Denham, TimDonohue, Mark2022-03-240278-4165http://hdl.handle.net/1885/262412The terminology and definitions for farmers, foragers and those who undertake in-between subsistence strategies have attracted recurrent debate by archaeologists, anthropologists, geographers and others. These debates are plagued by semantic and conceptual confusions in terms of the definitions proffered to the ‘middle ground’ between foragers and farmers, as well as in terms of how categories are applied in the past and the present. In broad terms, perspectives diverge between considering the adoption of agriculture to be an ‘all-or-nothing’ commitment or a continuum representing various types of ‘middle ground’. A careful unpacking of data from traditional societies in Murdock’s Ethnographic Atlas reveals geographical structuring of the global dataset, as well as considerable differences based on local crop assemblages. In sum, agro-pastoral, cereal-based societies in Africa and Eurasia exhibit a stronger tendency with respect to subsistence dependence on farming, while societies in North America and those reliant on root crops and arboriculture in the wet tropics tend more towards a ‘middle ground’ that incorporates aspects of farming without abandoning foraging.Tim Denham’s involvement in this research was funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2016-2020, FT150100420); Mark Donohue’s involvement was funded by an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2011-2015, FT100100241)application/pdfen-AU© 2021 Elsevier Inc.https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ForagingFarmingGlobal distributionsLand useAgro-pastoralHorticultureArboricultureEthnographic AtlasGeorge Murdock2021-12-2410.1016/j.jaa.2021.101390CC BY-NC-ND