We present a model that calculates incident solar radiation falling on terraced and unterraced fields in steep slope environments. The results are presented as a function of altitude, latitude, slope aspect, slope angle, and season. The net solar benefit or cost from slope leveling (terracing) differs significantly according to these situational factors. For instance, terracing will confer a net direct solar radiation benefit of 15 per cent on south-facing 30-degree slopes at the Equator for a typical growing season; it will reduce net annual direct solar receipt by 21 per cent on south-facing 30-degree slopes at 45° N latitude. Modified solar radiation must be considered as potentially important in the historical origins, functioning and abandonment of terracing. It should be a component in agronomic evaluation of modern terrace construction, restoration, or maintenance. Copyright (C) 2000 John Wiley and Sons, Ltd.

My subject is composed of two disparate pieces with an equation in common. The pieces are separated by geography and culture; time and economic mode of production; and by academic discipline and literature. These differences are manifest and important; the feature that they have in common is somewhat more subtle.

MY TITLE ALLUDES TO HUNTING. THE IMAGERY IS DELIBERATE: I intend a somewhat predatory engagement with the subject. How do ecological factors affect hunter-gatherer decisions about the harvest of non-produced food resources? What are the ecological strategies of the food quest? And, especially,. how does one go about asking these questions? What is a productive or heuristically useful research procedure? I will suggest that the analytic process is a little like foraging itself. The inquiry is, in a sense, the quarry. © 2009 by Temple University Press. All rights reserved.

Risk-sensitive analysis of subsistence adaptations is warranted when (i) outcomes are to some degree unpredictable and (ii) they have nonlinear consequences for fitness and/or utility. Both conditions are likely to be common among peoples studied by ecological anthropologists and archaeologists. We develop a general conceptual model of risk. We then review and summarize the extensive empirical literatures from biology and anthropology for methodological insights and for their comparative potential. Risk-sensitive adaptive tactics are diverse and they are taxonomically widespread. However, the anthropological literature rarely makes use of formal models of risk-sensitive adaptation, while the biological literature lacks naturalistic observations of risk-sensitive behavior. Both anthropology and biology could benefit from greater interdisciplinary exchange. © 1999 Plenum Publishing Corporation.

The role of climate change in the development and demise of Classic Maya civilization (300 to 1000 C.E.) remains controversial because of the absence of well-dated climate and archaeological sequences. We present a precisely dated subannual climate record for the past 2000 years from Yok Balum Cave, Belize. From comparison of this record with historical events compiled from well-dated stone monuments, we propose that anomalously high rainfall favored unprecedented population expansion and the proliferation of political centers between 440 and 660 C.E. This was followed by a drying trend between 660 and 1000 C.E. that triggered the balkanization of polities, increased warfare, and the asynchronous disintegration of polities, followed by population collapse in the context of an extended drought between 1020 and 1100 C.E.