Archeologists have long assumed that transport considerations have been important in structuring various aspects of the archeological record. An optimality model, derived from the principles of evolutionary ecology, is presented to investigate the trade‐off between field processing and transport for central place foragers. The model implicates (1) the time required to make a round‐trip and (2) the relationship between time spent field processing and increase in the utility of the transported load as the two critical factors determining what parts of resources are likely to be returned to a residential camp.

Variation in the costs and benefits of maize agriculture relative to local foraging opportunities structured variation in the relative intensity of agricultural strategies pursued by prehistoric peoples in the American Southwest. The material remains of Fremont farmers and horticulturists, long identified as the "northern periphery" of Southwestern archaeological traditions, are examined as a case representing extreme intersite variation in the economic importance of farming. New data quantifying the energetic gains associated with maize agriculture in Latin America are compared to caloric return rates for hunting and collecting indigenous foods. These data suggest that prehistoric maize farming was economically comparable to many local wild plants, but that intensive farming practices were most similar to very low-ranked seeds. The model predicts a continuum of pre-historic strategies that included horticulture within a system of indigenous resource collection and high residential mobility at one end, and at the other sedentary farmers heavily invested in agricultural activities with residences maintained near fields during a significant portion of the growing season. Differences in agricultural strategies should have been strongly influenced by the effects of local ecology on the marginal gains for time spent in maize fields and the abundance of key, high-ranked wild foods, not harvest yields per se. Increasing agricultural investments are expected with decreasing opportunities to collect higher-ranked foods, while decreases in time spent farming are expected only with increases in alternative economic opportunities.

Dendroarchaeological samples can contain three kinds of information: chronological, behavioral, and environmental. The decisions of past people regarding species selection, beam size, procurement and modification techniques, deadwood use, and stockpiling are the most critical factors influencing an archaeological date distribution. Using dendrochronological samples from prehistoric and historic period sites in the same area of eastern Utah, this paper examines past human behavior as the critical factor in dendroarchaeological date distributions.

This chapter examines the properties of border-check and spray irrigation systems, particularly the hydrology of the different systems, the management challenges and the application of alternative irrigation technologies in Australia and New Zealand. It then investigates the sustainability of irrigated pastures for dairy production in terms of both environmental constraints (e.g. deep drainage and pollutant export) and productivity constraints, both of which will ultimately affect their economic viability.