CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume29, Numberi, FebruaryI988 ? I988 byThe Wenner-GrenFoundation for Anthropological Research. All rightsreserved OOII-3204/88/29oi-0002$2.75

Two major questions presentthemselves in the social anthropologyof hunter-gatherers.These questions do not overtlyshape the studies of researchersin the area Some Major Problems and probablyneed not even be explicitlyposed.2 Rather, they could be seen as problemsconstitutive of the an- in the Social thropologyof hunter-gatherers,problems that necessar- ily come to be posed in respectof it if onlyfrom outside the discipline. I have the feelingthat the intellectual Anthropologyof value and generalinterest of research on hunter-gatherer societies lie in our capacityor potentialfor scientifically Hunter- Gatherers' answeringthese questions. The firstquestion arises fromthe fact that hunter- gatherersappear to be the most ancient of so-called primitivesocieties-the impressionthat they preserve by Alain Testart the most archaic way of life known to humanity,that characteristicof the whole of the Palaeolithic. I am not saying that hunter-gatherersocieties are the most an- cient,merely that they appear to be so-that theyevoke Whatis therelationship between the present-day hunter-gatherer the societies of the Palaeolithic. Everyquestion neces- studiedby anthropologists and thesocieties of the Palaeolithic? sarilyarises initiallyat the level ofappearances, and it is Andhow is thearticulation between the economy of these soci- the business of science to criticise these appearances. etiesand theirother aspects to be conceived?In attemptingto The firstquestion may thereforebe formulatedthus: answerthese questions, this article takes into account a further problem,that of the uniqueness of Australian Aboriginal social Given the appearanceof similarityin termsof life-style, organization. technology,etc., between existing3 hunter-gatherer soci- eties and those of the past, how should one conceive of ALAIN TESTART is Directeurde Recherche,deuxieme classe, of the relationbetween them? theCentre National de la RechercheScientifique (mailing ad- This question is an evolutionaryone, and I know that dress:Maison des Sciencesde l'Homme,54 boulevardRaspail, many of my colleagues will not concern themselves 75270 ParisCedex 6, France).Born in 1945, he was educatedat theEcole NationalSuperieure des Mines de Paris(dipl6me with it, foranti-evolutionist feeling has been intensefor d'ingenieur,i968) and at theUniversite de ParisVII (doctoratde most of this century,particularly in France, and to a troisiemecycle en ethnologie,1975). His researchinterests are th largeextent remains so. Thereforeit is necessaryhere to social organizationof the Australian Aborigines, the social an- say a word about evolutionismand in its favour.In its thropologyof hunter-gatherers, and symbolism.His publications minimal form,evolutionism appears to me to consist, includeDes classificationsdualistes en Australie:Essai sur l'evolutionde l'organisationsociale (Parisand Lille: Editionsde 1 once it has been recognizedthat social formschange in Maisondes Sciencesde l'Hommeand Lille III, 1978), Les chas- the long term,in an investigationof the generalcharac- seurs-cueilleurs,ou l'originedes in6galit6s(Paris: Societe terof that change and of the laws, if any,that govern it. d'Ethnographie[Universite de ParisX, Nanterre],i982), Essai sur Such an inquirycannot but be legitimate,and it is aston- chezles chas- les fondementsde la divisionsexuelle du travail ishingthat scholars,and not the least eminent,such as seurs-cueilleurs(Paris: EHESS, Cahiersde l'Homme,i986), and L communismeprimitif, I, Economieet id6ologie(Paris: Maison Radcliffe-Brownin certain of his writings(I968[I95.2: des Sciencesde l'Homme,i985). The presentpaper was submitte II5), have supposedlybeen able to foundthe scientific in finalform I9 VI 87. standingof social anthropologyon the a priorirejection of all evolutionaryconcems. I lack the space here to develop this argument(but see Testart I985c, i987b); I will say onlythat one should not confusethe undeniably outdatedevolutionist schools ofthe igth centurywith a careful modem inquiry based on the considerable findingsof prehistoricarchaeology and embarkingon what I would call a "reasoned evolutionism." Among the errorsof earlierevolutionism could be cited the par- ticulartheses ofthe differentigth-century schools, most of them untenable; the methods adopted by the evolu-

2. Posed at the Chicagosymposium of I966 and airedin Man the Hunter(Lee and DeVore i968), theyseem to havebeen less promi- nentin thecourse of the four intemational conferences on hunter- gatherersheld in Paris,Quebec, Bad Homburg,and Londonbe- tween1978 and I986. 3. "Existing"in the sense of the "ethnographicpresent" or what prehistorianscall the"sub-present," that is, thosesocieties capable ofbeing treated anthropologically or ethnohistoricallyand broadly i. Translatedby RoyWillis. observedfrom the 17th or i8th centuryup untilour times.

I

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 2 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, February1988 tionists,particularly the abuse of the notion of "sur- The second question arises from our speaking of vival," which was appliedwilly-nilly to differentinstitu- hunter-gatherersocieties, that is to say, of an ensemble tions without asking why and in what context a past of societies groupedin the same categorybecause of the institutioncould survive and be integratedas a living similarappearances of theirsubsistence techniques and element into a new structure;and the generalphiloso- theireconomies. This assumes firstof all thatpeoples as phygoverning evolutionary inquiries, including the out- differentand widely separatedone fromanother as the dated idea of moral progressand the concept of social Australian Aborigines and the Inuit (Eskimo) can be evolution on a biological model. Here was an ensemble profitablycompared: what is in questionis thus initially both odd and obsolete. the possibilityof a social anthropologynotwithstanding For a betterunderstanding of the differencebetween cultural differences(in the sense of culturalanthropol- these old evolutionistpositions and those currentlypos- ogy). Further,these societies are grouped in terms of sible, we may returnto the question: What is the rela- techno-economiclevel, and this presupposesthat their tion between existingand formerhunter-gatherer soci- technologicaland economic characteristicsare relevant eties? Writing at the tum of the century, Sollas for the description and understandingof them. The (I9II:382 et passim) replies without more ado to this underlyingquestion is how one is to conceptualize a question with the statementthat the Tasmanians are a possible articulationbetween the economic aspect of a people of the Eolithic,the Australians"Mousterians of societyand its otheraspects. the Antipodes,"the BushmenAurignacians, and the Es- During the past few decades there have been many kimo Magdalenians. He identifiesthe one with the discussions on how hunter-gatherersshould be defined. other,purely and simply.It is evident,however, that the Here I take it as obvious that hunter-gatherersare by Eskimo are not Magdaleniansany morethan other exist- definitionpeople who hunt and gather and do other ing hunter-gatherersare prehistoricpeoples. There can thingslike huntingand gathering.However, what does be no question ofrepeating such naive statementstoday. it mean to hunt and gather?It could mean to exploit The anti-evolutionistscould well reply that the two resourcesthe reproductionof which one does not con- series of peoples comparedby Sollas are separatedby at trolas one does in agricultureand/or stockkeeping. If the least io,ooo years.But anti-evolutionism4contents itself relevantcriterion is absence of domesticationin respect with assertingthis difference,as much in space as in of subsistence,it would seem necessaryto include all time-a viewpointthat preventscomparison of peoples who depend for subsistence upon wild resources, with obvious similarities.In other words, between a whetherfishing, collecting, or gathering.Finally, if this simplisticevolutionist position that claims to identify technicaldefinition appears a good one it is not because past cultureswith those of the presentand the opposite of a materialism that I believe should be a question position that restrictsitself to observingdifference and ratherthan a doctrinebut ratherbecause it allows the rejects even the idea of comparison,there is an inter- explicitformulation of one ofthe questionsthat give the mediate and more subtle position that takes account of studyof hunter-gatherers its interest:Is therea relation, both evident differencesand apparent similarities. and, if so, how should it be expressed,between the This contentionmay seem trivialto some, but it is still techno-economiclevel of a society and the various as- heresyto others. pects of its social organization?This definitionseems a The relation between existing and past hunter- good one (although it should be emphasized that any gatherersocieties is problematic,and it is our job to definitionis inevitablyprovisional) because it does not constructa conceptionof it. The answerto the question evade the problemas would a definitionin purelysocial cannot be otherthan complex,and the two extremere- terms,5which would mix in the verymoment of its ut- sponses I have evoked both errby excess of simplicity, teranceterms referring to technical activities("hunter- the firstbecause it does not see this relation as prob- gatherers")with social forms.In the same way, adher- lematicand the second because it denies the existenceof ents of "cultural ecology" long used the term "band any such relation.Both evade the problem,which is in society"in referenceto hunter-gathererswhen insteadit what respectsexisting hunter-gatherer societies are con- should have been asked to what extent these societies tinuouswith those of the past and in what respectsthey were in factorganized into bands. This question was no are different. doubt posed, but it would have been betterto avoid a terminologythat tendedto obscure it. 4. Sucha positionhas recentlybeen forcefully reaffirmed by Schrire I shall now brieflyoutline the evolutionof what seem (i984). When she makes herselfthe advocateof archaeologyand to me to have been the major problematicsof the an- ethnohistory,above all in respectto southernAfrica and Australia, thropologyof hunter-gatherers with Childe's twoimmense regions that have beenlittle investigated from these starting pointsof view,I can onlyapplaud, but I am unableto followher concept of the "Neolithic Revolution" (I94919-251:34; when she appearsto opposehistory and evolutionism.The ques- 1953[1935]:43; I964[1936]:65; I96l[1954]:7I; etc.). The tionthat arises is ratherthat of knowing whether, on thebasis of a choice of such a point of departuremay seem surprising betterknowledge of particular histories, one can discernmore gen- eralevolutionary tendencies. If the crucialquestion to be posedto an evolutionismI call reasonedconsists in identifyingthe relations 5. As proposedby Ingold (ig8oa:74). Correlatively,an archaeologist (necessarilyhistorical) between existing and past societies,that specializingin theMiddle East, Ducos (I 976:148), proposesa socio- evolutionismincontestably counts archaeologists and ethnohisto- economicdefinition (in termsof property) of the domesticationof riansamong its principalsupporters and audience. animals.

