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The Concept of Carrying Capacity for Systems of

Shifting Cultivation1
ARTICLE in AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST OCTOBER 2009
Impact Factor: 1.49 DOI: 10.1525/aa.1975.77.4.02a00040

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The Concept of Carrying Capacity for Systems of Shifting Cultivation

Author(s): Stephen B. Brush
Source: American Anthropologist, New Series, Vol. 77, No. 4 (Dec., 1975), pp. 799-811
Published by: Wiley on behalf of the American Anthropological Association
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The Concept of CarryingCapacity

for Systems of Shifting Cultivation'
STEPHEN B. BRUSH
College of William and Mary

The concept of carrying capacity is related to homeostatic regulation as part of the

"new ecology" paradigm. Formulas designed to measure the man-land balance of
tropical horticulturalists reveal two problem areas. Theoretically, the relationship
between homeostasis, change, and evolution remains indefinite. Methodologically,
there are substantial difficulties in defining cultural and environmental components
of the formula and in obtaining diachronic data to test the concept.

CARRYING CAPACITY FOR HUMAN GROUPS is generally defined by anthropologists

as the man-land balance which is maintained by native populations practicing simple food
producing methods such as shifting cultivation. Although it has usually been associated with
the study of shifting cultivation, this concept of balance between resources and human
demands theoretically may be applied to any technological system.2 Moreover, it relates to
the whole question of optimum population which economists and others have debated at
length (Gottlieb 1945). The balance is maintained for the ecologically and economically
sound reason that if the carrying capacity is exceeded, there will be environmental
degradation which in turn will adversely affect the group. The concept of carrying capacity
involves one of the most interesting paradoxes in the theoretical spheres of ecological
anthropology and systems analysis. The paradox is that although the concept is apparently
valid for the life-system of the earth as a whole, the application of the concept to specific
human subsystems (cultures) is difficult if not impossible. The solution of this paradox
brings into play many of the themes which mark the current debate between biocultural
anthropologists and cultural ecologists. Like other models borrowed from biology by
anthropologists, this concept has been theoretically provocative but pragmatically difficult.
This paper will suggest several theoretical problem areas and empirical weaknesses inherent
to the concept of carrying capacity which may limit its utility in anthropology.
The conceptual basis for an idea of carrying capacity has been present ever since Malthus
wrote An Essay on the Principle of Population almost two hundred years ago. The principles
of the concept have been debated as they concern other animal and plant populations. The
attractiveness of adopting the concept for anthropological purposes is manifest for several
reasons. First, it represents an attempt to use the deductive nomothetic method in
anthropology. This is one of the few such attempts in the discipline. Second, it provides
anthropology with an empirical problem which can be dealt with in a quantitative fashion
and theoretically can thereby be tested. Third, it provides anthropology a rubric under
which comparisons may be made between human groups and other biological systems and
communities which have been described by other sciences. This rubric may harbor other
insights which are applicable to understanding human groups. Fourth, many human groups
do practice population control in an apparent effort to hold down both population size and
Submitted for publication March 27, 1975
Accepted for publication July 7, 1975

