How do humans make a living?

Part I: Hunter Gatherers

February 16, 2005

“Primitives”

• Hobbes: “Nasty, brutish and short”• Rousseau: “Noble savage”

• Anthropologists avoid:– Primitive, advanced, savage, stages,

tribes

Teleological Models

• Great Chain of Being– God– Angels– Humans (Culture)– Mammals– Other animals– Plants (Nature)– Rocks– Dirt

Teleological Models

• Colonial explorers categorized people in the same way:– Light skinned, upper class Europeans– Poor (ethnic) Europeans (Slavs,

Mediterraneans)– Dark skinned farmers– Dark Skinned hunter gatherers– Great apes

Stages of Culture

• Edward Tyler: Primitive Culture (1871)– Civilization (Present)

– Barbarism

– Savagery (Distant past)

Technology

Category• Civilization• Upper Barbarism• Middle Barbarism• Lower Barbarism• Upper Savagery• Middle Savagery• Lower Savagery

TechnologyAlphabet, writingIron toolsFarming, herdingPotteryBow and ArrowFishing, ForagingNo technology

Cultural Evolutionism

• State• Chiefdom• Tribe• Band

• Increasing social complexity• Based on political/social/economic

characteristics

Bands

• Hunter-gatherers• Small, less than 100 individuals• Linked by kinship and marriage• Size may fluctuate• Egalitarian

Tribes

• Some agriculture• At least one more powerful leader• Headman

Chiefdoms

• At least 2 social classes• Elite ruling class• Common class

States

• Intense food production• Multiple social classes• Bureaucracy• Complex social organization

Why not teleology?

• Implies that some people don’t have history (living relics, etc.)

• Change is not always unilinear

• Assumes that “primitive” people are isolated from modern world

Human Ecology

• Subsistence strategy as behavioral adaptation

• Making a living in the easiest way in a given environment

• Modern foragers may be analogous to ancient foragers (human ancestors)

Foraging Diversity

Foraging Diversity

• Environments• Workload• Division of Labor• Political organization• Histories

Mikea

• Tenrecs• Tubers• Corn• Wage Labor

• Hybrid system of foraging and cultivation

Optimal Foraging Theory

• Resource value=energy value -handling cost (Calories)

• Reasons for not following model:– Show off factor– Nutrients, not just Calories

Conservation?

• If foragers were conservationists, they would kill only adult male animals.

• If not, they would exploit resources following optimal foraging theory.

Exchange

• Redistribution• Reciprocity

– Generalized– Balanced– Negative

• Markets

Potlatch

• Huge feasts of redistribution• Brings prestige for Organizer• Wasteful?• Cultural Ecology Interpretation

What can Archaeology Tell Us?