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social AnthropologyofHunter-Gatherers | 3 in that Childe was not an anthropologistand did not which Palaeolithic and Neolithic are definedas the Age claim to be one. Moreover,his main fieldof studywas of Worked Stone and the Age of Polished Stone,9and the Neolithic; he had littleto say about the Palaeolithic (3) an alimentaryapproach that goes far beyond the and was consistentlyreticent about the social character- confinesof prehistory which classifiespeoples according istics to be attributedto hunter-gatherers.Nevertheless, to what they eat and is expressedin the evolutionary I believe that his concept of the Neolithic Revolution sequence hunting,stockbreeding, agriculture. lends strengthand relevance to the categoryof hunter- This last ruptureis more difficultto definethan the gatherers,which can be envisagedonly in its opposition others,because here I am introducinga distinctionnot to the categoryof agro-pastoralists.Two points should made by Childe himself,but it is decisive forall that. be emphasized: (1) Childe conceived of this opposition Childe undoubtedlyinterested himself in peoples' diets, as bothdiachronic and synchronic,and it is thus capable and it was even one of his main preoccupations,but he oforganizing data fromboth prehistoric archaeology and was less concernedwith what men ate than with the ethnography.(2) Conceived diachronically,it translates way theyproduced it and the repercussionsof this pro- as a major historicrupture comparable in importance, duction on society.'0 In his hands the distinctionbe- accordingto Childe,to thatconstituted by theIndustrial tween Palaeolithic and Neolithic becomes an economic Revolutionin modem times. This, grossomodo, is the difference:the Neolithic is definedas a way ofproducing grandconceptual frameworkwithin which the idea of foodfollowing the domesticationof plants and animals, hunter-gatherershas evolved.6 impliesa certainorganization of production, and has cer- Childe has been much criticisedfor his notion of a tain consequences fordemographic structure and mode Neolithic Revolution. It has been argued that the pro- oflife. In the finalanalysis it matterslittle whether peo- cess involved was extremelyslow and not the sudden ple eat curds or cereals; although Childe did not use rupturesuggested by the term"revolution," that his ma- these terms,it is economic structurethat is in question. terialismis somewhat mechanistic,etc. But these re- In thus definingthe Palaeolithic and Neolithic in eco- proachesfrom prehistorians have to do with the way of nomic terms,he drew attentionto the differencebe- conceivingthis Neolithic Revolutionas a historicalpro- tween two major kinds of society.For one thing,he dis- cess; it is always a matterin these debates of describing covered the social in the depths of prehistory,a or reconstitutingthis process, its explanation,its causes, discipline whose immediate data were of a geological etc. I am not competent to discuss these criticisms or naturalisticorder. But, by the same token, he be- (which,insofar as I can judge,appear well founded),and I queatheda continuingproblem to social anthropology:if do not see the necessity to do so because in my view this oppositionbetween two greatcategories of society Childe's main contributionis hardlythat of having at- definedby theireconomies is to have meaningand rele- temptedto imagine a processbut of havingthought of a vance, how should one thinkof each of these ensembles conceptual opposition.What he bequeathed to later re- in all theirsocial dimensions?What ties, what connec- searcherswas not so much a reflectionon the way in tions,what causal relationslink the economyand other which one type of society succeeds anotheras the very aspects of the social? The problem of the articulation idea of a global and radical oppositionbetween two ma- between economy and society has been posed in an- jor kinds of socio-economicorganization. He was in fact thropologysince the thirties,when Steward(I936, I955) the firstto propose a definition-or at least to see the attackedit in termsof a problematicthat was to endure implications of a definition-of the Neolithic as an beyondMan the Hunter into the seventies.In adopting epoch characterizedby sedentaryagriculture; correla- the notion of "band" already presentin American an- tively,the Palaeolithic is definedby a hunter-gatheringthropology, Steward proposed a moderate and rather economy.By so doing,it could be said, he achieved,in flexiblebut convincingenough integration of the known the fieldof prehistory and, moregenerally, in anthropol- ethnographicfacts. The American "band" more or less ogy,an epistemologicalrupture or break7in relationto correspondedto what Radcliffe-Brown(I930-3i), re- threeigth-century approaches to the differencebetween ferringto Australia,called the "horde": a fundamental these epochs: (i) a naturalisticapproach, in terms of group,residential and economic,endowed with a certain which the succession of the two stages of the Stone Age capacityfor social and political integration.The "band is seen as being like that of two geological eras (glacial/ post-glacial) characterized by differentenvironments 9. These definitionsare generallyattributed to Lubbockin i865, and differentfaunas,8 (2) a technological approach,in althoughhe in factmade use of the threecriteria, including the economicone, to defineand differentiatethe two StoneAges-a 6. One can see somethinglike a huntingstage in Morgan'sAncient fact,moreover, recognized by Childe (i963[19511:.29). Childe'scon- Society,but the oppositionbetween hunters and agriculturalists tributionthus consisted essentially in underliningthe centralim- does not figurethere as a key oppositionas it does forChilde. portanceof a criterionalready recognized before him, not of invent- 7. The expression"epistemological break" (coupure6pist6mo- ing it. logique) is proposedby Althusser (i965:24) to designateone ofthe io. It was thus that he wrote (I963[I951I:33) to justifyhis keyconcepts of the epistemologyof GastonBachelard. definitionof the Neolithic:"Obviously the cultivationof edible 8. On thispoint Childe did no morethan take up in his ownway a plants,the breeding of animals for food, or the combination of both rupturealready entrenched in prehistory,the existence, recognized pursuitsin mixedfarming, did represent a revolutionary advance in since the tum of the century,of a periodcalled the "Mesolithic" humaneconomy. It permitteda substantialexpansion of popula- afterthe last glaciationand continuingthe traditionof worked tion.It madepossible and evennecessary the production of a social stone. surplus. . .."

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 4 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, FebruaryI988 level of organization"was the social formheld to corre- fishers' constitutinga categorydistinct from that of spond to the hunter-gatheringeconomy. This is-oi hunter-gatherers(Murdock I968a:i5). Neither of these was-the key concept of the anthropologyof hunter- solutions includes the idea of a specificarticulation be- gatherers. tween economic formand social form,because at pre- That Childe said but little,as I have remarked,about ciselythis pointrecourse is had to a criterionextemal to the relationbetween the economyand the restof society the economic structure,either ecological or alimen- among hunter-gatherersmay be because of his unhappy tary."1 awarenessof the inadequacy ofhis thinkingon the sub- 2. Vis-a-vis Soviet anthropologyand prehistory,the ject. One cannot propose a Neolithic Revolution or a presence in Siberia,of inegalitarianhunters and fisher- rupturethat separates two major ensembles unless the folk poses a problem similar to that of the Northwest phenomenaon each side ofthe dividecan at least forthe Coast. This problemhas been obscuredfor a long time most part be thoughtof in the same terms,and Childe by a purely technologicalconception of the Neolithic, was too well acquainted with the ethnographicdata not principallydefined by the use of potteryand polished to know that no such unificationis possible. There are, stone: hence all the Siberian hunter-gatherersare ex- in particular,societies of the NorthwestCoast of North cluded fromthe Neolithic category(Mongait I959:83- Americathat constitute an enormouschallenge: lacking 87; Okladnikovi962:273-74; et al.; butnote some dif- agricultureor stockbreeding,these societies are never- ferentapproaches since the seventies, such as that of theless quasi-sedentary and strongly inegalitarian Khlobystin,cited by Howe I976). (Childe I954:4I-42). Childe was greatlypreoccupied The question is thus a double one. On the one hand, with the archaeologicaldata fromLake Baikal and from one has to decide whetherto recognize,within the large certain European sites, where again the grave goods class of hunter-gatherers(defined as peoples not practis- of simple hunter-gatherersshow that their societies ing domestication),different categories; eventually this were inegalitarian(I963[I95i]:82-86). He nonetheless question implies anotheron the periodizationof prehis- adhered to what might be called the "surplus argu- torictime. On the otherhand, the question is thatof the ment": thatin the absence offood production, the econ- idea of an articulation between economy and society: omy ofhunter-gatherers is too weak and undevelopedto how to understandtne factthat hunter-gatherers held to yield a surplusand thereforeeconomic inequalities can- be exceptional,if indeed they possess the same econ- not emerge.Childe appearsto have maintainedthis line omy, have been able to constructsuch differentsoci- ofreasoning until the end ofhis life(I954:4I-48), and eties. It is to answerthis double question thatI have put yet he was obliged to recognize the existence of in- forwardthe concept of "storinghunter-gatherers,"'2 a equalities among certainhunter-gatherers. Ifone cannot categoryarising from recognition of an economic struc- even say of these societies that theyare always egalitar- ture characterizedby (i) an economic cycle based on ian (i963[195i]:85-86), what can one say about them seasonal and massive storageof staples and (2) some an- that is general? nual planningof the economy,implying a certainrigid- Childe was too great a thinkerto have recourse to ityof behaviours and strategies.As the broadoutlines of expedientsto rid himselfof this embarrassingproblem. this thesishave alreadybeen laid out in the pages of this It was in fact crucial forhis thinking,because one can- journal (Testarti982b), I returnto it here only to show not affirmthe validity of an opposition between two how it relates to the problematicjust outlined and to termswhen one of them is itselfa problem.One could indicate how it may be improvedupon. recognizethe diversityof Neolithic societies once they Conceived in economic terms,this proposedsolution had emergedfrom their common source,but what was shattersthe supposed unity of hunter-gatherersin that one to make of these hunter-gatherers,themselves so these termsdo not lead to domestication;the solution diverse?This is whyit can be said that,despite the mod- consists in redefiningthe economic categoriesand dis- est place of hunter-gatherersin Childe's writings,the question posed by such exceptionalhunter-gatherer so- i i. Somediscordant voices made themselves heard from the sixties cieties as those ofthe NorthwestCoast hauntshis entire in relationto California,which posed a problemsimilar to thatof work. the NorthwestCoast. These criticscontested, with reason,the It equally haunts the anthropology of hunter- universalityof the "band" modeland establishedthat the Indians of California,the most numerousof the hunter-gatherersand gatherers.In this respectit is extremelyinteresting-at amongthe mostimportant for their cultural achievements, could an epistemological level-to see how this unresolved in no way be simplyset aside as "exceptional"(Bean and Saubel questionprovoked a regressionto an earlierproblematic: ig6i:2,37; Kunkel1974:8; Bean and Blackburn1976; et al.). I. In American anthropologyinformed by the theory I 2. Althoughthe idea appearedin twopreliminary articles (Testart of the "band," the question takes the followingform: 1979a:IoI-3; 1979b), it was not fully developed until my book (I982a). Since the publicationof this work,numerous studies of How is it possible that the societies of the Northwest "exceptional"hunter-gatherers have appeared,among which could Coast are organizednot at the band level but at that of be cited a collectiveJapanese publication (Koyama and Thomas the chiefdom?Two answers were proposed duringthe 198I) with the significanttitle AffluentForagers that traces a very fiftiesand sixties. Accordingto one, it is exceptional interestingparallel between aboriginal California and theJapan of theJomon epoch; some workson theNorthwest Coast, emphasiz- ecological conditions that account for the exceptional ingsuch exceptional aspects as slavery(Mitchell and Donald I985) characterof thesesocieties (Steward I 955:175; Service orthe potlatch (Mauze I986); somestudies of the Eskimo of north- i962:47; et al.). Accordingto theother, it is a matterof westemAlaska (BurchI986); etc.

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-Gatherers15 tinguishingothers that are more precise and relevant. and provides the economic basis on which the first But this economic solution also appeals to the otherap- statelikesocieties can develop. The "Neolithic Revolu- proaches(ecological, technological, alimentary) and per- tion" conceivedby Childe as the ensembleof the radical mits a restorationof the factorsimplicated by these ap- changesintroduced by the adoptionof agriculture is thus proaches to their properplace as secondary ones, not explodedin space and time along two axes, geographical strippedof relevance but drawingtheir meaning from and historical. Rather than a refutationof Childe's their interactionwith economic structures.Thus the views, the proposed model consists, in a sense, of its economic structurebased on storagepresupposes four generalization. conditions for its realization, two ecological and two The main interestof the new model is thatit allows us technological:resources have to be (i) abundantand (2) to paint a pictureof social evolutionthat is much more seasonal, and theremust be techniquesfor (i) the acqui- satisfyingthan a simple succession fromPalaeolithic to sition of largeamounts of resourcesand (2) theirpreser- Neolithic. This pictureis more complexnot onlyin that vation and long-termstorage. Thus not only environ- it revealsa rupturethat had not been apparentbefore and mentaland technologicalfactors but also the alimentary in distinguishingtwo ruptureswhere only one had been one become subordinatedto and integratedwith the eco- seen but also, while recognizingthe existenceof a major nomic structure.From simple considerationsof the time line of development,in drawingattention to regional requiredto preserveresources it is apparentthat it was modalities of evolution.To me it appearsneither rigor- relativelyshort when it came to vegetables(the products ously unilinearnor, properly speaking, multilinear. of gathering)and fishand verygreat for meat; it follows That said, we now come to the second major question that this storageeconomy could come into being only posed at the beginningof this article,that of the rela- forthose who were principallygatherers and/or fishers tions between economy and society.How does the pro- ratherthan hunters. posed model allow us to respond to this question? It This solutionevidently leads to rejectionof the idea of could be said to have been especially designedto take a "Neolithic Revolution" and the relatedidea of a radi- account of certainsocial characteristicsso surprisingfor cal separation between hunter-gatherersand agro- hunter-gatherersthat they had been called "excep- pastoralists.Or ratherit results, within Childe's own tional": theirsedentary character and the profoundlyin- problematic,in displacingthe locus of the problem:it egalitariannature of their society.13 Conceived in eco- replaces the opposition between hunter-gatherersand nomic terms,it must appeal to a certainconcept of the agro-pastoralistswith anotherthat is more relevantbut relationbetween economyand society.Correlations be- still conceivedin termsof economic structure.Not only come evidentbetween economic structureand storage, is the previouscategory of hunter-gatherers irremediably sedentariness,and socio-economic inequality. These split into two irreduciblecategories but also the hunter- correlationsare satisfyingand allow us to envisage the gatherersI have called "storers" are seen to have the categoryof storinghunter-gatherers as an autonomous same economic structureas cultivatorsof cereals, the and properlyconstructed one solidlyanchored in empir- formerdoing with wild resources(products of gathering, ical fact and quite distinctfrom the other categoryof fishing,etc.) exactly what the latter do with domes- hunter-gathererscharacterized more classically by ticated ones. Here again the new model allows us to nomadism(a mobile life-style)and the egalitariannature integratethe criterionof domesticationas a secondary of their society. The idea of eventual causal links be- factor.Where wild resourcesare not both abundantand tween the correlatedelements is, however,at least in an seasonal, the introductionof adequate resourcesdomes- importantpart, a problem. It is understandablethat ticated by man and transplantedinto the environment groups should practice intensive storageof theirmain is an indispensableprecondition for the realization of food resourcesto provideagainst the season of scarcity the economic structureof storage.The model thus al- and also that they should be sedentaryor nearly so lows us to view agriculturenot as an economic factorof throughoutthis season, since the accumulated reserves radical or universal importancebut as a technological renderunnecessary any migrationin searchof food. This factorthat becomes decisive onlyunder certain environ- connectionbetween economic formand "residencepat- mentalconditions. Agriculture becomes one ofthe tech- +.*-"//e eIn01"V%l an %"A ii 14 T+ p*n%Ws^e1p, eon +,- Am.,.rp, nological preconditionsof the economic structure.En- 13. I leave to one side a thirdcharacteristic of these societies, their visaged in historical perspective, the invention of high demographicdensity, which is much less pertinentto the agricultureloses the radical importancethat it had for discussionhere. Childe and has to be resituatedamong the ensemble of 14. This does not mean that intensivefood storageis the only inventions marking the final Palaeolithic and Meso- means forhunter-gatherers to become sedentaryor thatit is the lithic. Agriculturethus occupies a much more modest onlyfactor that can explainthe conditionof those that are seden- tary.I have alwaysacknowledged at least threeother factors (Tes- positionin relationto the originof the economic struc- tartI98I:I84-87; i982a:28-30) thatcombine in differentdegrees turebased on storage,but once thishas been established, in each case: (i) the developmentof effectivemeans of transport, it reassumes its historicalimportance as the sole factor such as sledgesand draughtand pack animals;(2) thepossibility, capable of developing to the limit certain tendencies mainlyrealized in northernEurasia (a pointrightly emphasized by Watanabe I983), for the groupto split into sub-groups,one of thathad appearedearlier, in particularwith the storage- which remainsstable while othersgo on periodicexpeditions; based structure:it allows the intensificationof produc- (3) the existenceof non-seasonal,abundant wild foodresources tion in a way not realizable by simple hunter-gatherers thatare concentratedin a limitedarea. Intensive storage (as I have