799

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800

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[77,1975

density (Meggers 1971). It is certainly valid to hypothesize that this is related to carrying
capacity.
The computation of carrying capacity has become common for field biologists and,
increasingly, for anthropologists, geographers, and other social scientists (Allan 1965;
Brookfield and Brown 1959; Carneiro 1960; Conklin 1959; Gourou 1966; Rappaport 1968;
Bayliss-Smith 1974). Most research on carrying capacity in human communities has focused
on systems of shifting cultivation. Besides being among the simplest production systems,
these systems are relatively self-sufficient and isolated from other cultural or economic
systems. Moreover, the operation of systems of shifting cultivation may be measured
according to a limited number of easily defined and quantified variables: (a) land available,
(b) land requirements per capita, (c) number of fallow years, (d) number of productive years
per plot, and (e) population.
The aim in computing carrying capacity for systems of shifting cultivation is to indicate
the point beyond which population cannot grow, ceteris paribus, without causing some
damage to the basic resource of the system, land. This damage has been described as a
process of land degradation which ensues when population passes a critical point without
altering its diet, food production technology, or the extent of its land base. Allan (1949:1)
describes this critical population point:
If this practical limit of population is exceeded, without a compensating change in the
system of land usage, then a cycle of degenerative changes is set in motion which must
result in deterioration or destruction of the land and ultimately in hunger and reduction
of the population. The term "erosion" in its widest sense is sometimes used for this cycle
of destruction, but the word as it is generally understood has too limited a connotation to
describe a process which results in radical changes in the whole character of the land; loss
of mineral plant foods, oxidation and disappearance of organic matter, breakdown of soil
structure, degeneration of vegetation; and the setting up of a new train of land and water
relationships. The whole process is best referred to as land degradation.
Once the point of carrying capacity has been determined, some cultural response may be
hypothesized for groups which approach it. Such responses might include: (a) means of
limiting population size by either lowering the birth rate or raising the mortality rate; (b)
means of maintaining population densities through migration; (c) cultural control mechanisms which limit the use of resources; and (d) technological change to an alternate food
procurement system utilizing the resource base differently. Whereas these hypotheses are
important and correlated to the concept of carrying capacity, this paper will focus mainly on
the problems of calculating that point. To do this, however, one must be cognizant of the
theoretical milieu of the concept.
FORMULAS FOR COMPUTING CARRYING CAPACITY
For systems of shifting cultivation at least four different formulas have been suggested for
the computation of carrying capacity, that is the critical population size before land
degradation begins.
Allan (1949:14-15)
Area of land required per head = 100CL/P where:
C

"cultivation factor"

cultivation period + fallow period

cultivation period

This is "an expression of the number of 'garden areas' required for each type to
allow for the complete cycle of cultivation and regeneration."
L = "the mean acreage in cultivation at any one time per head of population."
P = "the cultivable percentage of the type" (of soil and land). The "type" is based
on a survey and classification of soils and vegetation for a specific region.

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SHIFTING CULTIVATION: CARRYING CAPACITY

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Critical population size =

X
where:
100 CL/P
X = total land area available to the community.

Carneiro (1960:230)

X Y
Critical population size = (R + Y)
where:
A
A = "the area of cultivated land required to provide the average individual with the
amount of food that he ordinarily derives from cultivated plants per year."
Y = "the number of years that a plot of land continues to produce before it has to be
abandoned."
R = "the number of years an abandoned plot must lie fallow before it can be
recultivated."
T = "the total area of arable land that is within practicable walking distance of the
village."

Conklin (1959:63)
Critical population size (Cs)

AT

where:

L = "maximum cultivable land available."

A = "minimum average acreage required for clearing, per individual, per year."
T = "minimum average duration of a full agricultural cycle."
L
Cs
AT
X 100
Critical population density (Cd) = T
X 100 = T
Gourou (1966:45)
Potential population density =

AX C
where:
B

A = "number of cultivable hectares per square kilometer."

B = "the length of the rotation (cultivation plus fallow)"3
C = "the number of inhabitants per hectare cleared each year."
It is obvious that these formulas have much in common, although they utilize different
units and a somewhat different organization of concepts. The formulas of Allan and
Carneiro may be reworked so that they are completely equivalent to each other without
altering the mathematical relationship among the variables. By reworking the formulas of
these two authors, one may come to the following formula:

P =
s

DA
where:
C(A + B)

Ps =
A
B =
C =
D =

CriticalPopulationSize
Cultivation Period
Fallow Period
Acreage Needed Per Capita to Provide Average Subsistence
Total Amount of Arable Land Available
APPLICATIONS OF THE FORMULAS

None of the carrying capacity formulas presented above were developed for purely
theoretical purposes. Rather, they were developed to describe and measure the functioning

