reading Response 3
azi4mk
anth_220_ch-11._06-2.pptCultural Anthropology
Getting Food
Cultural Anthropology
Food-getting activities take precedence over all other survival needs, including reproduction, social control, defense, and transmission of knowledge to the next generation
Cultural Anthropology
In our society food-getting strategies are simplified – we merely need to go to the supermarket
Cultural Anthropology
But for some of the world, the level of food-getting takes up more time and is much more labor-intensive. It is called subsistence economics.
Cultural Anthropology
Subsistence economics is a situation where basically all able-bodied adults are engaged in getting food for themselves and their family as their main activity
Cultural Anthropology
Subsistence economics is how humans obtained their food for millions of years by foraging for their subsistence – e.g. gathering plants, nuts, berries, scavenging, hunting and fishing
Cultural Anthropology
Foraging is much less common today
As a subsistence style, it is used today by hunter-gatherers, who make up only about 5 million people on the planet
Cultural Anthropology
Foraging for plant life – gathering plants, berries, seeds, nuts and tubers is more common in areas close to the equator as compared to northern latitudes such as the Arctic, where plant life is scarce
Video:
Cultural Anthropology
In northern climates, since plants are scarce, hunting is more predominant
See an Inuit (Eskimo) hunter in Northern Canada in the classic anthropological film “ “Nanook of the North” (1922)
Foragers
Foragers actually spend less time obtaining food than most other types of food-getters
!Kung adults of Southern Africa spend just 17 hours a week on average getting food
Characteristics of Foragers
Foragers generally have small communities with no class differences
Getting Food: General Features of Food Collectors
A survey of 180 food-collecting societies indicates that there is a lot of variation with regard to which food-getting activity is most important to the society. Gathering is the most important activity for 30 percent of the surveyed societies, hunting for 25 percent, and fishing for 38 percent.
*
Food Production
Most of the world does not forage for food but produces it in one fashion or another
3 types of food production; horticulture, pastoralism, and intensive agriculture
No food production strategy is perfect, as the videos illustrate
Food Production
Horticulturalists have relatively small plots of land
Often use hand tools instead of machines
May also raise small animals; pigs, chickens, sheep, goats
Getting Food: Food Production
Horticulture
Plant cultivation carried out with relatively simple tools and methods; nature is allowed to replace nutrients in the soil, in the absence of permanently cultivated fields
Main Horticultural Method - Shifting cultivation
A type of horticulture in which the land is worked for short periods and then left to regenerate for some years before being used again
*
Characteristics of Horticulturalists
Horticulturalists may often move their villages every few years to avoid overcultivating the land
Characteristics of Horticulturalists
Nevertheless, their way of life is more sedentary than foragers and they are more densely populated than foragers
Characteristics of Horticulturalists
They also have the beginnings of different specializations within their roles – e.g. part-time politicians
The Yanomamö – Slash and Burn Horticulturalists
Slash-and-burn
A form of shifting cultivation among horticulturalists in which the natural vegetation is cut down and burned off. The cleared ground is used for a short time and then left to regenerate.
*
Slash and Burn Horticulture
Video:
Horticulturalists’ Village
*
Horticulturalists
- Slash and burn is an important adaptation to the environment
- The field is easier to plant after its vegetation is cut down
- The burned material provides nutrients for a better crop yield
Pastoralism: The Lapps
Pastoralism
A form of subsistence in which food-getting is based directly or indirectly on the maintenance of domesticated animals. The Lapps herd reindeer.
*
Video:
Pastoralists
The pastoralists are perhaps the most endangered group in terms of their food production lifestyle, since herding animals takes up large amounts of land, 15,000 square miles is not unheard of -- not easy to obtain today
Intensive Agriculture
Intensive agriculture
Food production characterized by the permanent cultivation of fields and made possible by the use of the plow, draft animals or machines, fertilizers, irrigation, water-storage techniques, and other complex agricultural techniques
*
Intensive Agriculture
People using intensive agriculture employ techniques that let them cultivate fields permanently, unlike horticulturalists
Key to permanent fields is either organic or inorganic fertilizer to keep fields fertile
Intensive Agriculturalists
Another difference between horticulturalists and intensive agriculturalists is the use of tools
Intensive agriculturalists use at least a plow pulled by an animal instead of the hand tools of horticulturalists; usually agriculturalists use automated equipment to cultivate their crops
Intensive Agriculturalists
Intensive agriculturalists generally specialize in just one or two crops; they can’t subsist on these alone
Generally they will raise cash crops – crops that they raise to bring to market so they can generate money to buy other things they need to survive
General Features of Intensive Agricultural Societies
Societies with intensive agriculture are more likely than horticulturalists to have towns and cities, a high degree of craft specialization, complex political organization, and large differences in wealth and power
*
Problems with Agriculture
More likely to face problems with drought and famine than horticulturalists
Since they depend on one crop only, the crop can be destroyed by disease, floods, lack of water, and there is no diversity of back up food to rely on
The Origin, Spread, and Intensification of Agriculture
Wheat is now grown in many areas of the United
States where hunting and gathering was practiced
*
Origins of Agriculture
The origins of agriculture are unclear as to why this food production style began
We do know that it started about 9,000-10,000 Y.B.P. probably in the Near East, near Eastern Iran today, but arose soon afterward independently (not through diffusion) elsewhere
The Rise of Agriculture
One theory as to the rise of agriculture is Mark Cohen’s
Believes that as we became better food gatherers, populations became larger
The environment could no longer support our foraging – parts of the world became overforaged
The Rise of Agriculture
People began to increase the yields of their most desirable wild plants by weeding and perhaps deliberately planting the most productive types of their favorite plants
Grains were a good choice here – they grow quickly and they can be stored for later
The Rise of Agriculture
Others, including some archaeologists, say that about 13,000-12,000 Y.B.P. there was a general climate change
The Ice Age ended and the world got drier and warmer and better suited to plant life, especially a type of grain that grew annually
The Rise of Agriculture
The archaeologists believe some foragers exploited this grain, storing it, and by doing so, gave up their nomadic foraging existence
It is not clear how we became agriculturalists, but agriculture changed human existence dramatically, with the rise of permanent settlements for the first time in our history
Video:
The Rise of Agriculture
With permanent settlements and increasing high population density, intensive agriculturalists could probably dominate their foraging, pastoralist, and horticulturalist neighbors, and these groups were pushed more and more into the margins where we see them today
Agriculture and Nutrition
The irony of the agricultural revolution is that it did not produce better nutrition, especially in the beginning
Agriculture and Nutrition
- Even though agriculture could support more people on a smaller amount of land, the early agriculturalists over-relied on single crops and did not get the variety of foods of that the foragers were able to obtain; therefore we see in the archaeological record there is more disease among early agriculturalists than among their non-agricultural contemporaries
Getting Food: General Features of Food Collectors and Producers
*
