Pastoral adaptations span a variety of organizational states ranging from self-sufficient, mixed-subsistence agropastoralists to economic specialists dependent on trade with agriculturalists for subsistence. A preliminary study of ethnographically documented pastoralist cases demonstrates robust relationships between environmental variables relevant to plant biomass, herd structure, mobility, labor organization, and subsistence dependence. Three organizational states of pastoral adaptations are distinguished by subsistence dependence on food acquired through trade, the geographic scale of mobility, and habitat variables. The archaeological sequence at Nabta Playa, a Neolithic site in the western desert of Egypt with early evidence for the presence of domesticated cattle, is used to illustrate the utility of this research for archaeologists concerned with the origins and evolution of pastoral adaptations.
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