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of specific systems of shifting cultivation. In looking at the various applications of the

carrying capacity formulas, several patterns of use stand out. One application of the formula
is to assess the potential of a certain subsistence system for growth. Perhaps the most
ambitious use of the concept in this fashion was made by Allan (1949, 1965) in his attempt
to measure, for development purposes, the population potential of large regions of Africa. In
his later work Allan notes the utility of the concept in integrating social, economic, and
agrarian aspects of development.
Another application of the formula is to measure the functioning of a system in an effort
to predict how the system will function at a particular point. Both Carneiro (1960) and
Rappaport (1968) have applied the concept of carrying capacity in this fashion. Carneiro
uses the formula to dispel the notion that overpopulation, in an ecologically detrimental
sense, is the major cause behind the pattern of shifting villages among Amazonian groups.
Rappaport (1968) uses the concept in his treatment of ritual as a homeostatic device. Early
in his book (1968:97) he argues that "a carrying capacity figure indicates ranges of values
within which variables must remain if the system is to endure, but it does not indicate how
values are kept within these ranges." He then goes on to show how these values are
maintained by the ritual activities of the Tsembaga. In his conclusion he says,
Maring ritual, in short, operates not only as a homeostat-maintaining a number of
variables that comprise the total system within ranges of viability-but also as a
transducer-" translating" changes in the state of one subsystem into information and
energy that can produce changes in the second subsystem [Rappaport 1968:229].
Another application of the concept is to place it in a causal relationship to other
socio-cultural events. Leeds, for instance, suggests that:
If the population rose beyond this maximum capacity of the land-technology
relationships, groups would either have to fission off, go on the warpath, regulate
population by any of a number of internal institutions such as infanticide, or die either
from extreme famines or from steady nutritional deficiency [Leeds 1961:21].
Finally, the formulas of carrying capacity have been increasingly used by archaeologists
and prehistorians to estimate aboriginal populations for specific areas and cultures. One such
attempt is that of Bayliss-Smith (1974) who seeks to estimate the aboriginal populations of
various islands of Polynesia.
From these applications of the carrying capacity formulas, one may appreciate the dual
problems which must be dealt with in a critique of the concept. First, the measurement of
carrying capacity was never designed to be an end in itself. Anthropologists like Rappaport
who have used the concept include it as part of the larger field of biocultural systems
analysis. On this level, it must be considered in relation to other ecological concepts such as
energetics, trophic level, and niche, as well as sociological concepts such as intensification,
equilibrium, and domestic and political organization. Second, it is a specific formula applied
to certain data, and it must be evaluated as such. In assessing the concept on this level, one
must consider the operational questions of the definition of variables and how to measure
them.
EVALUATING THE CONCEPT OF CARRYING CAPACITY
In spite of the popularity of the concept of carrying capacity and some of the apparent
success which various applications have achieved, I would like to suggest several problem
areas of the concept which warrant caution in its use in the analysis of systems of shifting
cultivation or other subsistence systems. These relate to the nature of science as described by
Kuhn (1962).
In his lucid treatise on the structure of science, Kuhn (1962) suggests two basic concepts
which are useful in the evaluation of any system of explanation. These two interrelated

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concepts are those of "normal science" and of paradigm. Kuhn defines normal science as
"research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that
some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation
for its further practice" (1962:10). Certain of these scientific achievements have a special
place in the history of a discipline in that they provided "models from which spring
particular coherent traditions of scientific research" (1962:10). These achievements are
defined as paradigms, and according to Kuhn, they share two essential characteristics: "Their
achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away
from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended
to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve" (1962:10).
The related concepts of normal science and paradigm provide a framework in which to
view the conduct of scientific research as well as change within any given discipline. The
history of any particular science may be viewed as the progression from one paradigm to
another by the practitioners of that discipline. At any given time, certain paradigms serve to
define both the problems and the methods of the research field. Included in a paradigm are
the major elements of research: law, theory, application, and instrumentation. Most
scientists, of course, work within the traditions of particular paradigms and do not concern
themselves directly with the creation of new paradigms. The open-endedness of paradigms
means that researchers spend most of their time and effort solving problems and extending
limits of the original paradigm. Kuhn describes normal science as puzzle-solving:
To scientists, at least, the results gained in normal research are significant because they
add to the scope and precision with which the paradigm can be applied .... Bringing a
normal research problem to a conclusion is achieving the anticipated in a new way, and it
requires the solution of all sorts of complex instrumental, conceptual, and mathematical
puzzles. The man who succeeds proves himself an expert puzzle solver, and the challenge
of the puzzle is an important part of what usually drives him on [1962:36].
One aspect of the paradigm-normal science framework is that paradigms play a
fundamental role in establishing the rules and assumptions under which normal science is
conducted. They have a priority in shaping the problems, rules, and methods of a field at
any given time. This priority is supported by the process of instruction which emphasizes
problem-solving rather than paradigmatic inquiry. The priority of paradigms compels us,
therefore, to scrutinize potential paradigms and their components very closely.
THE "NEW ECOLOGY" PARADIGM
During the last decade, a new paradigm has been proposed to analyze the relationship
between human groups and their environment. This paradigm has been presented as an
alternative to others, the best known being Steward's concept of cultural ecology. Among its
leading proponents are Vayda (1969) and Rappaport (1967, 1968, 1974). The outlines of
the new paradigm were described in an article by Vayda and Rappaport (1968) entitled,
"Ecology, Cultural and Noncultural." Its major feature is a reintegration of the analysis of
cultural adaptations with general ecological analysis: "human populations as units are
commensurable with the other units with which they interact to form food webs, biotic
communities, and ecosystems" (Vayda and Rappaport 1968:494). Human cultures are to be
understood here not as unique but in terms which are applied to other living organisms:
populations, communities, ecosystems. The advantages of such a paradigm are clear: as part
of a unified science of ecology, generalizations concerning human behavior have a broader
scope and applicability; and this type of analysis will allow us to ask the questions
concerning the origin and presence of certain traits as opposed to merely functional
questions.

