Comparative Study of Territoriality across Forager Societies

Abstract

Land tenure systems vary considerably across forager societies. The economic defensibility model explains this variation by considering the costs and benefits of defending resources that vary in density and predictability. The purpose of our study was to describe and explain the variation in tenure systems across 30 hunter-gatherer societies from across the world using the economic defensibility model. We used qualitative data from the Human Relations Area Files (HRAF) database on defense and sharing of resources among groups, and quantitative data from Binford’s Frames of References (2001) as indicators of resource density, resource predictability, and competition for resources. However, we were unable to explain the variation in territoriality using these independent variables. We argue that the diversity and complexity of foragers’ subsistence strategies is one of the main reasons for our failure to find correlations between territoriality and resource density and predictability. We propose that it may better to conceptualize tenure systems in foraging societies as assemblages of multiple property regimes.