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 6 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number i, FebruaryI988 certain major characteristicsof what Durkheim's fol- in that it does not allow a choice betweentwo converse lowerswould have called "social morphology":stability conceptions of the causal link. According to one of and concentrationof the population in villages during these, it is the storage-basedeconomy that,by generat- the season of scarcity,which is also the time of leisure, ing material riches within the society,gives rise to in- the season when ceremonies occur, etc. But the other equalities; the technologicaland economic organization connection,between what I have been calling the "eco- is the ultimate cause of social forms.According to the nomic base" and the developmentof socio-economic in- other,it is, on the contrary,the social formsthat pro- equalities,is farfrom clear. The centralidea (farfrom the voke the transformationin the materialbasis ofthe soci- only one, but I simplify)is that the massive stockpiling ety; thus one could imagine,for example, that individ- of staples constitutesthe material base for a possible uals or groupssocially dominantby virtueof a hierarchy developmentof socio-economicinequalities. The key to (whichwould then be envisagedas the initial cause) de- the problemand the whole ambiguityof the formulation termined a certain intensificationof production and turn on the use of the adjective "possible." It has two favouredthe productionof durablegoods of which they senses. Accordingto the first,the transitionfrom an were the principalbeneficiaries through their dominant economy of nomadic hunter-gatheringto an economy position and that would allow them to ensure (or rein- based on storagepermits (renders possible) the develop- force)their domination of an enlargedmaterial base. See- ment of socio-economicinequalities to the extentthat ing no way of decidingin favourof one or the otherof the bulk ofthe productionis thenceforwardtransformed these arguments equally compatible with my ap- (by techniques appropriatedand accumulated differen- proach,'6I have avoided choosingbetween them.With- tiallyby individualsor by groups).Let it be understood out being able to identifyprecisely the causal connec- that there may be socio-economic inequalities outside tion betweeneconomic formand social form,the theory the storage-basedeconomy, but these can only become inevitably leaves unanswered the question that has significanton the basis of such an economy:in concrete everyright to be posed. It identifiesa certainarticulation terms, whereas a man socialized among nomadic between economyand society,but it is a weak articula- hunter-gathererscould at the most accumulate some tion.I leave my criticismthere, because thereis another stone axes, feathers,furs, and otheritems valued by the that is much more decisive. culture,enjoy great prestige, accumulate wives, and dis- In the processof this generalreorganization, the locus pose of the best portionsof game thathe was obligedto of the problemhas been displaced: it is not the agricul- redistributein the absence of the practice of preserva- turalrevolution that representsthe major break among tion, the same man could, among storing hunter- societies but the adoption of an economic structureof gatherers,control a considerable mass of foodstuffs which the centralfeature is storage.It accounts much eitheras a privateowner or as the head of a group.In the betterthan Childe's conceptualizationfor the distinc- second sense ofthe word"possible," the developmentof tion between egalitarianand inegalitariansocieties: the inequalities is not ineluctable: it is only a possibility appearance of inequalities is in large part tied to stor- inherentin what I have called the economic base, and I age.'7 This reorganization,which I have already indi- was somewhat surprisedto discoverin each case study cated as lyingentirely within the frameworkof Childe's of storinghunter-gatherers the presence of marked in- problematic,thus takes account of a veryimportant as- equalities. I have even asserted that this possibilityis pect of society,but it has nothingto say on its other subordinatedto certainsocial conditions,that it cannot aspects-kinship, social organization,and the symbolic be realizedas long as foodsharing is therule and requires dimension,all mattersthat are the peculiar concernsof the appearanceof a kind ofprivate property in foodstuffs social anthropology. or controlby the collectivitythrough a privilegedindi- Nomadic hunter-gatherers,although they can be glob- vidual who is socially investedwith a pre-eminentright ally characterizedas egalitarian,exhibit enormous dif- overthe managementof the stores.(These two divergent ferencesin termsof social organization.Nothing is more possibilitiesseemed to me to have been realized grosso strikingin this respectthan the peculiarposition amidst modo, the one in California,the otheron the Northwest this greatclass ofnomadic hunter-gatherersoccupied by Coast.) Australia.Here are what I see as the threemajor distinc- This is a complex argumentthat has not always been tive traitsof Australiansocieties: understood,'5and it conceals a fundamentalambiguity i. Unilinearity.With two or three doubtfulexcep- conceivedit, integrated into a cyclicaleconomic structure) entails i 6. The originalattempt by Legros (i982) to developa theoryof the sedentariness,but sedentarinessdoes not entailstorage. The ques originof inequalities on a social base sprangfrom an argumentof tionhere is onlystorage as I have definedit (i.e.,simultaneousli thesecond type; as he now sees it,his approachis notincompatible intensive,seasonal, and providingthe groupwith essential nutri withmine (personalcommunication). tionduring the whole season of scarcity) and notthe more limitec 17. I have neverclaimed that this was theonly factor. It wouldnot storage,less systematicand directedto otherends, thatis prac apply to cultivatorsof cereals and hunter-gatherersin regions tised,more or less,by all hunter-gatherers(Testart i982a: 149-73 favourablefor the establishmentof a storage-basedeconomy, i.e., I985a; Bahuchetand Thomas I985; IngoldI985; et al.). regionsin whichthe two environmentalconditions for this econ- I 5. Forexample, the otherwise moderate criticism of me byCauvix omy are realized.I have indicatedthe limitsof this approachin (i985:17 n. 8), accordingto whichI supposea privateappropriatiol showingthat the storagefactor probably played no partfor cul- ofstocks, can onlybe theresult of a superficialreading of my book tivatorsof root crops (Testart i982c).

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-Gatherers| 7 tions,all the more or less well-knownAustralian tribes cases. The situation in the Canadian interioris more (amongthe 500 on the continentat the time of coloniza- complex: unilinearitycombined in varyingmeasures tion)possess a clan organizationand may be matrilineal, with totemismand with organizationinto two or three patrilineal,or both.'8 phratriesis found among the southernAlgonkin and 2. Binarity,a dualist schema in both social organiza- among the western Athapaskans,but these two cases tion and the systemof representations. It sufficeshere to occur on the marginsof the regionand in contact with recall the very complex game played out in Australia cultivatingand/or storing peoples, as if the nomadic between moieties that may be patrilineal,matrilineal, hunter-gathererswere reproducingin their society the or, again, endogamic (generationlevels). These opposi- salient featuresof their powerfulneighbours. In brief, tions combine in the diverse systems of sections and unilinearity,dualism, and totemism are the general sub-sectionsand in the semi-moieties,systems exclu- characteristicsof Australian societies; conversely,in the sive to Australia.Other typesof dualist organizationin- otherhunter-gatherer societies which,however, seem to clude those connectedwith the divisionof moieties into possess the same typeof economy,these characteristics phratriesin the northand otheroppositions not reduc- are rare.2"How can one account forsuch a radical dif- ible to the precedingones in the southeast.'9 ference? 3. A classificatorymode of thoughtthat classes to- To my way of thinking,this problemis the major one gethermen and things.The social frameworksthat di- facing the anthropologyof hunter-gatherers.It can be vide membersof societyby clan and class, moiety,sec- formulatedas follows: what purposedoes it serve to re- tion, etc., also serve as classificatoryschemas for the tain a categoryof hunter-gatherers,defined as they are whole of Nature, with the result that each social seg- by a similarityin way of lifeor in elementaryeconomic ment (clan or class) correspondsto one or severalanimal behaviour,if this categoryremains powerless to resolve species or some naturalphenomenon. This is totemism, the major problemsof social anthropology?What is the nowhereso well developed(and so multiform)as in Aus- point of an anthropologyof hunter-gatherersif it has to tralia. remainaloof fromall the questions thathave concerned Unilinearityis associated with kinshipterminological social anthropologyfrom its beginnings?All the subjects systemssuch as the "bifurcatemerging" ("Iroquois," in I have touched on in connection with the comparison Murdock's terminology),unless thereis terminological between the Australiansand otherhunter-gatherers are differentiationbetween the two cross-cousins.More- par excellence the classical topics of the discipline as over,Australian social organizationdetermines classes theyhave emergedthrough works that are historicland- that have sometimes been called "matrimonial"; ex- marks: that of Morgan,whose major interestwas clan ogamy is expressed by a prohibitionagainst marrying organizationand kinship systems,that of Durkheim, into the same class or a prescriptionof marriageinto who was more interestedin totemic phenomena and another. modes of classificatorythought, and finallythat of Levi- The phenomena I have just enumeratedare solidly Strauss,in connectionwith exogamyand matrimonial characteristicof Australia and virtuallyabsent among systems. other nomadic hunter-gatherers.Let it be emphasized How is this problem posed in the anthropologyof that I have excluded the storersfrom the comparison hunter-gatherersas it has developed since Steward, because theybelong to an altogetherdifferent economic throughthe works of Service,Leacock, Damas, Lee, and category.For the same reason, I exclude "mounted" others,and foundits classical expressionin the sixties hunter-gathererssuch as the Plains Indians, because with the publication of Man the Hunter?The key con- theyare as much stockbreedersas hunters,and the trop- cept by means of which the social organization of ical peoples of Africaand Asia, because theysubsist as hunter-gatherersis approachedand characterizedis that hunter-gatherersonly through their ties with neighbour- of the "band." It is an ambiguous concept: in the first ing agro-pastoralistsin what seems to me a veritable place it has a residentialsense, designatinga group of inter-ethnicdivision of labour.20The remaininghunter- persons who live together,share a camp, and perform gatherersare divided between several major culturere- more or less the same economic tasks, but it also refers gions of which the most importantare, in addition to to a minimal political unit. By reason of this veryambi- Australia,southern Africa, southern South America,the guity,it has seemed capable ofproviding a link between Great Basin, and the interiorof Canada. None of the economic base and social formsand consequentlyhas featuresobserved in Australiais foundin the firstthree given rise to impassioned debates. Service (i962, i966), generalizingthe alreadyold ideas of Radcliffe-Brownon the Australian"horde," maintained that the local group I8. There are also clans formedon a local or conceptualbasis, withouta strictlyunilineal composition,which it is out of the had to be patrilocalfor purely material reasons, roughly, questionto examinewithin the frameworkof this article. let us say, because of the organizationof labour; there- I 9. This lastpoint is importantbecause it showsthat the principle foreit was not hardto see in patrilinealitythe social and ofbinarity is not limitedto the classical and recognizedforms of ideological translationof the patrilocal compositionof social organization,such as sections,sub-sections, etc. (Testart the Whl hi ITIAITAi TAT a nO lno "Ar%wTAhlr 1980). 2o. Hunter-gatherersof this category present a numberof distinc- tive featuresthat I have soughtto enumerateelsewhere (Testart 2i. One arrivesat the same sortof resultby takingthe kinship I98I:I88-203). systemsinto consideration(Testart I985 b:248-53).

