Measuring Forager Mobility

Mobility plays a large role in generating the patterns of stone rawmaterial usage seen in forager archaeological sites, but how best to translate these patterns into a complete quantitative characterization of the organization of forager mobility remains a difficult problem. The number of potential variables involved, including rawmaterial quality and abundance as well as individual movement and technological decisions, makes it extremely difficult to analyze mobility independent of all other influences. This papers develops a formal model of forager mobility based on a wellknown stochastic process termed a Lvy random walk. When combined with neutral assumptions about how stone is procured and used, the model may be used to recover detailed quantitative information about the organization of forager mobility from rawmaterial transport distances. The model has clear behavioral interpretations in terms of levels of planning, risk sensitivity, and timeenergy optimization and thus provides several potential currencies for comparative studies of prehistoric mobility strategies. How other behavioral decisions such as rawmaterial selectivity and even social exchange of raw material might influence patterns of stone rawmaterial transport is also explored.