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Food Production

Food Production. When roaming piles of meat just aren’t good enough. Settlement Game Debrief. Which sites were most successful? Important keys: Diversity of foods  Population explosion Help from neighbors? Help from nature/luck Trading – risk/reward. Pre-Ag Developments: Europe.

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Food Production

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  1. Food Production When roaming piles of meat just aren’t good enough

  2. Settlement Game Debrief • Which sites were most successful? • Important keys: • Diversity of foods  Population explosion • Help from neighbors? • Help from nature/luck • Trading – risk/reward

  3. Pre-Ag Developments: Europe • Melting glaciers change habits • Following herds of large game in tundra (specifically what do you think?) • As forests grow, either hunting becomes more difficult, or more readily available foodstuffs appear, or both • Maglemosian culture (Northern Europe, ~12,000 yrs ago) • Evidence of use of many new tools • Utilize wood, fishing, hunting • Kitchen middens, remains of equipment suggest much more fishing

  4. Pre-Ag: Near East • Also increasing use of stationary food • Broad spectrum collecting • Wild wheat presumably harvested in surplus • Necessitates sedentarism • Natufians (Eastern Mediterranean [Levant], ~15,000 years ago) • Pit-house dwellers (diagram) • Plastered “cellars” • Sickles appear to show evidence of intensive grain harvest

  5. Why Broad Spectrum Collect? • Shift occurs fairly commonly around the globe; why? • Climate change – food supply changes • New foods become more prevalent, others less • Over-killing of large herd animals? • More people necessitates dietary creativity

  6. Sedentarism • Natural step so long as the spectrum you collect is localized • Sedentarism doesn’t occur everywhere with collecting • Populations grow because they can • Change in stress from raising nomadic child versus sedentary one • More digestible foods for babies (animal milk in addition to mothers’ as well as cereal grain mush, yum!), earlier weaning, earlier possible next birth

  7. Domestication of Plants and Animals • Look for differences between wild species (and cultivated) and what we suspect are domesticated • Wild grains – weak rachis (seed bearing part of the plant) • Cultivated – tougher rachis [these seeds could survive the wild harvesting process] • Similar differences in domesticated animals ~10,000 years ago (some disagreement as to goats, pigs, or sheep) • Article coming tomorrow…

  8. Dogs (YAY!) and Cats (BOO!) • Dogs probably first animals domesticated • Humans have uses for dogs • Track prey, alert to danger, scavenge/cleanup • Did they domesticate themselves? New forests provide convenient food for humans, perhaps humans provide consistent food for wild-but-taming wolves? • Ditto on cats – notorious rodent hunters – when humans store grains, attracts rodents, and also those that eat them – ta-da! Friendly kitties!

  9. Some important early sites • Ali Kosh • SW Iran ~7500 BCE • Consume mostly wild plants and animals for 2000 years – then agriculture and herding increase • Goats are common, outside their normal range  Domestication! • Many flint tools, but obsidian tools also show trade with Turkey • 6750-6000 BCE – large increase in consumption of cultivated grains • Further evidence of trade: seashells (Persian Gulf), copper (Central Iran), turquoise (Iran/Afghanistan border) • Pop. Explosion – 5500-4500 BCE, irrigation, plows, domestic cattle – more sophisticated food production

  10. Sites cont’d • Catal Hüyük • Southern Turkey ~5600 BCE • Bull shrines • Advanced farming – surplus of ag. Goods • Much fine handicrafts, appear to come from all over the place outside of CatalHüyük • Little raw material in Catal Hüyük; relied on trade with neighbors

  11. Why Domesticate? • Climate change giveth, climate change can taketh away – in areas where wild crops started to lag behind pop growth • Cultivation/domestication ensues • Cultural readiness – simply waiting for humans to develop – natural occurrence • Desire to reproduce most bountiful conditions • Pop. growth forces a move from ideal resource areas to less ideal – try to recreate the optimal situation • Population pressures favor broad spectrum collecting and its descendants

  12. Consequences of food production • Accelerated population growth • Diminishing birth spacing; desire for more kids to work • Declining health • Bone and tooth evidence • Reliance on unideal food crops • Developing stratification/might limit access to foods to lower classes • Elaboration of material possessions • Time to produce them • Stratified society lends self to expression • Value in trading economy

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