Population pressure in coastal environments: An archaeological test

The question of the origins and development of maritime adaptations has engendered much recent debate concerning the relative roles of environmental change, technological evolution, population growth, and various cultural factors in this process. A major problem involves successfully testing causative explanations based on these factors on archaeological data. This paper presents a research design which will allow a test of one of these factors — population growth and pressure on resources — based on notions derived from optimal foraging theory. Preliminary data from the Casco Bay region of southwestern Maine (USA), used to test the model, suggest that continuous population growth and pressure on resources did exist in that region, based on (1) increasing use over time of less valuable resources, (2) increased culling of lower yield age‐ or size‐classes of various animal species, (3) more intensive use of marginally productive habitats, and (4) increased mobility costs associated with use of more distant sites.