Subsistence and Economics

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Subsistence and Economics
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Upper Palaeolithic

• 14,000 years B.P., people relied more on fish,
  shellfish, small game, wild plants than migratory
  herds of animals
• called Mesolithic in Europe
• called Archaic in Mesoamerica
• called Epipalaeolithic in Near East
• 8,000 B.C., first clear cultivation and
  domestication of plants and animals
• China, SE Asia, Africa - 6,000 B.C.
• Mesoamerica, Andes, Peru - 7,000 B.C.
• Eastern U.S. - 2,000 B.C.
• Definitions
• sendentarism
• agriculture

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Preagricultural Developments

• Near East
• end of Upper Palaeolithic (14,000 years B.P.),
  switch to broad-spectrum hunting and gathering
• grain diet impetus for construction
• Mesoamerica
• end of Paleo-Indian period (10,000 years B.P.),
  shift to broad-spectrum hunting and gathering
• climate change
• Other areas
• SE Asia - changes in environment
• Africa - warmer, wetter environment

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Broad-Spectrum Collecting

• Why did it develop?
• climate change
• decline in availability of big game (overkill)
• Results
• successful exploitation of new food
• decline in stature
• decline in general level of health
• sedentarism
• population growth
• increase in variation of tools

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Domestication of Plants and Animals

• Neolithic - New Stone Age
• old definition cultural stage in which humans
  invented pottery and ground-stone tools
• new definition presence of domesticated plants
  and animals
• people began to produce food, not just procure it
• Definitions
• cultivation - crops
• domestication - animals and crops that are
  modified

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Domestication Examples

• Fertile Crescent
• arc of land from Israel through southern Turkey
  to Iran
• wheat, rye, barley, lentils, peas, fruit, nuts -
  8,000 B.C.
• Near East
• first animal domestication
• dogs - 10,000 B.C.
• goats and sheep - 7,000 B.C.
• cattle and pigs - 6,000 B.C.
• Ali Kosh (Iran, 7,500 B.C.)
• Catal Küyük (Turkey, 5,600 B.C.)

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Domestication Examples

• Mesoamerica
• Why did H/G lifestyle persist in Mesoamerica?
• First domesticate maize (5,000 B.C. in Mexico)
• Early domesticate bottle gourd
• Other domesticates beans and squash
• South America and Eastern United States
• most domesticates after 7,500 B.C. (gourds,
  squashes)
• first domesticate chili pepper (7,300 B.C.)
• corn/maize beginning 2,000 B.C., some as late
  as A.D. 200
• animals dogs and turkeys llamas, alpacas,
  guinea pigs

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Domestication Examples

• East Asia
• earliest evidence of cereal cultivation outside
  Near East (6,000 B.C.)
• mostly in plains and terraces around rivers
• other domesticates bamboo, gourds, rice
  (Thailand around 4,000 B.C.)
• Africa
• first domesticates African rice, peanuts, yams
• first domesticated animals donkey and guinea
  fowl

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Why (independent) domestication?

• V. Gordon Childe (1950s)
• Oasis Theory - People were forced into shrinking
  pockets, or oases, of food resources surrounded
  by desert, providing an incentive to domesticate
  plants and animals.
• Robert Braidwood and Gordon Willey
• Climatic changes werent severe enough for
  Childes Oasis Theory
• People domesticated plants and animals when they
  were good and ready. They needed information
  about their environment and an evolved culture.
• Lewis Binford and Kent Flannery
• Some change in external circumstances must have
  induced or favored the changeover to food
  production.
• Maybe a desire to reproduce abundant natural
  resources.
• Mark Cohen
• Population pressure on a global scale explains
  why people all over the world adopted
  agriculture.
• Others
• Return to the idea of climatic change

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Consequences of Food Production

• Population Growth
• birth spacing - ovulation, breastfeeding
• value of children
• cooking
• Decline in Health
• bones - nutrient deficiencies
• teeth - enamel defects
• shorter stature
• Diamond article - health, starvation, disease,
  class divisions
• Elaboration of Material Possessions
• houses became more elaborate and comfortable
• padded, upholstered furniture (woven textiles)
• advanced tool technology
• pottery, art creation
• long-distance trade

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Food Collection

• Food collection takes precedence over other
  activities important to survival. Defined as all
  forms of subsistence technology in which
  food-getting is dependent on naturally occurring
  resources--wild plants and animals.
• The way a society gets its food strongly predicts
  other aspects of a culture, from community size
  and permanence of settlement to type of economy
  and degree of inequality and type of political
  system, and even art styles and religious beliefs
  and practices.
• Three points covered in this chapter (EE 16)
• Ways different societies get food
• Why societies vary in their food-getting
  strategies
• Why societies switched from collecting to
  cultivating

