Social networks and information: Non-“utilitarian” mobility among hunter-gatherers

R Whallon - Journal of anthropological archaeology, 2006 - Elsevier
Hunter-gatherer mobility is not always related to the positioning of people for optimal
exploitation of subsistence resources. Another essential reason for forager mobility is the
establishment and maintenance of a network of social relations which provides a flow of
information among widely scattered social groups and functions as a “safety net” in
situations of local resource scarcity. It is proposed that the frequency and spatial scale of
such movement can be related to temporal and spatial patterns of variation in resource …