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Within the paradigm proposed by the new ecologists, the idea of carrying capacity
occupies an important place. In outlining the contributions to this new method, Vayda and
Rappaport (1968:494-495) cite studies of the definition of territorial rights and social
groups, the establishment of intertribal buffer zones, institutionalized camel raiding,
ceremonial feasting, the sacralization of such animals as cows, and the practice of human
sacrifice. The common thread of the new ecology paradigm which runs through all of these
studies is that they may be understood in terms of ecological regulation, or more specifically
homeostatic function:
the functioning of all these traits may be made more intelligible through investigation of
their role in maintaining within an adaptive range certain variables (such as size or
dispersion) pertaining to either particular human populations or the faunal and floral
populations upon which these depend [ Vayda and Rappaport 1968:495 ].
The concept of ecological regulation and homeostatic function thus establishes the basis for
the importance of carrying capacity within the paradigm of the new ecology.
As Kuhn demonstrates, any paradigm leaves a number of important problems unsolved,
and these problems become the grist for normal science. Within the new ecology, one of the
crucial, and unsolved, problems is the relationship between homeostasis, cultural change, and
evolution. The concept of homeostasis implies fixed ranges for key variables (size, density,
energy inputs and outputs), although the work done under the new ecology has had a
difficult time in determining which values of these actually define homeostasis. Recently,
Rappaport (1974:386) dealt with some of the difficulties encountered in specifying
homeostasis:
It is difficult or impossible, however, to assess the long-run effects of any aspect of
culture on particular biological variables, nor does it seem possible to identify any
particular feature of biological structure or function that will always contribute to
survival. Adaptiveness, therefore, is not to be identified with particular biological
variables, but with the maintenance of general homeostasis in living systems.
Unfortunately, it remains unclear how we are to assess "general homeostasis" without
measuring particular biological variables. The concept of carrying capacity stands at the crux
of this problem of specifying what is and is not homeostasis, and this problem has both
theoretical and empirical dimensions.
Much has been written by anthropologists concerning the dynamics of the relationship
between population, systems of food production, political organization, and other aspects of
socio-economic organization. The origins of modern anthropology, as well as many of the
contemporary advances in the discipline, lie in the nineteenth-century recognition of the
overall shape of the dynamics of evolutionary change which relate such factors as
demography, technology, and social organization. Some anthropologists see this interest in
homeostatic regulation as a refocus away from these dynamics toward the problem of
demographic and technological stability. Murphy (1970:165) argues that the adoption of
biological models such as homeostasis and carrying capacity in anthropology is fraught with
contradictions:
If the logic of ecosystem analysis is pursued to its conclusions, however, a very different
set of principles emerges: Ecosystem analysis in biology operates with far stricter
equilibrium models than does social system analysis in anthropology, even when carried
out by the most orthodox of structural functionalists, for nature at its most chaotic is
more orderly than the activities of sapient creatures.
In evaluating the utility of a homeostatic paradigm, anthropologists might be well advised
to be mindful of successes and failures of similar paradigms in the history of the discipline.
The structural-functional paradigm elaborated by Radcliffe-Brown and other British social
anthropologists in the 1940s and 1950s is similar to the new ecology in at least two general