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ratherastute, it had to be admittedthat it was incompat- able requiresmore lengthydiscussion. Let us say forthe ible with the ethnographicdata. Numerous researchers sake of brevitythat the characterizationof a formof (Turnbull,Lee, et al.) in effectcriticised Service's model societyas orga-nizedinto bands seems to me a characteri- by showing that the local groupwas by no means pat- zation by an extremelyweak social form,for the band as rilocal but, on the contrary,fluid and flexiblein compo- it has been redefinedfollowing the critiqueof Service's sition. suggestionis not strictlyspeaking anything more than a Paradoxically, the most powerful criticism was to ratherdiffuse local groupingand, at most, a formof or- come fromAustralia, where there developed fromthe ganization of labour. It was possible to maintain the beginningof the fiftiesa great controversyabout local band as the general form of hunter-gatherersocieties organization:A. P. Elkin,R. Berndt,L. Hiatt,and numer- onlybecause it had been emptiedof its content,24i.e., of ous otherresearchers rejected22 Radcliffe-Brown's model the sense it had forSteward or Service,who envisagedit of the horde and showed that,despite a relativelyrigid as a principlecapable ofexplaining other aspects of soci- social organizationinto patrilinealclans, Australianlo- ety.Finally, 25 it is extremelydoubtful if one can charac- cal groupswere extremelyvariable in compositionand terize a type of society throughconsiderations drawn the principles of their recruitmentcorresponded with solelyfrom residential and workgroups; it is a littleas if criteriaother than clan affiliation.After that, hope was one were to characterizecapitalist societies by the com- abandoned of findinga simple correspondencebetween position of towns or the size of factories.Such an ap- the organizationof bands and of clans: the social edifice proachis bound to leave out what is most typicalof the seemed more than ever irremediablysplit between two society,i.e., its characteristicsocial relations.Thus, to levels orderedby differentprinciples and orientedto- returnto our problem,one cannot help wondering,in wards differentends. But fromanother perspective Aus- relation to Australia,why kinship relationsare so im- tralian studies legitimated a unitary view of hunter- portantthere. This is reallya question about social rela- gatherers,since, apartfrom the factthat some possessed tions, namely, Why do these assume in Australia the clans and others did not, all possessed the same local principalor predominantform of kinship? organizationinto bands of flexibleand changingcom- In formulatingthese criticismsof the anthropologyof position. Such seems to me to have been the state of hunter-gatherersand of the culturalecology within the the question as it emergedfrom a readingof Man the parametersof which it is situated, I am conscious of Hunter. theirextreme severity. I offerthem only because I know But such a view of thingscannot satisfy us, forat least how much we owe to the works just cited: the recogni- two reasons. The firstderives fromits settingaside of tion of the 'determiningrole of gathering,largely due to some of the major problemsof social anthropology.To the work of Lee; the concomitantabandonment of the the question "Why, alone among hunter-gatherers,do old idea thathunters lived on theverge of famine and the the Australians have clans?" it has no answer except slicytlu -nrnuvoctiue creneraliza_tin-nof t1his idean hv perhapsthat this clan organizationis a superficialphe- nomenon, somethinglike an epiphenomenon,relating as secondaryphenomena the innumerablevariations of social or- to a hard-to-explainsuperstructure while the band or- ganization.In proposingto see in thehorde the principal phenome- ganization representsthe profoundreality of the social non,Radcliffe-Brown set himselfagainst the whole tradition of the organization.23 The second reason thisview is unaccept- firstperiod of Australian anthropology, which gave primary atten- tionto thesocial variationson thetheme of moieties, sections, or matrilineality.The same desireto discoverthe universalbeneath 22. This veryimportant controversy, which I do nothesitate to say the social variationsis foundwith Steward when he proposesthe has shakenthe foundationsof Australiananthropology, has not "family"and the "band" as thetwo primary levels of social integra- perhapsreceived all the attentionit deservesoutside Australia. In tion.In Radcliffe-Brownand in Steward-and I have emphasized effectit impliesthe general conclusion that a group,in thiscase the the historicalparallelism between their concepts of "horde"and Australianpatriclan, may be linked (sentimentally,religiously, "band"-is concealedthe same desireto minimizethe importance etc.,and evenin a certainway economically,as I have maintained ofsocial organization,in all its specificityand in all its variations, on the basis of certainfacts rarelytaken account of [Testart in favourof concepts supposedly more universal, such as thefamily I978: I48-50]) withthe land even without its members' residing on and theband. And I wouldadd: conceptsas vacuousas thefamily thisland. andthe band. It thereforedoes not strike me as surprisingthat after 23. A historicalpoint, with epistemologicalimplications, would 50 yearsof thinking about the band this approach still has nothing not seem out of place. Radcliffe-Brown'sconcept of the "horde," to tell us about social organization-becausethe notionof band generallyattributed to his I930-3I article,was in factmuch ear- was put forwardprecisely to legitimatethis deficiency.It goes lier; the idea thatthe local groupis patrilocalappears in turn-of- withoutsaying that I considersuch an approachan epistemological the-centuryworks such as Howitt(I904), and Durkheim'swhole error,our principal task being to takeaccount of the specificityof explanationof sectionsrests on Howitt'sidea just as laterLevi- differentforms of social organizationand not of the claimed, Strauss'swas to rest on Radcliffe-Brown's.But Howittaccorded ghostlyuniversality of band or family. only minorimportance to local organization;in the traditionof 24. The term"band" has also tendedto fallinto disuse.Leacock Morgan,his wholeinterest lay withmoiety organization and mat- andLee (i982:7-9) stillemploy the term band societiesas a syn- rilineality,which he consideredantecedent to patrilineality.Rad- onymfor "societies of hunter-gatherers" in order to connotecollec- cliffe-Brown,in taking up the idea ofpatrilocal group, changed its tive property,etc., but thereis hardlyany more questionof a meaningentirely: this group is presentedas thebasis ofall Austra- specificorganization in bands as the key organizationalform of lian social anthropology,it becomes the universalfoundation, a hunter-gatherers.Significantly (see n. 23), Burch(i986) proposes stablegrouping present everywhere in Australia,a realitythat is replacingthe word"band" with"local family." simultaneouslyeconomic, political, and social (Radcliffe-Brown25. This last aspectof the critique is developedelsewhere (Testart thoughtit exogamic),around which could thenceforthbe situated I985b: chap.I).

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Sahlins with his notion of the "affluentsociety"; the rc agriculture.For North America Kroeber(I939) showed evaluation of the role of women; the idea that we ar long ago that the geographicallimits of Indian maize dealing with hunter-gatherersand that environmentr cultivationcorresponded very closely with naturallim- factors(in particularthe latitude)are primarilyresponsi its of rainfalland sunshine. Hunter-gatherersthus ex- ble forthe relativeimportance of the two branchesof isted in the New Worldonly where agricultureas tradi- hunter-gatherereconomy; etc. All this is apparent i tionally practised by the Indians was impossible. Man the Hunter and several subsequent works (amon Nevertheless,the immenseplains ofthe Pampas and the them Lee I979) and marks the high point of a school c Canadian forestswere propitious for stockraising; in par- thoughtthat turnsaway fromkinship, symbolism, an ticular,the caribouhunted in Canada is an animal ofthe othersubjects of classical anthropologybut represents same species as the reindeerof Siberia,which has been theoreticaladvance of the firstimportance in the dc domesticated.This is a general differencebetween the main of the economy,precisely the domain that classi Old and the New World,where stockraising, even when cal anthropologyhad neglected.This observationbring it was possible,has been onlyslightly developed. In view us back to our problemof the considerablesocial diffei ofthese differencesbetween the two continentsin tradi- ences that exist between hunter-gatherers.This is c tional techniquesand economic orientations,we can say course the question of a possible articulationbetweei thathunter-gathering occurs in America only whereag- economyand society,posed anew, and also a matterc ricultureand stockraising,to the extentthat theyhave bringingtogether two areas ofstudy (or, as I would rathe beenpractised and developedon thiscontinent, are im- say, two theoretical approaches) that are unaware c possible. I believe a similar point could be made about each other. Once again, we find that on similar ecc the Bushmen (or San) in relation to the Hottentots(or nomic bases therearise complex and verydifferent cor Khoi-Khoi), stockbreeders with whom they were structionshaving to do with kinship and symbolisnr coupled within a single vast cultural region: hunter- There can be no question ofdoubting the realityof thes gatherersseem to have lived only where therewas an differencesor of minimizingtheir importance: they ar absence of year-roundsurface water, in the centraland related to the domains most studied by anthropolog southern Kalahari, in the deserts of Namibia, on the since its beginnings.Suspicion falls ratheron the prem Cape Provinceplateaus-in other words,where stock- ises of the problem,on the veryidea of a similaritybe breedingas practisedby the Hottentotswas impossible. tweenthe economyof the Australiansand those ofothe In both America and Africa,hunter-gatherers seem to nomadic hunter-gatherers,because the study of th, have occupied only residual regionswhere the domes- economyhas always been the poor relationof our disci ticationof plants and animals as traditionallydeveloped pline. It is thereforethe other line of research,that o by neighbouringagro-pastoralists was impossible or, at cultural ecology and Man the Hunter and, in more re least, impracticableby reason of naturalfactors such as mote fashion,that of Childe, that should be followe cold and drought.We findnothing of the kind in Aus- despite my criticisms,which are intendedless to limi tralia,where prehistorians such as White(I97 1:i85) and theirscope than to deepen theirconcerns. Golson (I972:387-88) have shown that the horticulture To explicate the Australiancase, let us begin by set practised in New Guinea could easily have been in- ting aside the idea of environmentaldeterminism, be troducedinto tropicalnorthern Australia. Here thereis cause the range of variation in Australia is verywid no ecological reason for the persistence of a hunter- (desert,tropical, Mediterranean, etc.) and correspondsi gatherereconomy, simply a culturalbarrier. part to what we findin southernAfrica. On the othe These differencesare importantprecisely because they hand,we findsignificant differences between Australiai concern this techno-economic level that appears so hunter-gatherersand otherswith regardto two orderso similar from one hunter-gatherersociety to another. phenomena: Nevertheless,they are not decisive. As a matterof fact, I. Hunting techniques (I summarize Testart I985b we do not know how to interpretthem. It is out of the 115-29). Australia is the only regionpeopled solely b' question to have recourseto any formof technological hunter-gatherersthat does not possess the bow and ar determinism,first of all because it is difficultto see how row.Furthermore, it is not merelythe instrumentthat i a social structurecould be consequent on such simple unknownbut the veryprinciple of using the elastic en technological facts as I have put forward.To put it ergystored in a curved piece of wood: thus we do no crudely,the use of the bow seems as compatiblewith findthe musical bow or the bow trap or springtrap ii exogamyand totemismas with any othersocial form.It Australia.Other lacunae in the Australiantechnologica mightbe objected that these simple technologicalfacts ensemble are the absence of instrumentsusing kineti( may be embedded in a broadertechnological context, energy,such as the bola and the lasso, ofweapons usinj more complex and structured,that is yet to be discov- compressedair, such as the blowpipe, and of poisonec eredand thatthis would representthe only correctlevel dartsand the veryweak developmentof trappingtech on which to seek an explanation.Certainly, but thereare niques. also other argumentsagainst technological determin- 2. The capacity,depending on environmentalcondi ism. The technical data are difficultto explain as a first tions, for adopting an agro-pastoraleconomy (I sum cause. We have to admit thatthe technologicaldevelop- marizeTestart i98i:203 -II ). In America,it is appareni ment of a societyis blocked or favouredby the environ- that the hunter-gathererregions are those ill suited tc mentin which it findsitself: now, in the Australiancase

