reveal a stepwise decrease in
nut collection during the Late Woodland period, and again
during the transition to the Early Mississippian period. This
pattern is accompanied by statistical increases in maize
abundance, indicating an intensification of maize production
around A.D. 1100. We consider these patterns in light of
similar maize increases occurring throughout the Eastern
Woodlands and evaluate several possible interpretations related
to population pressure, climate change, competitive generosity,
and cultural emulation, the latter which appears to have been
inspired by prolonged contact between local populations and
Mississippian groups in the greater Cahokia area.

Integrated regional studies of environmental variability during the late Holocene can provide valuable insights into the ways that cli-mate variability and human activities affect natural ecosystems and landscapes over decadal to centennial timescales. When ... Ann England, 1 Warren ...

Agricultural production almost needs to double in the 21st century, putting tremendous pressure on agricultural resources. Most food production increases must come from more agricultural intensification in the South. This advances the need for a new green revolution: higher productivity and at the same time less pressure on the environment. Agrobiotechnology can contribute to this double green revolution. Biotechnology innovations

The area of semi-natural grasslands in Bulgaria has decreased tremendously in the past century due to agricultural intensification or abandonment. As these grasslands host valuable biodiversity, conservation measures are needed for their sustainable maintenance. We studied the effect of pastureland abandonment on plant communities at the Ponor Mt., a part of the Balkan Mts., Bulgaria. Data on floristic composition, vegetation structure and several abiotic parameters were collected in 137 randomly located 16-m2 plots in 2008. Canonical correspondence analysis (CCA) was used to analyse how species composition is related to abiotic and land use factors. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs) were used to test for the effects of sheep grazing vs. abandonment on vegetation structure and composition. The main environmental factors explaining the compositional variation were related to the altitude, sheep grazing and soil depth. Pastureland abandonment led to an increase in vegetation height and of the richness of mesophytes and leafy plants, and red-list species. Grazed plots had higher total species richness, more xerophytes, rosette forming and spring-flowering species. To ensure the persistence of the species of both the open grasslands and mid-successional grassland communities, the management should be carried out in an extensive way and with a zonation regime.

... Permissions & Reprints. Conservation of Mediterranean temporary ponds under agricultural intensification: an evaluation using amphibians. Pedro Beja Corresponding Author Contact Information , E-mail The Corresponding Author , a , b and Rita Alcazar c. a ERENA, Av. ...