ABSTRACT
Ecological anthropologists with their commitment to gathering a wider range of non-cultural data and organizing the variables into systems models often focus on small units of interaction for both practical and theoretical reasons. Ecological anthropologists have found it difficult to resist the attractions of an hypothesized human ecosystem in which population was somehow regulated without direct imposition of Malthusian sanctions, and growth rates, if present, were extremely low. Michael Jochim has pointed out that the boundary definition of human ecosystems is even harder than that of biological ones because of the more diverse interactions and because humans establish cultural boundaries that may or may not coincide with any natural ones. Village citizenship descended in the male line, and local statutes first written down in 1483 prohibited outsiders from enjoying communal rights in the forests, the alp, or the irrigation system. Without resources to supplement privately owned farm lands, alpine agro-pastoralism would not have been possible.