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it is clear that it is not the natural environmentthat and/orthe othermoiety, affines and not kin ofthe hunt- preventsthe adoption of the bow or of horticulturebut ers. These latterreceive lesser portionsor even, in some the social environment,and we are sent back to social cases, nothingat all. This differencecan be summarized conditionsas the determiningcauses of the diffusionof as follows: Except in Australia,the distributionprocess techniques.As a last attemptto save the idea of a tech- begins with those who have taken part in the hunt; in nological determinism,I have mentionedthe possibility Australia,it begins elsewhere,and this "elsewhere" is thatour technologicalfacts belong to a largerensemble. denlnedby the complex play of several binaryopposi- This is in factwhat we find:in respectof hunting as well tions (between alternategenerations, between kin and as horticulturaltechniques,26 Australia appears a back- affines)inherent in the kinshipsystem and social organi- water in relation to the possibilities offeredby neigh- zation (moieties,sections, etc.). bouring peoples with whom there is contact, pos- These resultsare extremelyimportant, for the follow- sibilities that are undoubtedly compatible with ing reasons: conditionsof the naturalenvironment. One could say,in i. This differencebetween the Australiansand other summary,that in Australia we find a cultural ban on nomadic hunter-gatherersis equally an economic differ- technologicalinnovation, but at this point we reverse ence. the scholarlyreasoning about the connectionsof cause 2. It is relatednot to techniques,the mode of adapta- and effect:far from being determining, the technological tion to the environment,or anythingelse of this nature factsseem determined. but to a differencein the social formof production-a We are thus sent back to somethingother than the differencein structure.In Australia,the productescapes techno-economicdomain, without knowingwhat that the producer(the game escapes the hunter)to the benefit "other" is. We can clearly see differentsocial formsin of anotherwho disposes of its distribution. Australia and elsewhere,but we do not see how these 3. The social formof productionpeculiar to Australia differencescan allow us to explain the observeddiffer- presupposes precisely the interventionof the social ences in techniques and economy. Why is this? Evi- formsthat appear to constitutethe specificityof Aus- dently because these forms-clan organization,exog- tralia: the otheris effectivelydefined only by the opera- amy, totemism, etc.-are non-economic, having no tion ofa social organizationthat divides the membersof effectswhatever on production.This indeed seems to be society into several classes (marriageclasses, moieties, the problem,but, given anthropology'straditional ne- sections,etc.) thatare distinctand opposablein termsof glect of the study of economic structures,can we be several major oppositions (between moieties, between certainabout it? Well, comparativestudy of the various generations,between kin and affines,etc.). formsof game-sharingsystems among hunter-gatherers 4. Finally,and most important,all these social forms has demonstratedthat they can be dividedinto two ma- apparentlyserve to uphold a single law: exogamy de- jor categories (I summarize Testart I985b:53-96; i987a). crees thata man may not dispose sexuallyof the women Everywhereapart fromAustralia there is always, as a of his own clan: totemic prohibitionsenjoin the non- result of complex proceduresthat vary greatlyacross consumptionof an animal of his own totemic species cultures,one individualamong those who have contrib- unless there is a prescriptionto reproducethe species uted to or participatedin some fashionin the success of symbolically for the benefit of other clans;28 game- the hunt (throughhaving sightedthe game, broughtit sharingsystems prevent the hunterfrom disposing of an down,provided the decisive weapon,etc.) who is consid- animal he himselfhas killed. One may no more dispose ered the owner of the game taken,presides over its dis- ofone's game than ofone's totemor one's sisters.Conti- tribution,and is entitled to the best of it. An initial guity(between hunter and game, between totemistand distributionoccurs among the participantsin the hunt, totemic species, between brother and sister) always and it is only secondarilythat the pieces are redistrib- translatesas an advantage for others. It seems hardly uted outside the circle of hunters,particularly to their necessary to say that drawing a parallel between ex- kin.27 In Australia, while forms of sharing differsig- ogamyand totemismis not new; what is new is discov- nificantlyfrom one region to another,those who have eringthat the same law presentin these two classical priorityrights to game and ideallypreside over its distri- domains of anthropologyalso structuresmaterial pro- bution are otherthan the participantsin the hunt,typi- duction. cally of the other generationfrom that of the hunters This law accordingto which one may not dispose of what is one's own (or what one is "closest" to) seems to me to representsomething like theprinciple of intelligi- 26. To which one could add the techniquesof preservation(by bilityof Australiansociety conceived as a whole.29At dryingand smoking)of animal fleshwhich, though known and practisedin funeraryrites during the treatmentof the corpse,art once social schema and schema of thought,it applies to used very little to preservegame or fish for food (Testari I982a: 170-72). 27. Let us notein passingthe extremely important result that kin. 28. I merelymention in passinga subjectof much controversy that shiphas onlya secondaryplace amongthese hunter-gatherers. It is deservesmuch fuller development (Testart i985b:s257-343). entirelydifferent among the Australians.In particular,it follows 29. This law also holdsin Australiafor certain well-known aspects thatnot only the form (the terminological system) but also therole ofritual: one doesnot initiate the young of one's moiety, who must ofkinship cannot be the same forthe one as forthe other (Testari be initiatedby the othermoiety; the same forfunerary practices, i985b:23 I-47). etc.

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Totemic Prohibitionsand representations prescriptions

organization Sexuality 2 Exogamy

Hunting Social formof production production

Technicaldevelopment of production

FIG. I. Hypothesison the relationshipbetween the economic and otheraspects of society. I, provisionof the framework(categories of kin, matrimonialclasses, etc.) in termsof which the commonprinciple or law for structuringthe various domains of societyis defined;2, isomorphism(structuring by a commonprinciple); 3, determinationor causal relationship.

at least threedomains: sexuality,including matrimonial this idea must remain vague in that I have yet to dis- exchange and the productionof children;an important cover the social formthat has such an effecton produc- ideological sector,totemism, in which men think and tion. One such has been mentionedso far,and thereis mime on the ritual plane theirimaginary relation with good reason to believe that it is indeed the social struc- Nature,which theyeventually reproduce symbolically; ture of productionthat determinestechnical develop- and an importantsector of the economy,the hunt. Be- ment.That is just about as faras my reasoninghas gone, tween these threedomains it is vain to ask which deter- althoughI have to admit that I do not findit entirely mines the other.Instead of seekinga causal relationbe- satisfactory. tween them,I shall speak of "isomorphism." The captureof game occasioningno advantage,either Wheredoes all this leave the question of articulation materialor moral, forthe hunters(they derive no pres- betweenthe economic and the social? It is clear thatthe tigefrom it and do not oversee its distribution),there is privilegedaspect of the problem,in which everythingis no incentivefor them to increaselabour productivity, to interconnected,cannot be other than the formor the experiment,or to adopt new and eventuallymore effica- social structureof production.On one side we see an cious techniques. This explains the weak development isomorphismbetween the economic domain and do- in Australia (comparedwith otherhunter-gatherer soci- mains of the social, including that of representations; eties) ofthe weaponryand techniquesof hunting. On the this common structurepresupposes the existence of otherhand, the factthat no one appropriatesthe prize in well-definedsocial formsconstituted by the diverseas- no way preventshunters from cooperating in collective pects of social organizationthat divide the societyinto hunts; on the contrary,among other hunter-gatherers marriageclasses and into distinctcategories of kin (fig. the principle of appropriationof game by one of the i). So much for the social side. What about the other hunterscan only give rise to conflictswith othermem- side,the economic?How are we to conceive the connec- bersof the huntinggroup when it comes to decidingwho tion between the social structureof productionand the has rightsand particularlywho is the owner.Without in technicaldevelopment of production? any way reducingthe size of the huntinggroup, this It seems impossible to elicit the complex social con- principlehas the effectof causing each hunterto rely structionI have just outlinedfrom the technicalfacts; I more on his own skill and the efficacyof his weapons have already admitted this. Neither can there be any than on the help of others.This is clearlynot a question questionof isomorphism:the technicalfacts form a sys- of the size of the group but ratherone of the relative tem,but theycannot be orderedwithin a structureanal- weighting,within forms of huntingthat may be collec- ogous to that which I have put forward.From another tive, of the factors of cooperation and efficacy of side,I have alreadyexpounded the reasonsthat led me to weapons. This relation is invertedin the case of Aus- believe it was social factorsthat influencedtechnical tralia and of the otherhunter-gatherers because the dif- developmentto the extentof eventuallyblocking it, but ferentsocial structuresof productionfavour conversely

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recourseto one factoror the other.We thus findthat in what the Australian archaeologistscall the small-tool Australia,while the range of huntingweapons is oddly tradition(three items that were unknownin Tasmania, restricted,on the contraryall formsof collective hunting probablythe most conservativepart of the Australian are represented,including the use of barriers,surprising ensemble since the island became separated fromthe indeed in a countrywhere the fauna is so sparse and continentby the Bass Strait).The economy remains a ungregarious. hunter-gatherereconomy. The majortechnological char- To summarize,then: The discoveryof a social struc- acteristicis rejection-of the bow, of horticulture,of turepeculiar to Australia,inherent in the economybut techniques forpreserving meat, etc. Structuresand so- equally connectedwith all social domains,has allowed cial formsanalogous to those observedin Australiawere us to account for a certainnumber of facts relatingto probablypresent in Palaeolithic societies. This is only a hunter-gatherers.Can these facts 'be placed in a dia- hypothesis,but it does allow us to account forthe very chronicperspective? In otherwords, can this new view slow technologicaldevelopment of the Palaeolithic.We ofthings lead us to a new conceptof evolution? I thinkit cannot,however, assert that these formsand structures can, forreasons I would call a prioriin that any attempt were the only ones. to theorize about an object of scientificstudy implies 2. Everywhereelse, new social structuresappeared certainhypotheses on the laws of its movement. with or afterthe end of the Palaeolithic.30I cannot give The equipmentof an Australianhunter is, as we have eitherthe exact date or the reasons forthese changes, alreadyobserved, notable forcertain deficiencies. There but I see themas mutations,structural ruptures, that are is no cultural or archaeological evidence of regression. unlikely to have occurredsuddenly and were probably The technical level attainedby Australia as regardsthe the result of a slow transformationthat affectednot weapons and other implements,of hunting is thus isolated elements but global totalities. The result of slightlybut significantlyinferior to that attainedin the these mutationswas the developmentof the productive otherregions of hunting and gathering;it seems as ifthe techniquesof the society,among the techniquesof food Australiancondition perpetuated an earliertechnologi- preservationand the beginningof domestication.This cal stage. developmentattained different levels accordingto envi- This hypothesis,which is at the verymost reasonable ronmentalconditions; sometimes it led to agriculture, on the basis of the ethnographicdata, can become con- sometimes to a sedentaryhunter-gathering economy vincing only if underpinnedby data fromprehistoric based on storage.Where the environmentor the state archaeology.It appears that the results of a study of of technical development made these types of econ- these data (Testart I985 b: I3I-56), diverse and fragmen- omy impracticable or impossible, societies remained taryas theyare, allow us to proposetwo generalconclu- nomadic hunter-gatherers.This hypothesisaccounts for sions: (i) duringthe greaterpart of the Palaeolithic and our earlier observationthat nomadic hunter-gatherers until the veryend of the Upper Palaeolithic,weaponry remainedsuch, outside Australia,only where the envi- remainedrudimentary, particularly as regardsthrowing ronmentprecluded the adoptionof a storageeconomy or weapons, the use of spears being attestedin the Upper of an agro-pastoralisteconomy as it was practisedin the Palaeolithic but the harpoon, spear-thrower,aind bow region.Perhaps I should emphasize here that my argu- not being evident before the Magdalenian and Meso- mentinverts the currentnotion that an earliercondition lithic; and (2) the most widely accepted and best- is best-preservedin an unfavourableor degradedregion, foundedhypotheses about prehistorichunting have re- an argumentthat is simplisticin that it envisages the course to cooperation as a decisive element in its society as all of a piece, overlookingthe possibilityof success. Archaeologicaldata are always subject to revi- lack of correspondencebetween social form and eco- sion and subtle reinterpretation,and these conclusions nomic level. In fact,the hunter-gatherersof the degraded should thereforebe taken as provisional and regarded regionstell us nothingabout past social forms,because with extreme prudence. Nonetheless, they appear to whateversocial formsmay have existed among hunter- bear witness to the same inverse relation between gatherersthey could not, given the unfavourableenvi- weapons and cooperation as I have proposed for Aus- ronment,have been translatedinto anythingother than tralia. All this would seem to support the idea that a hunting-and-gatheringeconomy; they are just as likely Australiain some sense perpetuatedthe technicalstage to be the expressionof the greatestnovelty. If we seek to of the Palaeolithic. know about the past, a field of study that has never To this hypothesisI would add anotherresulting from my earlierreflections, namely, that technological devel- 30. These formsthat are presentamong hunter-gatherers other social thanthose of Australiaremain to be enumerated.I have doneno opment is determinedby what I have called the morethan characterize them in a verycavalier fashion, in contrast structuresof production. Here, then,is how I see things: to thoseof Australia. There is evidentlymuch material for research i. The social structureof productionpeculiar to Aus- here.Such researchshould also be decisivebecause the theoretical traliadetermined no significantdevelopment of produc- propositionthat I have put forwardin respectof Australia cannot tive techniques beyond what they had been in the be consideredvalid unless it can be generalized.Its validitythus depends,for us, on thepossibility of eventually theorizing the San, Palaeolithic. At the most we can recordthe adoptionof the Athapaskans,the Algonkin,etc., in the same termsas the the spear-thrower,the semi-domesticationof the dog Australians,in termsof social forms,social structuresof produc- (the economic imnortanceof which is contestedi.and tion,isomorphism, etc.

