How do humans make a living?

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)

Category Civilization Upper Barbarism Middle Barbarism Lower Barbarism Upper Savagery Middle Savagery Lower Savagery Technology Alphabet, writing Iron tools Farming, herding Pottery Bow and Arrow Fishing, Foraging No technology 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

Tenrecs Tubers Corn Wage Labor Hybrid system of foraging and cultivation Mikea

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?

How do humans make a living?