The Impact of Subsistence Change on Mobility and Settlement Pattern in a Tropical Forest Foraging Economy: Some Implications for Archeology

I critically examine archeological presumptions that a continuum from “mobility” to “sedentism” underlies the evolutionary transition from hunting‐gathering to agriculture. An ethnographic case from the Philippines shows that some foraging societies undergoing subsistence change may become more mobile as they near or cross the threshold to sedentary life. A distinction between residential and logistical mobility does not account for this finding, because the increased mobility in question has both residential and logistical demensions.