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions T E S TAR T Social Anthropologyof Hunter-GatherersI I3 seemed dishonourableto any disciplineother than social warningagainst searching for any simple causal relation anthropology,the point of departureshould be hunter- among these domains, he immediatelyproceeds to de- gatherersin favourableregions, hunter-gatherers who clare that "it is clear that the privilegedaspect of the might not have been such and probablyremain such problem,in which everythingis interconnected,cannot only by reason of restrictivesocial formsthat forthem be otherthan the formof the social structureof produc- are quite possibly a distantand gloriousheritage. tion"-which does not follow logically and is even di- rectlycontradicted by what precedes. Elsewhere,after suggestinga correlationbetween low developmentof techniques and cooperativeefforts in food producingas characteristicof the Upper Palaeolithic,he adds to it a Comments second hypothesison the determinationof technological developmentsby the "social structuresof production," a quite separatehypothesis with no link to the statistical BERNARD ARCAND correlationand one that seems to make little sense Departementd'anthropologie, Universite Laval, Cite giventhat these unspecified "structures" are now plural. universitaire,Quebec, P. Q., Canada GiK 7P4. The article testifiesto the intellectual honesty of a 24 viii 87 writerwho wishes to respectthe ethnographicfacts he knows well. The problemarises fromhis adherenceto a This article is probably best understood as part of a rather monolithic theoretical frameworkthat seems much broaderenquiry. It follows Testart's rathermas- quite incapable of dealing with these facts. At worst, sive and scholarlyresearch in the literatureon hunter- this may even be damaging,as when the model failsand gatherersand representsperhaps somethingof a pause, forlack of a betterway out we are told thatAustralians an effortto reconsidersome fundamentaltheoretical is- sufferedfrom a "culturalbarrier" and thatother hunter- sues, that mightideally lead to a bettertomorrow. gatherers have had "restrictive social forms." This The questions addressedhere should concem all those hardlyseems the way to restoreevolutionism to respect- interested in hunter-gatherers(I could hardly claim ability. otherwise,since I raised the same points at the interna- Testart appears obsessed with drawinga causal link tional conferenceson huntingand gatheringsocieties in between economy and social organization.His knowl- Quebecin I980 andLondon in I986). Does thecategory edgeof the ethnographyforbids any such straightforward "hunter-gatherers"make any analytical sense? or Why relation, hence his numerous hesitations and claims should groupingpeople on the basis of their mode of thatthe issues are farfrom settled. At the same time,he extractingfood fromnature inform us about the nature frequentlyrefers to "determination,"which in this arti- of their societies? Is there any meaning in using this cle runs everyconceivable way to and fromtechnology, categorybeyond its obvious contrastto "agro-pastoral- environment,structures of production,subdivisions of ist" and "industrial" societies? Testart has already of- society, etc. But he wants to remain faithfulto the fereda major contributionto these questions with his model, and this leads him even to suggestthat if soci- convincingargument on the importanceof food storage, eties with similar economies have generateddifferent which can generateradical social differencesbetween formsof social organization,it is probablybecause their societies otherwiseequally based on huntingand gather- economies were neverreally similar. This is the kind of ing. He told us then thatthe conceptof a Neolithic Rev- argumentenjoyed by harshcritics and the kind ofwhich olution is inadequate in thatthere are oftenno sociolog- Baudrillardwrote, some i 5 years ago, that it reminded ically significantcontrasts between some societies of him of Baron Munchausen tryingto extricatehimself hunter-gatherersand some of the societies producing fromquicksand by pullinghis own hair.One is leftwith foodby cultivating.Recognizing the importanceof food the impressionthat the search can only be endless and storagewas undeniably a step forwardin refiningthe the only way out would be forTestart first to reconsider problem at hand. Unfortunately,much of the present his deeperconviction of the existenceof separatelevels articlecan be seen as takingus a few steps back. of society,the "economic form"and the "social form," The argumentis difficultto follow and oftendown- which can usefullybe correlated. rightconfusing. Each time Testart leads us to under- Testart's earlier research has significantlymodified stand how diverse and complex the realityof hunter- our ways of looking at hunting-and-gatheringsocieties. gatherersreally is and how any generalizationcan only It should be obvious by now that the presentarticle has be partial and simplistic,he himself,after a briefmo- not impressedme to the same extent.Yet, throughhis ment of doubt and hesitation,leaps back to an interpre- uncertainties,his doubts and even anxieties,which are tationthat we thoughthad died with the Frenchschool neverreally helped by resortingto too narrowand sim- of historicalmaterialism of the past two decades. This ple a model ofhuman society,he may well be approach- makes for some ratherblatant contradictions.For ex- inga ratherpromising reformulation of his originalques- ample, aftertelling us that in Australia game-sharing tion: Has anthropologyitself become the determining proceduresare coherentwith totemic organizationand factorbehind the categorizationof people on the basis of exoaamv (the contrarywould have surnrisedland after theireconomic and/orsocial organization?

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TIM INGOLD definitionin purelysocial terms,which would mix. . . Departmentof Social Anthropology,University of termsreferring to technicalactivities ('hunter-gatherers') Manchester,Manchester MI3 9PL, England. 24 VII 87 with social forms."I challengehim to demonstratethat the distinction between domesticated and wild re- I share Testart's view that the anthropologicalstudy of sources can be made without implicatingsocial rela- huntingand gatheringsocieties rests on the premises tions. As he well knows, both Ducos (1978:54) and I that such societies are essentiallycomparable and that (Ingoldig8ob:133; i986b:133, 233) have arguedthat do- some relationshipexists between those of the ethno- mestication carries an essential connotation of social graphic present and those of the more or less distant appropriation.Testart is surelydeceiving himself if he past. And I agree that to justifythese premises,we are thinksthat in speakingof hunting-and-gatheringas the called upon to specifyin what this relationshipconsists exploitationof non-domesticated("wild") resources,he and to demonstratethat there is more in common to is referringonly to the technical and not to the social societiesof hunters and gatherersthan the mere fact that aspect of practicalactivity. Where I have elsewherede- theirmembers spend much of their time huntingand fined hunting-and-gatheringas the practical concomi- gathering.I cannot,however, go along with his reformu- tant of a system of collective appropriation(Ingold lation of these crucial problems,which seems to me to I980a; i986b:222-42), I have not mixed the social with put the clock back ratherthan forward. the technical but merely given explicit recognition Testartbegins with a defenceof what he calls a "rea- to the factthat it is the social formof appropriationand soned" evolutionism,which apparentlyconsists in not- not the morphologyof the objects appropriatedthat ing that between presentand past hunter-gatherersoci- characterizes the productive practice. Eliminate this eties there exist both similaritiesand differences.But social component of production and hunting-and- like the evolutionismof an earlieranthropology, the ob- gathering reverts to predation-and-foraging,strictly ject remainsa comparativeone: to establish certaines- comparable to the extractivebehaviour of nonhuman sential types of society and to arrangethese types in animals. some (not necessarily unilinear) order of progression. Ifthe meaningof the technicalremains unclear in Tes- Whateverthe validityof this kind of exercise,it is quite tart'saccount-referring interchangeably to the activity differentfrom attempting to document,from ethnohis- (e.g., "hunting-and-gathering")and to its instruments torical and archaeological evidence, the actual connec- (e.g.,"bows and arrows")-the meaningof the economic tions between particularsocieties as unique historical is still more obscure. Hunting-and-gatheringhas been entities. Yet Testart seems to think his evolutionism definedas technique,yet he goes on to speak ofan econ- covers that as well, maintainingin a footnotethat the omy definedin termsof huntingand gathering.Unable relationsand connectionshe seeks betweenpresent and to decide whetherit is economic or only technical,Tes- past societies are "necessarilyhistorical." As I have ar- tartconflates the two: thus again, hunter-gatherersoci- gued elsewhere(Ingold i986a), both "history"and "evo- eties "are groupedin termsof techno-economic level." If lution" can be understoodin at least two fundamentally thereis anythingmore to the economythan the techni- distinctsenses, and whetherthe termsare identifiedor cal formof activity,Testart does not tell us what it is- opposed depends on which of these senses one chooses not,that is, until the closingpassages ofhis paper,when to adopt. But in asking "in what respects existing he suddenlyintroduces the "social formof production," hunter-gatherersocieties are continuous with those of which governs"an importantsector of the economy:the the past" it will not do to interpretcontinuity at one hunt." moment as formalsimilarity and at the next as unbro- Evidently,this social formis integralto the economy ken genealogical connection. The confusionis as ele- and in no sense technologicallydetermined. Has Testart mentary,and as damaging,as thatbetween analogyand just discovered what many economic anthropologists homologywith regardto biological species. (includingstudents of hunting-and-gathering)have been Turningto the second major question,whether hunt- sayingfor the past 2o years?If so, it is not apparentfrom ing-and-gatheringsocieties have enough in common to the precedingpages, in which the key problem is re- renderthem comparable at all, Testart rephrasesit by peatedlyphrased as one of identifying"the causal con- asking whether any relation exists, and if so of what nection between economic formand social form,"as kind, "between the techno-economiclevel of a society thoughthe one were wholly externalto the other.So it and the variousaspects ofits social organization."I wish may be, if the economic is reducedto the technical.But to make three comments about this formulation.The that can hardlybe squared with Testart's finalrestate- first concerns the characterization of hunting-and- mentof the problem,where it appearsas one ofconceiv- gatheringas technique,the second its conjunctionwith ing the connection,within the domain of the economy, economy in the hybrid "techno-economic," and the "between the social structureof production and the thirdthe dichotomybetween the latterand "social or- technicaldevelopment of production."And to returnto ganization." myearlier point: if hunting-and-gathering is definitive of Testartrecognizes hunting-and-gathering by "absence an economic form,and if the economy comprisesboth of domesticationin respect of subsistence" such that social relations and techniques of production,why is nourishmentis obtainedfrom wild resources.He holds Testartso averse to introducinga social componentinto that this is a "technical definition"and prefersit to "a the verydefinition of hunting-and-gathering?