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Food Collection - Features

• low population density
• small community size
• generally nomadic
• infrequent food shortages
• minimal trade
• no full-time crafts or specialists
• few, if any, wealth differences
• informal political leadership

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Food Production - Features

• Food production is the cultivation or
  domestication of plants and animals
• Horticulture
• growing of crops of all kinds with simple tools
  and methods
• extensive and shifting cultivation
• larger communities than food collectors some
  craftworkers
• Intensive Agriculture
• permanently cultivated fields
• more likely to have towns, cities, craftworkers,
  political organization, differences in wealth
• more likely to face famine and food shortages
• Pastoralism
• depend directly or indirectly on domesticated
  herds of animals
• mainly practiced in grassland or semiarid
  habitats
• generally nomadic

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Food Production - Features (EE p.272)
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Environmental Restraints

• Food collection was practiced on almost all areas
  of the Earth at one time.
• Tropical forests, until recently, were not the
  site of food collection.
• Grasslands favor large game.

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Origin, Spread of Food Production

• Possible Reasons for Switch
• regional population growth
• global population growth
• climatic change
• Possible Reasons for Primary Mode of Subsistence
• territorial expansion
• more productive method of getting food
• population pressure

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Economic Anthropology

• Economic anthropology studies economics in a
  comparative perspective.
• An economy is a study of production,
  distribution, and consumption of resources.
• Mode of production is defined as a way of
  organizing productiona set of social relations
  through which labor is deployed to wrest energy
  from nature using tools, skills, organization,
  and knowledge.
• Similarity of adaptive strategies between
  societies tends to correspond with similarity of
  mode of production variations occur according
  to environmental particularities.

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Natural Resources - Land

• Every society has access to natural resources
• Some own property (private property system), some
  share, some have rules of access to land

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Land Usage

• Food Collectors
• land has no intrinsic value for food collectors
• Horticulturists
• most do not have individual or family ownership
  of land
• Pastoralists
• customary for animals to be owned by individuals
• Intensive Agriculturalists
• individual ownership of land

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Technology

• Food Collectors
• tools belong to the person who made them
• tools include those needed for the hunt, digging
  sticks
• Pastoralists
• each family owns its own tools, clothes, tent,
  livestock
• Horticulturists
• principal tools include knife and hoe
• often obligated to lend to others
• Intensive Agriculture
• tools made by specialists, acquired through trade
  or purchase

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Modes of Production

• Domestic (family or kinship)
• Industrial (based on mechanized production)
• Tributary (elite controls portion of production)
• Postindustrialism (computers drive mechanized
  production)

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Incentives for Labor

• Why do people work?
• necessary for survival
• profit motive
• surplus storage
• overhunting
• sharing
• need for achievement
• enjoyable
• gain respect

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Forced Labor

• Taxation (U.S.)
• Corvée (Incas)
• Draft (many countries)
• Slavery (most extreme form)

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Reciprocity

• Three types of distribution of goods and
  services
• reciprocity
• redistribution
• market or commercial exchange
• Reciprocity consists of giving and taking without
  the use of money.
• generalized reciprocity - implicit and long-term
• balanced reciprocity - explicit and short-term
• The Kula Ring - Trobrianders of Papua, New Guinea
• leveling device (potlatch)

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Redistribution

• Redistribution is the accumulation of goods or
  labor by a particular person, or in a particular
  place, for the purpose of subsequent
  distribution.
• Important in societies that have a political
  hierarchy.
• Wealthy are generally more likely than the poor
  to benefit.
• Why do redistribution systems develop?
• Service - agricultural societies that contain
  subregions suited to different kinds of crops of
  natural resources
• Harris - competitive feasting encourages people
  to work harder to produce somewhat more than they
  need protection against crop failure

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Market or Commercial Exchange

• Definition Exchanges or transactions in which
  the prices are subject to supply and demand,
  whether or not the transactions actually occur in
  a marketplace. Market exchange involves not only
  the exchange of goods, but also transactions of
  labor, land, rentals, and credit.
• Resembles balanced reciprocity, but money is
  involved.
• Kinds of money
• general purpose (serves to purchase all kinds of
  goods)
• special purpose (exchanged on the spot)
• Why does money develop?
• When trade or barter becomes increasingly
  efficient.