ABSTRACT
Competition for resources can be considered a major driving force for social and cultural change in human societies. Here, we suggest two directly observable measures of competition at the individual and group levels: 1) the percentage of individuals within a group that do not meet their resource requirements and 2) the percentage of groups within a population in which at least one individual does not meet his/ her resource requirements. We use these measures within an agent-based simulation framework to investigate the potential influence of patterns of resource distribution and social rules on the intensity of competition among human individuals and among social groups. We then relate competition intensity to cultural developments in prehistoric populations and make suggestions how measures of competition can be incorporated into archaeological and anthropological research.
