title: The ecology of population dispersal: Modeling alternative basin-plateau foraging strategies to explain the Numic expansion.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  The expansion of Numic speaking populations into the Great Basin required individuals to adapt to a relatively unproductive landscape. Researchers have proposed numerous social and subsistence strategies to explain how and why these settlers were able to replace any established populations, including private property and intensive plant processing. Here we evaluate these hypotheses and propose a new strategy involving the use of landscape fire to increase resource encounter rates.
  
  
  METHODS
  Implementing a novel, spatially explicit, multi-scalar prey choice model, we examine how individual decisions approximating each alternative strategy (private property, anthropogenic fire, and intensive plant processing) would aggregate at the patch and band level to confer an overall benefit to this colonizing population. Analysis relies on experimental data reporting resource profitability and abundance, ecological data on the historic distribution of vegetation patches, and ethnohistoric data on the distribution of Numic bands.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Model results show that while resource privatization and landscape fires produce a substantial advantage, intensified plant processing garners the greatest benefit. The relative benefits of alternative strategies vary significantly across ecological patches resulting in variation across ethnographic band ranges. Combined, a Numic strategy including all three alternatives would substantially increase subsistence yields.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The application of a strategy set that includes landscape fire, privatization and intensified processing of seeds and nuts, explains why the Numa were able to outcompete local populations. This approach provides a framework to help explain how individual decisions can result in such population replacement events throughout human history.
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Archaeological Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Global Change and Sustainability Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.
authors.forename: Kate E
authors.initials: KE
authors.lastname: Magargal
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Archaeological Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Global Change and Sustainability Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.
authors.forename: Ashley K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Parker
authors.affiliation: Archaeological Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Department of Philosophy, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.
authors.forename: Kenneth Blake
authors.initials: KB
authors.lastname: Vernon
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.
authors.forename: Will
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Rath
authors.affiliation: Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Archaeological Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.|Global Change and Sustainability Center, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah, 84111.
authors.forename: Brian F
authors.initials: BF
authors.lastname: Codding
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture; D001106:Archaeology; D005390:Fires; D006801:Humans; D008019:Life Style; D008954:Models, Biological; D015205:Northwestern United States; D010067:Ownership; D011157:Population Dynamics; D015206:Southwestern United States
keywords: Great Basin; anthropogenic fire; behavioral ecology; ecological modeling; economic intensification; resource privatization