Archaeological approaches to agricultural production often assume a linear relationship between agricultural inputs and outputs, irrespective of community size and production level. They also often overlook the distinction among land productivity, labor productivity, and land utilization efficiency. In contrast, studies of recent agricultural economies typically identify nonlinear input–output relationships concerning land and labor productivity. I use scaling analysis to investigate the relationship between population and agricultural production over time in the Northern Rio Grande region of the U.S. Southwest. I present evidence that an economy of scale in land utilization has characterized Northern Rio Grande Pueblo communities from Prehispanic to recent times and identify trends in this relationship suggesting that the primary factor behind the increasing population size of Northern Rio Grande Pueblo communities was not improvements in technology per se but changes in the social institutions required for coordinated farming efforts on this landscape. My results suggest that studies of past agricultural economies could be improved by paying greater attention to nonlinear input–output relationships and emphasizing various factors, including land productivity, labor productivity, and land utilization efficiency.

农业生产的考古方法通常假设农业投入和产出之间存在线性关系，而与社区规模和生产水平无关。他们还常常忽视土地生产率、劳动生产率和土地利用效率之间的区别。相比之下，对近期农业经济的研究通常确定与土地和劳动生产率有关的非线性投入产出关系。我使用标度分析来调查美国西南部格兰德河北部地区人口与农业生产之间随时间变化的关系。我提供的证据表明，从前西班牙时期到近代，土地利用规模经济是北里奥格兰德普韦布洛社区的特征，并确定了这种关系的趋势，表明北里奥格兰德普韦布洛社区人口规模不断增加的主要因素不是技术的进步其本身，而是在这一景观上协调农业努力所需的社会制度的变化。我的研究结果表明，通过更加关注非线性投入产出关系并强调各种因素，包括土地生产率、劳动生产率和土地利用效率，可以改进对过去农业经济的研究。