Settlement in villages or in well-defined clan territories, with populations of several hundred members. In many cases, village sites are moved due to various factors, including decreasing soil fertility and hostile social relations. Political leadership is exercised by a headman or a Big Man, with important roles in production, exchange, and resource allocation. Cultivation of permanent fields with little or no fallow and the use of various techniques to maintain soil fertility such as irrigation, terracing, animal husbandry, fertilization, crop diversification and rotation, and drainage. Cultivation of a variety of domesticated crops rather than a single crop.
Production is both for subsistence and sale.
Egalitarian, independent households are the primary units of production and consumption. The sexual division of labor is variable, i.e., both men and women participate in the agricultural process, but the tasks each performs varies from one culture to another. Ownership or other well-defined tenure rights in land that are long term and often inheritable. Farm size is relatively small. Economic inequality is common but does not develop into permanent class stratification due to individual and household mobility.