The spatial patterning of the social organization of modern foraging Homo sapiens: A methodological approach for understanding social organization in prehistoric foragers

Individualized households are the most important institution in the organization of modern human foragers. These households interact and use space in a highly organized manner, which is reflected in the creation of single or multiple domestic areas per household. These areas, when composed of primary refuse, leave diagnostic material clusters which are potentially identified archaeologically. Although the number of domestic areas can be more easily detected than the number of households responsible for them, here it will be shown that modern spatial algorithms are very effective at documenting the multi-cluster nature of modern human immediate-return foraging camps. At the heart of this observation lies the potentiality of tracing back in time this particular social organization and the question of how other pre-Homo sapiens hominins were socially organized. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.