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aspects: (a) the emphasis on homeostasis rather than on change, and (b) the adoption of a
model from another discipline (biology) for explanation in anthropology. The failure of the
structural-functional paradigm may be traced, in part, to difficulties arising over the question
of using a dynamic versus a homeostatic model (Leach 1954) for explaining social structure.
Although it should be clear that not all theories and paradigms which present a homeostatic
model lead necessarily to the typology of fixed systems which Leach (1961) aptly described
as butterfly collecting, the history of theory in anthropology suggests that we be prudent in
our assessment of their utility.
The structural-functional paradigm has also been criticized for misusing models derived
from biology. Nagel (1961:534-535) concludes that "the cognitive worth of functional
explanations modeled on teleological explanations in physiology is. . . in the main very
dubious." While not criticizing the conceptual use of the "organismic analogy" in British
social anthropology, Harris' (1968:526-527) critique of the structural-functional paradigm
points out how easy it is to misuse and misapply a model derived from another discipline.
It may be objected that the concept of carrying capacity was never designed to oppose
cultural evolution. Such an objection might argue that the concept of carrying capacity
could be subsumed in a larger model of cultural evolution. Harris (1968:424) presents the
case for this view:
Homeostatic functional paradigms should be kept distinct from statements of the
conditions under which the system develops new functional or dysfunctional concatenations: in other words, the conditions under which cultural evolution takes place. When
the system evolves, changes in the value of the elements in one sector accumulate and in
An understanding of cultural evolution
so doing cause changes in other sectors ....
requires the study of both system-maintaining and system changing phenomena, and in
both cases, we are concerned with probabilistic versions of causality.
The essence of carrying capacity is to discern how resource pressures are perceived and
corresponding adjustments made to relieve that pressure. These adjustments may appear in
either a homeostatic or a dynamic form. There is enough evidence for both types of
response. The important question may be whether homeostasis or change is adaptive.
Unfortunately, there appears to be an almost a priori assumption shared by many
anthropologists that the former is adaptive while the latter is not.
The idea of homeostasis might be applicable to Pleistocene hunting and gathering groups
where there is evidence of long-run demographic stability. The measurement of homeostasis
using carrying capacity has, however, been generally applied to post-Pleistocene (Neolithic)
food producing groups, that is to the very genre of human group which we know to be
dynamic. This, of course, does not condemn the concept out of hand. Rather, the ideas of
homeostasis and carrying capacity can play an important role in framing the dynamic
relationship between population, resources, and technology (Spooner 1972). This is
especially true in archaeology where the issues of intensification and technological change
are receiving considerable attention. In designing models for prehistoric populations and
technological systems, the concept of carrying capacity should play a heuristic role and may
have explanatory value (Zubrow 1971, 1975).
If the concept of carrying capacity (a "homeostatic functional paradigm" in Harris'
terminology) is to be included in a larger model of cultural evolution, the overall paradigm
must include a set of laws and theories which demonstrate how homeostasis is transformed
into evolution and culture change. As Harris (1968:424-425) notes, "when a functional
statement cannot be made to yield a prediction of the changes of dependent and
independent variables, it is not properly speaking a functional statement, but rather a
functional equivocation." This "prediction of changes of dependent and independent
variables" rests upon the empirical implementation of the homeostatic functional paradigm
of carrying capacity to which we now turn.

