Site location

Spatial behavior is fundamentally rational in economic terms, but it is not necessarily optimal and is never exclusively economic (see Chapter 13). The principle of least effort is not exclusively human: Cattle trails converging on a feedlot and animal tracks to waterholes run straight over as much as several kilometers. However, in more distant areas of reasonable grazing, such pathways are adjusted to surface roughness, and their normal sinuosity suggests a relationship to body momentum as well as a measure of random walk. Traditional roads suggest a similar compromise among minimal distance, topography, and a variety of less tangible factors. Consequently, human spatial behavior seldom truly approximates the optimization principle, that is, a minimum of effort for a maximum of return (McFarland, 1978). Two critical imponderables interpose themselves in the conception and implementation of mobility and subsistence strategies. First, the distribution, predictability, and competitive variables that control resource opportunities and limitations (see Table 13–3) require complex decisions that allow for multiple alternative choices. Second, cultural and socioeconomic variables increase the multiplicity of alternative choices that can be made with respect to perceived rather than real environments (see Table 13–4).

Accordingly, site location is essentially rational, often less than optimal, and always to some degree idiosyncratic. The decisions of hunter-gatherers relate to sites selected for relatively short time spans in relation to large resource spaces, and they involve elements of risk, diversity, and long-term productivity different from those that influence the decision making of farming communities.