Archaeological Approaches to Agricultural Economies

While agricultural origins have been recently revised in light of new genetic and archaeological evidence, parallel synthesis of subsequent developments in agricultural economies has lagged. This review summarizes recent advances in archaeological theory and method that contribute to an enhanced understanding of agricultural economies. Such advances address topics of persistent interest, including agricultural innovation, the introduction of new domesticates, risk and resilience, agricultural scaling, and the economic and environmental consequences of agricultural practices. Although points of complementarity and tension exist among varied contemporary discourses on agriculture, frameworks of resilience and entanglement offer particularly promising avenues for regional synthesis and worldwide comparison of agricultural economies.