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Having dealt with his two leading questions concern organizationand the relationbetween bands and clans. ing relationsbetween past and presenthunter-gathere: Oblivious to the subsequentdevelopment of the debate, societies and within such societies between the eco Testartwrites in a footnotethat thoughit has "shaken nomic and social levels oforganization, Testart proceeds the foundationsof Australiananthropology" it has "not to rehearsetwo argumentsthat he has alreadypresentec perhaps received all the attentionit deserves outside elsewhere,concerning the significanceof storage and the Australia." Within his peculiar time-warp,Radcliffe- apparentlyunique featuresof AustralianAboriginal so Brown,Steward, and Childe are only just over the hori- cieties. As regardsthe storageargument, I can only re zon, the ink is scarcelydry on the ethnographiesof 30 peat my previous accusation (Ingold i982) that Testar, years ago, and the signal advances in hunter-gatherer fails to show why practical storage,occasioned by th( ethnographyand theorythat followed the publicationin non-concurrenceof productionand consumptionsched I968 of the symposiumvolume Man the Hunter have ules, should lead to social storage,or the convergenceo. yet to take place. Where the rest of us have moved for- rightsto resourcesupon a specificproprietorial interest ward since those days,Testart has gone into reverse.It is Likeningstoring hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists,h( time he made it back to the future. now maintainsthat "the former[do] with wild resource! (productsof gathering, fishing, etc.) exactlywhat the lat ter do with domesticatedones." This is a prettystronE DOMINIQUE LEGROS claim to make, and thereseems no a priorireason tha- Concordia University,Sir George Williams Campus, we should accept it, ratherthan the contraryclaim thai 1455 de Maisonneuve Blvd. West,Montreal, Que., storinghunter-gatherers treat their harvested resource! Canada H3G iM8. 26 VIII 87 exactly as "nomadic" hunter-gathererstreat unhar. vested ones. The ethnographycan be read eitherway. Testart's work on huntersand gatherers,of which the When it comes to Australia,though not a specialist,] presentarticle is the most recent development,leaves have my doubts about the accuracy of Testart's gross me with two contradictoryfeelings. One is oftotal intel- characterizationof Aboriginal economy and society.His lectual excitement: his critique of the concept of the renderingof totemism,for example, is more redolentof Neolithic Revolutionis a masterpieceof epistemology, modernFrench than of traditionalAboriginal thought, and it de factoimposes an entirelynew way oflooking at more informedby a reading of Durkheim and Levi- cultural evolution. I am not exaggerating,for an ap- Straussthan by contemporaryethnography. On the sub. proachwhich demonstratesthe flawsin conceptsas ba- ject of kinship and descent: cases of non-unilinearity sic as thatof the band and ofthe Neolithic Revolutionis seem to representmore than "doubtfulexceptions" (see, bound to be both stronglycontested by some and enthu- forexample, Layton [I983] on the Pitjantjatjara);indeed, siasticallyendorsed by others,leading to a revampingof the contrastbetween unilineal and non-unilinealsys- the field.My otherfeeling is mixed. The presentformu- tems may constitutean importantaxis of variationin lation of Testart's rethinkingof the process of cultural Australia,as it does elsewhere (see, forexample, Stuart evolution and of the relationshipsbetween economic, [I980] on the comparable cases of the Yahgan and the social, and culturalapparatuses is still not bold enough Ona of Tierra del Fuego). It is decidedlyodd thatin set- and seems to me to constitutea retreatfrom the head- ting up a distinctionbetween Australian kinship sys- way he made in his book Le communisme primitif tems and those (forexample) of the Canadian interior, (i985 b). As I said to him in the conversationhe refersto, Testartmakes no referenceto the work of Turner(e.g., it is not that our ways of thinkingare totallyincompat- in Turnerand Wertman1977:96-Iio), who has already ible but thata renewalof the fieldrequires us to distance done thiswith rather greater sophistication and withthe ourselvesstill furtherfrom the classical anthropologists' advantage of a first-handknowledge of both ethno- conceptionof society. In otherwords, I go alongwith the graphic regions. Lastly, I object to Testart's negative critical part of his work and less with his counterpro- characterizationof AustralianAboriginal technology in posal in this shortarticle. In abbreviatedform, here are terms of its deficiencies.The idea that Australia has my reasons: "perpetuatedan earliertechnological stage" is preposter- First,there is the lesserproblem of storers and inequal- ous, given that many essential elements of the Aborigi- ity.Testart takes the position that thereis a qualitative nal toolkit(not found in Tasmania) were introducedas a differencein inequalities between nomadic hunter- resultof outside influencesno more than 5-6,ooo years gatherersand storing sedentaryhunter-gatherers. Al- ago. By any standards,Aboriginal technology is quite though he is not too explicit about it, his reasoning elaborate,especially if one includes the knowledgethat seems to rest on the idea that among nomadic hunters is just as vital as material equipment in the effective inequalities exist only in the domain of prestigeitems, procurementof subsistence. Technological inferiority or among which-it appears from his phrasing-are in- superiorityis notoriouslyhard to gauge,but had Testart cluded women,while among storersthe inequalities are chosen to emphasize the principles that Aboriginal in the spheres of productionand food consumptionas hunter-gatherersdo utilize ratherthan those they do well as in that of prestigegoods. However, this idea is not, he mighthave come to differentconclusions. erroneous.As fieldworkamong Tutchone Athapaskans In the I950s, an importantdebate emergedamong stu- in the Subarctic(see Legrosi98i, I982, i985) has shown dentsof AustralianAboriginal society about local group me (unexpectedly,for I thoughtI had embarkedon the

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions i6 | CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, February1988 study of an egalitariansociety), when individuals in a tive techniques. Following Balibar (in Althusser and nomadic societytake manywives it is, in a case like the Balibar 1970), who is himselfin part followingMarx, I Tutchone,not forprestige reasons alone butfor the work thinkthat what productivetechniques determine is not output they represent.Similarly, when they capture whethera surpluswill be extractedbut only the social members of their society, female or male, and make form in which a surplus may be extracted.In other themtheir slaves, it is to make themwork at productive words,like Engels (in Marx and Engels 1970:487), I take tasks. Moreover, and more important,the same Tut- the minimal position that "we make our historyour- chone case study demonstrateson a factual basis that selves, but, in the firstplace, under very definiteas- nature provides human beings with "stores" of food sumptions and conditions." A stratifiedstructure is a "preservedlive," such as year-roundproductive fishing possibilitythat some people may succeed in instituting holes, beaver colonies, etc. Even thoughsuch sites may in any economic context.Its formwill simplyvary ac- have verylow productivityby any standard,they take on cordingto the sortof production techniques which are in tremendousimportance when they are too few to feed place. While this thesis fitsthe ethnologicaland the ar- the totalpopulation and no otherresources are available. chaeological recordbest, some anthropologistsmay ob- They may thus be, as among the Tutchone, veryvalu- ject that it makes the emergenceof social inequalities able "stores" which some subgroupsappropriate as pri- (note that I am not saying the formor the volume of vate propertyby controllingaccess to the locations surplus extraction)depend on the simple initiative of wherethey are available. In factthe "store" analogywas some subgroupin a society.However, I do not see why spontaneously made by a bilingual informantin at- this should not be so. Afterall, when traditionalcultural temptingto explain to me in 1972, long beforeTestart's evolutionistslink evolutionto initialchanges in produc- thesis, the importanceof such sites in the Tutchone tion techniques,where do these changes come fromif past. As it can be demonstratedthat the proximityof not fromthe will ofsome individualsin society?Are not NorthwestCoast society had nothingto do with these new productiontechniques just as much a productof the phenomena,one has to conclude thata nomadichunting minds of some human beingsthinking and planningand and gatheringeconomy, and quite a poor one at that, othersresisting the change as new social or culturalin- providesjust as manyopportunities for the development stitutions? ofinequalities and ofa "storageeconomy" as a sedentary The second point is more conceptual.Since I have al- huntingeconomy in a rich environment.If one argues readyelaborated this point in two articles(Legros 1977, that thereis a differenceof volume between the social Legros,Hunderfund, and Shapiro 1979), I will only sum- surplusappropriated by the Tutchone elite and that ac- marize. Two types of causality are at work in any so- cumulated by the elite of a NorthwestCoast society I ciety. The firstmay be called synchroniccausality. It will agree,but a simple differenceof volume in surplus refersto the interdependencebetween an already con- extractiondoes not make a structuraldifference. In- stituted economic system and the sociocultural appa- equality is not a matterof surplus volume but one of ratuses which insure its maintenance or reproduction structuralrelationships between the various compo- overtime. The second may be termeddiachronic causal- nents of a society. In consequence, I think it farmore ity.It refersto the matterthat leads to the emergenceof productiveto take the positionthat all societies ofhunt- structurallynew social facts.When we are dealingwith ers and gatherershave providedpossibilities for the de- human societies, any economic system is necessarily velopmentof social inequalities in the full sense of the both and immediatelya technologicaland a social phe- term;that all have had the potentialfor a "storageecon- nomenon with rules for controllinglabour, means of omy" of one kind or another; that in some societies production,and the products of labour-rules which poorlyendowed in naturalfoodstuffs the volume of sur- may or may not be egalitarian.Any societymay include plus extractedhas necessarilyremained quite low; that several socioeconomic systems as just defined,even a in othersocieties livingin richerenvironments the vol- society of nomadic hunters and gatherers(see Legros ume of extractionhas become much larger;and that in 1978 for an Inuit group and Testart i985b:224-25 for still otherpopulations, not so well endowedwith readily Australia,where the rules forapportioning products of available naturalfood resourcesbut well located forthe the hunt and products of gatheringas well as other developmentof horticultureor agriculture,surplus ex- spheresseem to have been different).Hence, questions tractionvolume has become quite largesince the domes- of causality can neverbe posed in termsof an interrela- ticationof plants and/oranimals. Since it is recognized, tionshipbetween the overall economyof a givensociety on the otherhand, that societies ofhunter-gatherers did and the totalityof its socioculturalapparatuses. On the not have to instituteinequalities, and in fact some did synchronicplane, causalityis a questionabout how each not, but many obviously did at some point in the past of a society'seconomic systemsis synchronicallyinter- with or withouta richenvironment, with or withoutthe relatedto some of its superstructuralapparatuses, each adoptionof agriculture,and since it is evidentthat some constitutingin the process a given mode of production groupsin richenvironments did not move towardstrati- in the extended sense of the word. On the diachronic ficationand that some who adopted agriculturedid not plane, causalityis a question of how disparateelements instituteinequalities, it seems to me that there is no stemmingfrom one or several of the economic systems point in tryingto link the adoption of nonegalitarian and/orsociocultural apparatuses may by chance offer structuresto particularkinds of ecologyand/or produc- the buildingblocks fora new socioeconomic structure

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and ofwhether opportunities thus offeredare takenby at textof hunter-gatherer societies. (In addition,Cohen dis- least some of the social actors making historythem- tinguishes between hunter-gatherersand hunter- selves under the constraints and potentials of their gatherer-fishersand discusses the question of the Neo- milieu. I do not see why cultural evolution should be lithic transformation.) any less chancy and yet rule-governedthan biological The major problem with Testart's treatment of evolution. hunter-gatherers,in my opinion, is his dichotomous To sum up, my dissatisfactionwith the presentstate conceptionof economy and social organization.On the of the reconstructivepart of Testart's article is that it one hand, this necessarilyleads to (social or economic) remains embedded in the questions of traditionalcul- determinism;on the other,it reduces man's complex tural evolutionism,which, as raised,are unanswerable; relationto nature to labour or instrumentalaction, so- that it keeps the whole society as the unit of analysis cial relations mainly being viewed as relations of the when the dissectingof societal wholes into component labour process. What we need forthe conceptualization partsseems a moreheuristic approach for understanding of "primitive" societies (and not only these) is an ap- cultural evolution; that it nowhere attempts to con- proach which allows us to get detailed informationon struct concepts of modes of productionwhich in the the main relationshipsof man-to nature (the labour long term would allow for a finerand much different process being only part of this),to the Other,and to the probingof the ethnographicrecord. However, the cri- Self. Between these relationshipsthere is a specificar- tique bears only on the presentarticle as it stands and ticulation,since theyare based on a common principle, only on what I call its reconstructivepart. In the first which in the case of hunter-gathererswithout storage place, Le communisme primitifutilizes in part the may be generallycharacterized as solidarityand com- much more productivetheoretical framework that I am munication between man and man as well as between referringto, and I stronglyrecommend it for the ad- man and nature(Linkenbach I986). For each societythe vances it makes (in fact,I am surprisedthat we do not specific modes of relationship and their articulation yethave an Englishtranslation). His presentreversion to must be formulatedso thatpossible differencesbetween the theoreticalframework of traditionalcultural evolu- societies will become apparent(for example, the role of tionistsmay have been intendedto providehis CURRENT women and theirlevel of autonomyseem to be different ANTHROPOLOGY Anglo-Saxonaudience with a mode of in Inuit and !Kung societies). In addition,the possibility thoughtit is generallymore familiarwith, but it takes of appropriationof surplus as a preconditionof social away too much of the sharpness of his own previous stratificationand inequalityseems to be only one aspect termsof analysis.In the second place, but just as impor- of the explanationof evolutionaryprocesses. Above all, tant,my critiquein no way diminishesmy admiration it implies a negation of the principleof solidarityand forhis presentdebunking of the Neolithic Revolution thus a change in consciousness. concept. In his analysis of the AustralianAborigines, Testart tries to isolate an interpretivelogic, "at once social schema and schema of thought":the rule of not dispos- ing of what is one's own, which applies to the three ANTJE LINKENBACH domains of sexuality,totemism, and economy. In my Reichensteinstrasse48, 6903 Neckargemuind,Federal opinion he does not consistentlydevelop this reallyim- Republic of Germany.i9 viii 87 portantidea. He is presentinga key concept of Austra- lian culture,and it would be interestingto relate it to Social anthropologistsstill call "hunter-gatherers"a these societies' concept of nature.The classificationof largenumber of societies that show greatsimilarities in "men and things" in "totemism" is based on a specific the labour process and whose economyis characterized world view that denies essential barriersbetween man by the non-existence of cultivating techniques and and nature (Levi-StraussI962). stockbreedingand thereforerepresents a low level of Finally,Testart presents the hypothesisof a similarity technological development. To Testart this grouping between Australian Aborigines and Paleolithic socie- seems unsatisfyingand leads to what he calls the two ties. Forhim, the reasonfor technological stagnation lies majorquestions in the anthropologyof hunter-gatherers: in the social conditionsof Australiansociety, which al- the relationbetween economy and society,as well as the low no advantage for the hunter fromthe capture of existenceand conceptualizationof socio-culturaldiffer- game. In my opinion one should be carefulin assuminga ences among hunter-gatherers,and the possibilityof an profit-orientedlogic, which can easily become a con- analogy between hunter-gatherersof today and of the stant element in human history.Moreover, to claim or past. Obviously,these are problemsin the discipline,but denyan analogybetween hunter-gatherersof todayand I think we have to admit that nowadays most social of the past is always a question of one's conceptionof anthropologistsare aware ofthem, especially of the first. history.If one sees historyonly as a historyof progress, Even Testartrecognizes this, and I wonderwhy he does societies that "lack" innovations(new technologiesor not mention the work of, for example, Cohen (i968), aspects of social stratification)seem stagnantand there- Fried(i967) and Godelier (1973a, b), who discuss evolu- forecomparable to societies of the past. But we must tionaryproblems as well as problemsof the articulation bearin mind thatman's inventivenessis not confinedto of economic and sociocultural phenomena in the con- those dimensions which seem significantto us (Levi-

