The emphasis on agriculture in the title of this category of environmental regions points to the subject of this chapter: agricultural landscapes. The extreme variety of ecological zones that appear to fall within the breadth of a category of agriculturally marginal landscapes suggests the potential folly of investigating traits that mobile pastoralist landscapes might possess. Instead, the current investigation will consider what particular recipe of features these environments lack(or possess in critically low quantities). This chapter will examine environmental data in order to understand the various features of the ecological niches that contextualized the origins and developments of settled agricultural societies. Any landscape not possessing the necessary formation of these components might be considered to fall within the category of agriculturally marginal landscapes within which different mobile pastoralist societies develop and survive. 

The datasets presented in this chapter are derived from a variety of digital and non-digital sources and are presented in maps produced using QGIS.¹ Open-source spatial analysis software, QGIS is described on its website as “a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo).”² This program allows for the production of maps made up of various layers of photographic and geometric data that allow for both human and machine analysis.³ Although these layers render patterns of data at particular levels of distance, it is important to note that geographic and chronological scales of this investigation make small-scale precision difficult (if not impossible). 

The use of georeferenced settlement data in this examination acknowledges the regional scale of these experiments for identifying broad trends rather than individual details. The process of “georeferencing” data can be described as digitizing a print map and locating the information within a system of geographic coordinates. The result is an approximate replication of the data contained within the print map that reflects the inaccuracies of the original cartography. In contrast to digital maps, which contain data that can be preserved, replicated, and presented with fidelity at various scales, print maps range from relatively accurate details in “close-up” formats to broad sketches at “distant” scales. Because the scale at which the current investigation is concerned is closer to the latter (broad sketches), the incorporation of georeferenced data from variously accurate (or inaccurate) print maps should suffice for purposes of discussion.