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EMPIRICAL WEAKNESS OF THE CONCEPT

One of the proposed merits of the new ecology paradigm is that it lends itself to
quantitative analysis and some degree of testability. To this author, however, it seems as
though the principal empirical weakness of the concept of carrying capacity lies in the fact
that the theory of homeostasis inherent to the concept is neither testable nor refutable. This
seems to be true in two senses. First, the definition of the system is only partial, and the
variables within that system are poorly defined. Second, the specific relationship between
these components is indefinite and ambiguous to the point that a meaningful predictive test
may be impossible to conduct.
Measuring the carrying capacity of any subsistence system involves at least three steps.
First, the scientist must select key components of the cultural system as well as those of the
natural environment. In the process of selection, an unavoidable principle of operation is
that not all component parts of culture are essential to an understanding of the balanced
relationship between culture and nature, and, conversely, neither are all parts of nature
essential to this understanding. The problem for the scientist is to choose which parts of
both are important. The choice of culture components involves a description of the
subsistence system (i.e., hunting and gathering, pastoralism, horticulture). The choice of
environmental components involves the "effective environment." Second, having made the
choice, variables which comprise the various components of both the subsistence system and
the effective environment must be defined. Third, the interrelationship between these
components and variables must be specified. This final step is the statement of the carrying
capacity of a given subsistence system operating in a certain effective environment. The
untestability of the concept of carrying capacity rests with problems encountered at each of
these steps.
One of the first decisions in selecting components for the analysis of subsistence systems
is to judge what food sources are crucial. The selection means that while some food
resources are judged to be critical, others are ignored. An example of this is the omission of
animal protein from the carrying capacity formulas dealing with swidden agriculture (e.g.,
Carneiro 1960). The component selection in these cases followed the decision that vegetable
foods rather than animal foods were the crucial components in the demographic system. In
some cases, such as Polynesian islands (Bayliss-Smith 1974), a decision to omit animal
protein from the formula may be warranted, but it is a highly questionable decision for
other systems. In Amazonia, however, animal and fish resources may be an essential part of
the demographic formula of swidden agriculturalists (Denevan 1971).
Leibig's Law of the Minimum, one principle from biological analysis of ecosystems,
relates directly to this problem of selecting components to be included in the carrying
capacity formula. This concept states that the conditions which control a given species at
one time may differ from those which control it at others. Dice (1952:217-218) phrases this
concept as the "Law of the Limiting Factor," and explains, "as any environmental factor
approaches either the upper or lower limit of toleration for a given species, that factor
becomes of increasing importance in controlling the functioning, the growth, and even the
existence of the individual member of the species."
The enormous variability of survival under different diet conditions must be appreciated,
and the formulas as written are incapable of allowing for this. Moreover, one wonders about
the possibility and desirability of including each and every factor which may become the
limiting factor, either of the environment or of the culture. What is apparently marginal at
one time may be decisive at another. As Aschmann (1959:78) points out in discussing the
carrying capacity of the Indians of the central desert of Baja California, "a food available
only in small quantity and ordinarily ignored may be the one that at critical moments
prevented starvation. A consideration of only ten or twenty most important foods may miss

