About this Research Topic
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
Keywords: Sedentism, Institutions, Costly Signalling, Leadership, Cooperation, Collective Actions, Landesque Capital, Labor Mobilization, Domestication, Agriculture
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.