ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the human use of space from the perspective of behavioral ecology. It presents three large questions: How can one obtain a reliable supply of food and other resources, when resources vary in time and space? Where should one settle? And how large an area should one use, and when does it pay to defend it against intruders? A more sensitive approach to the problem of scale in spatial patterning is through autocorrelation and spectral analysis. The power spectrum tells one about the magnitude and scale of resource patchiness, even when the patterning may not be apparent in the raw data series. The spatial analog of such a measure would be a complete absence of patchiness at all frequencies; resources would be distributed randomly over space. Anthropologists have been explaining spatial organization in ecological terms at least since the time of Julian Steward.
