title: Risk of resource failure and toolkit variation in small-scale farmers and herders.
abstract: Recent work suggests that global variation in toolkit structure among hunter-gatherers is driven by risk of resource failure such that as risk of resource failure increases, toolkits become more diverse and complex. Here we report a study in which we investigated whether the toolkits of small-scale farmers and herders are influenced by risk of resource failure in the same way. In the study, we applied simple linear and multiple regression analysis to data from 45 small-scale food-producing groups to test the risk hypothesis. Our results were not consistent with the hypothesis; none of the risk variables we examined had a significant impact on toolkit diversity or on toolkit complexity. It appears, therefore, that the drivers of toolkit structure differ between hunter-gatherers and small-scale food-producers.
authors: Human Evolutionary Studies Program and Department of Archaeology, Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada. mcollard@sfu.ca
authors: Mark
authors: M
authors: Collard
authors: April
authors: A
authors: Ruttle
authors: Briggs
authors: B
authors: Buchanan
authors: Michael J
authors: MJ
authors: O'Brien
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D006801:Humans; D016014:Linear Models; D012306:Risk; D053001:Tool Use Behavior