Four questions about foraging models and the process of colonisation

Abstract

The target paper takes the debate about the narrative of Australian archaeohistory a significant step forward, and sets up some new research problems to be tackled. O'Connell's research with the Alyawara (Iliaura) (O'Connell and Hawkes 1981) demonstrated that, despite their access to purchased flour, modern fisher-gatherer-hunters will collect seeds and grind them, provided there is an anthropologist who can use a vehicle to drive them to the grasses. While this sounds dismissive, it is actually very important for two reasons: (1) the gatherers needed to know where and when the grasses were suitable for harvest; (2) the anthropologist's vehicle reduced the cost of travel and search effectively to zero, altering the values in the patch choice model. A distinguished ethnographer of fisher-gatherer-hunters protested angrily about this work: 'My people do not forage optimally.' I wondered, silently, whether they were somehow more virtuous because they had not reached optimality or perhaps they were somehow better than optimal. This questioning also has implications: (3) are there behaviours which do reduce the 'optimality' of foraging; and, (4) on what time scales do the considerations of behavioural ecology have to operate?