Investigating alternative trajectories for human demographic growth in temperate northern Holocene societies

After the end of the last Ice Age, warmer and more stable climates of the Holocene led to the development of entirely new kinds of food systems which in turn triggered population booms across mid-latitude environments globally. These momentous changes are often reduced to a simple linear narrative that tracks progression from mobile foraging to settled farming and from there to urbanisation and state formation. This ‘agri-centric’ narrative is problematic because in most cases behaviours typically attributed to farming societies, e.g. storage, sedentism, and social complexity developed well before agriculture and remained the most dominant social-ecological system for much of the Holocene. Moreover, such forager systems of various scales, and with different subsistence bases and social structures, were capable of triggering population booms of a similar magnitude to farming. FORAGER therefore seeks to change the paradigm of human history over the last 10,000 years by bringing together demographers, climate scientists, lab-based bioarchaeologists and cultural anthropologists to understand the drivers and consequences of population expansion and decline in Holocene hunter-gatherer societies. Working at unprecedented scale, thanks to the rich legacy data that already exists, these issues will be addressed systematically and synergistically across four temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. We will generate comparative insights into major patterns of cultural diversity long overlooked by progressive linear narratives of cultural change. The project will co-create new knowledge with Indigenous partners to elucidate existential possibilities long eclipsed by the recent historical penetration of industrialised farming into much of the temperate world. FORAGER will shed new light on a ‘lost chapter’ of demographic change, periods of great upheaval and resilience, highlighting the potential of alternative and perhaps more sustainable social-ecological systems.