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this critical aspect of the food economy." The wide potential for food substitution poses
serious problems for testing a specific formula with predictions about the response of the
other variables when population exceeds the defined carrying capacity. The use of such
foods may mean that a given population is able to grow beyond the size indicated by the
carrying capacity formulas without inducing environmental degradation.
There have been substantial difficulties in determining which components within the
environment are significant. None of the carrying capacity formulas include specific variables
which indicate land degradation or preservation of a given type of ecosystem. Rather, these
are implied in the amount of land needed per capita, and the length of the fallow and
cultivation periods. At what level do we say that a system is stable or in a process of
degradation? What are the crucial elements within the soil which may limit the carrying
capacity of the local ecosystem? Is a forest which takes thirty years to recover less "stable"
than one which takes fifteen years? Very few of the studies of homeostatic regulation cited
as examples of the new ecology have developed specific measures of the quality of the local
ecosystem which actually demonstrate that ecological stability is a product of a particular
cultural practice. Rather the environmental factors which indicate stability or degradation
are unspecified, and analysis focuses on the cultural or individual perception of the
environment.
One solution to the problem of selecting which components to include in a carrying
capacity formula is to leave the formulas sufficiently open-ended that additional
components may be added or others dropped. This is a logical strategy to adopt in the face
of cultural and environmental dynamics which may introduce or eliminate certain factors as
being critical to carrying capacity. The adoption of this strategy, however, erodes the
empirical value of the formulas by rendering them essentially untestable. The convenient
loophole which makes a formula open-ended enough to be adaptable to changing conditions
means that rigid test procedures may not be applicable to the predictions of the formula.
Thus the formulas become heuristic.
The selection of components, however, is not the only step which is problematic for the
computation of carrying capacity. Once the general selection of components has been made,
the researcher is faced with the problem of specifying which variables are crucial to those
components. The components which have been selected for systems of shifting cultivation
are: (1) cultivation period, (2) fallow period, (3) acreage needed per capita to provide
average subsistence, and (4) total amount of arable land available. Although swidden
agriculture is often treated as a relatively "simple" form of food production, anyone who
has conducted fieldwork which was aimed at measuring the performance of this system
knows that it is a complex system. This complexity is evident in a number of studies of
swidden agriculture: Conklin (1963), Spencer (1966), de Schlippe (1956), Allan (1965),
Freeman (1955), Brookfield and Brown (1963), Rappaport (1968), and Barrau (1958,
1961). It is evident that the people who practice shifting cultivation deal with ranges of
variables rather than with fixed variables.
This is readily apparent when one looks at the determinates of the acreage needed per
capita. These are both natural and cultural. On the cultural side, dietary, ritual,
technological, and exchange factors must be included as variables. In technology alone, there
are five major steps which must be accounted for: (a) site selection, (b) cutting, (c) burning,
(d) cropping, and (e) fallowing. Each of these steps, in turn, must be approached as a set of
variables with differential value ranges. In cropping, for instance, one must account for
different skills and methods used in seed selection, seed preparation, ground preparation,
planting, weeding, protection from pests, harvesting, storage, and food preparation. The
ability to alter any one of these has wide implications for the process in general. This ability
exists and is exercised.
The practice of fallowing is one step in which wide variation has been recognized. The

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fallow period may be shortened by protecting the plot from fire or through enrichment by
planting "nonswidden semidomesticates" (Conklin 1963:22). Pearson, who used Conklin's
formula, notes that the value for the maximum number of years required for the agricultural
cycle (cultivation plus fallow) is the most difficult term in the equation. He observes that
this term "must take into account such dimensions as the differences in intercropping
techniques, or differences in the productive period of each unit" (Pearson 1966:20). De
Schlippe (1955:205-212) describes a system of "pseudo-rotation" which makes the use of a
single figure of fallow years inappropriate.
The complexity of these variables means that each component of the formula assumes a
wide range of values. Predictions and tests of the carrying capacity formulas are ultimately
concerned with the upper ranges of some of the components (population, cultivation period
for fields) and the lower ranges of other components (acreage need per capita, fallow period,
and total arable land available). As certain components reach their upper range, certain
changes should occur in other variables, and possible changes in the system may be
indicated. Thus, a growing population should cause: (1) an increase in the total land
available (D) and/or in the cultivation period (A), or (2) a decrease in the average acreage
needed per capita (C) and/or in the fallow period (B). The elasticity of these components is
different. Both the cultivation period and the fallow period would seem to be relatively
inelastic, while the acreage needed per capita should be relatively elastic and responsive to
changes in population density.
The final empirical problem with the formula lies in the difficulties in obtaining adequate
information to test its operational role in swidden cultivation practice. The concept implies
the possibility of human recognition of limits set by the formula. This recognition may be
culturally coded as Rappaport's (1968) work suggests. Moveover, the concept indicates
inevitable consequences for a human population which exceeds these limits. The question
arises as to how to test this functional role of carrying capacity: how are limits recognized
and maintained and what happens if they are not?
The primary difficulty in testing this role concerns the need to use diachronic data. All
ecological systems are, of course, diachronic, and it is untenable to argue that anything as
complex as homeostasis can be demonstrated with data from one or two years. In this
regard, Zubrow (1971) notes that archaeological data may be the most useful type in
evaluating the model of carrying capacity. It is probable that data from a number of
generations would be necessary to test the concept, and the availability of this type of
information for swidden agriculturalists is unlikely. Historical sources for the culture in
question rarely, if ever, provide the necessary information. Once cultures have been
contacted enough by Europeans or other outsiders to the point that an anthropologist or a
team of researchers can spend a year or so collecting field data, it is likely that the culture
will be well on the road toward a dynamic relationship with external economic systems. This
type of relationship often leads to the abandonment of cultural patterns such as those which
maintained the ecological balance between the human population and other factors in the
environment. Nietschmann (1973, 1974) has described this sequence for the Miskito Indians
of Nicaragua.
Street argues that many of the scientists who deal with primitive peoples tend to take the
primitive's harmonious relationship with nature too much for granted and that this leads to
"assumptions of technological and gastronomic stagnation... (which) depart so markedly
from reality as to seriously diminish the utility of the computed density values" (1969:104).
Of his own fieldwork in New Guinea relating to carrying capacity, Street says: "I tramped
the trails of the Chimbu in October 1964, and saw numerous unmistakable signs of
environmental deterioration, to wit: many land slips, hard soils with poor structures,
sediment laden streams, rill wash, exposed subsoil" (1969:105).
Clarke (1971), who also worked in the New Guinea highlands, likewise notes a naive

