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Cultural Anthropology

Cultural Anthropology. CHAPTER FIVE: MAKING A LIVING. Chapter Preview. What is Adaptation? How Do Humans Adapt? What sorts of Adaptations Have Humans Achieved Through the Ages?. Patterns of Subsistence. Anthropologists have identified five patterns of subsistence:

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Cultural Anthropology

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  1. Cultural Anthropology • CHAPTER FIVE: • MAKING A LIVING

  2. Chapter Preview • What is Adaptation? • How Do Humans Adapt? • What sorts of Adaptations Have Humans Achieved Through the Ages?

  3. Patterns of Subsistence • Anthropologists have identified five patterns of subsistence: • Foraging (hunting and gathering) • Pastoralism • Horticulture • Intensive and mechanized agriculture • The pattern followed influences every aspect of the group’s culture, such as community size and kinship

  4. Adaptation • How humans manage to deal with the contingencies of daily life • The interaction between changes an organism makes in its environment and changes the environment makes in the organism organism environment

  5. Ecosystem The physical environment and the organisms living in it Anthropogenesis The process whereby ecosystems are influenced or altered by humans Environment does not determine culture Environment provides limits and possibilities humans culture environment

  6. The Food-Foraging Way of Life • The original affluent society • Highly developed • Well balanced and ample diet • Plenty of leisure time • Rich in human warmth and aesthetics • Today • Few people depend upon foraging • Found in the world’s marginal areas

  7. Characteristics of Food-Foragers • Mobility • Small group size • Usually fewer than 100 people live together • Size is limited by carrying capacity • Groups respond to the density of social relations

  8. Small Group Size • Population density • Rarely exceeds one person per square mile • Land can support 3 to 5 times as many people • Population control • Nursing possibly suppresses ovulation

  9. The Impact of Food Foraging on Human Society • Division of labour by sex • Food Sharing • A consequence of the division of labour • Response to more frequent meat eating • Camp becomes center of activity

  10. Cultural adaptations and material technology Mobility may depend upon nature of resources Population size depends upon hunting style Egalitarian society High mobility means few accumulated goods Age and sex only status markers Foods distributed equally The Impact of Food Foraging on Human Society

  11. Food-Producing Society • Transition • Food production first occurred about 11,000 to 9,000 years ago • Unlikely people voluntarily became producers • Arose as an unintended by-product of food-management practices • Adopted out of necessity when population growth outstripped ability of foraging to support people

  12. The Settled Life of Farmers • Permanent settlements • People stay close to gardens rather than following game or other food sources • Altered division of labour • Specialization develops

  13. The Settled Life of Farmers • Society more elabourately structured • Multifamily kinship groups reside together • Increase in population density • Horticulture developed • Crops cultivated with hand tools

  14. Pastoralism: The Bakhtiari • Animal husbandry the ideal way of life • Effective in places not fit for farming • Large number of people are pastoralists • Transhumance normal

  15. Intensive Agriculture and Nonindustrial Cities • Urbanization • Increase in specialization • New social order • Sharp increase in tempo of cultural evolution

  16. Nonindustrial Cities in the Modern World • Preindustrial cities • Urban settlements characteristic of nonindustrial civilizations • Some have been around for thousands of years • Common in the world today

  17. Anthropology Applied • Agricultural Development and the Anthropologist • An ancient system of agriculture in Peru • 4,000 years ago farming introduced with erosion • 1,900 years ago soil loss significantly reduces farming • 1,000 years ago farming revived with new techniques • Complex irrigation canal, terracing, trees, and imported soil • Highly successful permitting population increase • With coming of the Spanish, system deteriorated • The system is now being successfully reintroduced

  18. Aztec City Life • Tenochtitlán • Population in 16th century five times that of London • City covered 20 square miles with 60,000 houses • Based upon intensive agriculture (chinampas) • Diversification of labour with numerous specialists • Market played a central economic and social role • Three main classes: serfs, commoners, nobles • Semidivine king ruled with a council of advisors • Large bureaucracy oversaw public business

  19. Mechanized Agriculture • Large-scale agriculture dependent on complex technology and biotechnology rather than human power to increase production • Complex machinery lightens the workload and enables agriculturalists to open up larger farms

  20. NEXT TIME: Economic Systems

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