The Socioeconomic Dynamics of Settling Down

The foundation of larger and more permanent communities, and the cooperative nature of this process of sedentism, was one of the most consequential transitions in human history. Decades of archaeological research across the globe now indicate clearly that this process was not necessarily tied to a greater reliance on domesticated resources, nor was it generally linked to a cessation of individual or household mobility. For this reason, the process of establishing larger and denser networks of social interaction was not necessarily unidirectional, irreversible, nor driven strictly by resource availability. The process was highly social and the long-term sustainability of these denser social aggregations and networks co-occurred with the advent of new institutions and affiliations that often served to solidify the expanded interpersonal ties engendered by novel and more populated social contexts. Yet, consequentially, the institutions, modes of leadership, affiliations, and behaviors associated with settling down were markedly variable across time and space, with variance often tied to the hereditability, concentration, and distribution of the resources that sustained and financed these communities and their institutional components. Resources and power were distributed to different degrees and were often situational. Here, we highlight and endeavor to account for variability in the tempo and timing of this process, as well as the diverse paths that were taken in this key transformational episode in which the modes and scale of human cooperation often were reconfigured.

The aims of this Research Topic are threefold. First, our goal is to compare the processes through which humans formed denser social networks and larger communities in different global regions. Second, we aim to examine and contrast the shifts in behavior and the establishment of new institutions that accompanied this critical human transition. Third, we aim to examine the role of resources and subsistence in these processes.

Our Research Topic welcomes two general kinds of manuscripts: (1) process-focused case studies that describe and analyze the growth of human networks and more permanent communities in different global regions, and (2) comparative examinations that look at these processes using a comparative lens. Our intended vantage is principally on the socioeconomic aspects of these transitions, although we recognize that resource availability and distributions are key factors.

Topics for papers include, but are not limited to:

• the tempo and sequence of sedentism, agriculture, new forms of material culture in select regions and their social implications

• analyses of labor mobilization and early monumentality in select regions

• comparative perspectives on institutional shifts with sedentism, farming, pastoral lifeways

• mobility at times of more permanent or persistent communities

• the socioeconomic implications of larger or denser social networks