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propensity to assume that primitives have a stable relationship with nature. He points to
several difficulties in the use of carrying capacity formulas to test this assumption, and he
notes that damage to the land is a long term, diachronic process, while most ecological
studies on human groups are synchronic. He concludes:
In sum, I think that carrying capacity should be thought of as a gradient rather than as a
critical limit. Any change in population density along the gradient will prompt
environmental change; at most points along the gradient some environmental change will
be going on, even if the population remains constant. It follows that measurement of
carrying capacity requires knowledge not only of length of actual fallow and cropping
period, the amount of land needed to feed each person, and the total land available, but
also of the rate of the processes of erosion, leaching, retrogression of vegetation and
changing yields [1971:190].
The complexities involved in the collection of adequate diachronic data on all of the
components and variables which must comprise the computation of carrying capacity has led
to a retreat from the original goals of the concept by several scientists who have attempted
to apply it. Brookfield and Brown (1963) recognize the difficulties in obtaining adequate
data and in establishing rigid test procedures for the concept. Faced with such difficulties,
they are willing to lower the sights of carrying capacity as a concept, limiting their use of it
to "empirical description of the present situation in the area" (Brookfield and Brown
1963:113). This, of course, is a serious limitation, and one which fundamentally alters the
original intent of the concept as developed by Allan and Conklin. Both were expressly
interested in determining what population could exist "in perpetuity" on the land and in
calculating the critical density beyond which the productive capacity of the land would
deteriorate.
Like Brookfield and Brown's retreat from a dynamic, predictive goal to a static,
descriptive one is the conclusion, albeit warranted, by Bayliss-Smith (1974:262) that "the
measure of carrying capacity must always be regarded as relative, not absolute." These
reformulations of a descriptive and relative concept are logical responses to the difficulty of
defining the components, the variables and their interrelationships, as well as the difficulty
in gathering adequate information, which were overlooked by the authors of the original
concept of carrying capacity.
In conclusion, I would say that the most productive uses of the concept of carrying
capacity in anthropology have been essentially descriptive and heuristic. Perhaps the best
example of this is Rappaport's work with the Tsembaga. Although there are suggestions
relating the concept to such cultural phenomena as ritual and warfare, Rappaport stops short
of specific empirical hypotheses and tests relating carrying capacity to these. The heuristic
value of this concept is, however, a significant attribute. The concept of carrying capacity
has contributed to the discussion and construction of models concerning prehistoric and
modern populations, technology, and environment. The limitations imposed by pragmatic
difficulties of definition and measurement of variables must be recognized. On the other
hand, problems such as these are inherent to any new paradigm and become the essence of
normal scientific activity.
NOTES
1I am grateful to Dr. Bernard Q. Nietschmann, Dr. William Denevan, and Dr. Rolland
Bergman for their comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
2 For an excellent review of the general theoretical and practical issues related to carrying
capacity as a "dynamic equilibrium system," the reader is advised to consult Zubrow (1975),
Prehistoric Carrying Capacity: A Model.
3This variable is erroneous. The value of B, the length of the rotation, should be equal to:
cultivation + fallow
years of cultivation

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