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Strauss 1972) and that the processesof historical chang( There is among [Aborigines]... a profoundresistance need not be similar or even uniformin character. to creditingthemselves with theirown cultural achievements.All theywill claim creditfor is fidelity to traditionor, as theyput it, for"following the Dreaming,"the culturalfeatures of human societies JOHN MORTON havingbeen establishedentirely by the acts ofmyth- School of Behavioural Sciences,Macquarie University, ical beingswho ... are alone conceivedof as active Sydney,N.S.W. 2IO9, Australia. io VIII 87 and creative,men beingpassive beneficiariesof un- motivatedgenerosity. Testarthas been masterfullyand provocativelysynthe- sizing data on hunter-gatherersfor some time, and this Ifthere is a technologicalconservatism in Australia,it is paper testifiesonce more to the breadthof his knowl- echoed loudly in the religiousdomain. edge. He is concernedwith broad evolutionary questions In addition,and as Testartsuggests, religion does not and theirrelation to social theory,but a good deal of the simply account mythicallyfor the originsof economic paper approaches the specific question of the place of goods; it also in largemeasure takes creditfor reproduc- AustralianAborigines in hunter-gathererstudies. I will ing them (thoughnot directlyin the case of technologi- confinemy remarksto this latterissue, particularlyto cal items). As Hamilton (I982:9I) notes: "within the Testart's conclusion "that Australia in some sense per- Aboriginalperspective 'religious' property has an aspect petuatedthe technical stage of the Palaeolithic." of 'economic' property,since reproductionof [totemic] AustralianAborigines have long presenteda puzzle to species is held to depend on human actions over certain anthropology:why do theyhave such elaboratereligious objects, jealously guarded and kept fromall but their practicesand social formswhen othergroups, apparently owners,at certainplaces fromwhich all but the owners with similarlevels of techno-economicorganization, do are excluded." Through "increase rites" each "local not? Testart suggeststhat we should firstconsider that group was believed to performan indispensable eco- Aboriginesappear to have been technologicallyconser- nomic service not only foritself but forthe population vative and that this conservatismtakes the formof a aroundits bordersas well" (StrehlowI970: IO2). Though "cultural barrier"which preventsthe adoption of new the issue is more complicatedthan I can spell out here, economic strategiesin otherwisefavourable conditions. thisreproduction for others is closelytied to restrictions In coming to grips with the why of this situation,he on the consumption and use of one's own totemic statesthat we may be mistakenin thinkingthat Austra- species. lia's elaborate social and religious systemshave no ef- Participationin "increase ritual" and similar cults is fectson production.To the contrary,meat sharing,for largelyrestricted to seniormen, and the usual prerequi- example,can be shown to be intimatelyconnected with site forparticipation, initiation, is also the precondition moietyand generationdistinctions, with the injunction of marriage.After initiation a man's "marriagemust on a hunterto give up his produce for "the benefitof conformto the laws of his group; a perverteddesire for anotherwho disposes ofits distribution."Moreover, this women who are forbiddento him is one of the greatest injunctionis part of a generalizedprinciple of "surren- barsin his struggleand searchfor further knowledge and der": "one may no more dispose of one's game than of the power that comes with wisdom" (Strehlow I947: one's totem or one's sisters." The elaborate social and II2). Thus, anotherlevel of Testart's "isomorphic" or- religiousdimensions of Aboriginal life thus appearto be ganization,marriage, is also closely related to the reli- governedby a single "principleof intelligibility,"with gious domain. Economy, religion,social organization, three diverse domains-economy, kinship, and reli- and even technological innovation all fall within the gion-brought togetherin "isomorphism."Testart ad- ambit of the Dreaming forAborigines. mits,however, that he does not quite know how to place We should not underestimatethe practical signifi- this isomorphismin an explanatorycontext. All thathe cance ofthe Dreaming:it is not some rarefiedphilosoph- will ventureto say is that the rule of givingup game for ical system or something that is "just symbolic." othersto distributemeans that the hunterreceives no Testart'sthree "isomorphic" levels are verymuch prac- materialor moral advantagefrom increasing production ticallyintegrated. For example,hunting in CentralAus- and labour input and that thereis therefore"no incen- tralia is closely tied to the later stages of initiation, tive . . . to experimentor to adopt new and eventually when groupsof initiatesare sent away to kill game and more efficacioustechniques." bringback meat to exchange for secret knowledgere- Conservatismis indeed a featureof Australian soci- vealed to them by the eldersin secret/sacredacts. "It is eties, and it was precisely in relation to the techno- withmeat thatthe old men have to be 'loosened,' so that economic field that Strehlow (I947:35) observed that they will reveal their great tjurunga [sacred objects, "all occupations originatedwith the totemicancestors; verses, etc.] which they are clutching so tightly" and herethe nativefollows tradition blindly: he clingsto (StrehlowI97I:677). These prestationsare partof a gen- the primitiveweapons used by his forefathers,and no eral scheme of appropriationwhereby young hunters thoughtof improvingthem everenters his mind." Simi- normallypresent game to older men in the band. This larly,Maddock (I970:I77-78) has observedin the con- oftentakes the formof brideservice: as a youngman, a text of an analysis of mythsof the originof firethat hunteris likely to be living with and workingfor his

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-GatherersIi father-in-law(cf. Peterson I978), who also invariablyha! forfew civilizationsseem to equal the Australiansin a key part to play in his ritual career,particularly a: theirtaste forerudition and speculationand what circumcisor.Gifts, especially of game, that flow from< sometimeslooks like intellectualdandyism, odd as novice to his circumcisorare "partlya recompensefoi this expressionmay appearwhen it is applied to peo- the ritual services that have been renderedto the boy': ple with so rudimentarya level of materiallife. [patri]lodgeand partlyan anticipatorypayment of hi: bride-price"(Meggitt I962:308). It is onlyafter initiatior Conservatismis not only a matterof inertia: it is also and marriagethat participationin "increase ritual" oc commitmentto "social organizationand marriagerules curs,and such participationrepresents an identificatior [that]require the effortsof mathematiciansfor their in- ofritual actors with ancestralbeings and theirauthorit3 terpretation"and to a "cosmology[that] astonishes phi- (Morton I987). losophers" (Levi-StraussI966:243). This is a briefpicture of a complex situation,but it i: The incentive to invent and reproduce inventions sufficientto highlighta problemwith Testart's analysis stemsfrom a sense ofscarcity, and in spiteof the popular Australian hunters do indeed accrue advantages,boti image ofAustralia as an arid,unproductive land, there is "material" and "moral," from their capture of game no evidencewhatsoever of Aborigines' having taken on a However, these are not direct,and it remains true tha view of theircountry as unproductive.To the contrary, huntersdo not get prize cuts ofmeat or the prestigetha Aboriginalpeople view the land as wholly fertile,often comes from "ownership" and distributionof game waxinglyrical about its productivevirtues, especially in Rather,returns have to be measured in termsof accesL myth. It may well be that to us "Australia appears a to human resources and religiousknowledge: "Wealti backwater in relation to the possibilities offeredby in the Aboriginalsocial formationis assessed in termsol neighbouringpeoples with whom thereis contact,"but controlof the reproductiveand productivecapacity oi to Aboriginesthemselves it is no such thing.WVhen it women and the religious property" (Bern I979:I23). Ir comes to consideringconservatism, this latterview is fact,the situationis yetmore complex. Valued resource, all-important,since any "culturalbarrier" to innovation are not simplyconstituted by women and sacredknowl is matchedby the highvalue placed on the statusquo. In edge: they also consist of all the social relations tha Australia,there have been severelimitations on possible are created throughmarriage and all the territorialac challenges to this high value, since inter-groupcontact cess that comes frombeing attached to differentplaces has been restrictedto an island that affordedfew areas through knowledge of the Dreaming, sacred stories, ecologicallyripe fortechno-economic development and songs,and objects always being associated with specific few sustained contacts with peoples of "superior"abil- sites in the land. Aboriginalreligion in this way "sym ity. On the otherhand, if Australia has developed less bolically constitutesthe society as a structureof repro than any otherpart of the worldin termsof the cultural duction" (MyersI986:228), creatingand re-creatingties appropriationof nature, it has developed far superior between people, between "countries,"and between the methods for dealing with other key factorsof produc- two. There is thus a greatdeal at stake in hunting:the tion-access to labour and land (or, in the Aboriginal abilityof hunters to fulfilobligations to old men is inex- idiom, access to people and country). tricablybound to theirgeneral life prospects. Hunting tc The adaptive value of Aboriginalsocial and religious some extentdetermines with whom and whereone may organization is rarely underscoredin hunter-gatherer live, thatis to say,the access one has to labour and land. studies, mainly because of the latter's abiding concern At the veryleast, then,any "culturalban on technologi- withtechno-economic development. Testart is not espe- cal innovation"is unlikelyto stem froma lack of inter- ciallyguilty of ignoring the significanceof the social and est in the productsof hunting (cf. Sackett I979), and the religiousdomains: indeed,he has oftenbeen at pains to roots of conservatismhave to be soughtelsewhere. draw attentionto them. This particularpaper, however, Most of the examples I have drawn on here are from will contribute,perhaps unintentionally,to a certain Central Australia,arguably the most conservativepart myopia.Aboriginal ethnography testifies time and time of the continent.But such conservatismis a corollaryol again to the importanceof people and place as resources, the strengthof attachmentto the tenets of the Dream- yet technologystill holds pride of place in the general ing. "Westerndesert people," forexample, "are known field.I have attemptedto counteractthat view because throughoutAustralia for their conservatismand the an overemphasison technologytends to lead to the no- strengthof their adherence to the Law [Dreaming]"(My- tion thatthis is the only kind of developmentworthy of ers I986:297), and it was the same pridein and devotion study.However, to say that a society or cultureis con- to the Law that caused Levi-Strauss(I966:89) to remark servativeis to say no more than it does not developin a that Aboriginessometimes appear to be "real snobs." particularway. Conservatismin Australia is indicative But the keypoint (Levi-StraussI966:89, my emphasis)is of a "coldness" (L6vi-StraussI967:46-47) thatdescribes that not lack ofdevelopment but a particularkind ofdevelop- ment-a way of abolishing"the possible effectsof his- Australiansocieties have probablydeveloped in isola- toricalfactors on ... equilibriumand continuity"(Levi- tion more than appearsto have been the case else- Strauss I966:234). The Law that applies in Australia is where.Moreover, this developmentwas not under- based on the dictum "once a precedent;twice a tradi- gone passively. It was desired and conceptualized, tion" (Myers I986:285). Development is here a case of

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adaptingto novel circumstancesand givingthose adap- was unproblematicand accountedfor by an evolutionary tations the weight of authoritywhich comes froman paradigmthat saw Aboriginesas transitionalbeings on eternalLaw, enforcedby men identifiedwith it. the bottom rung of the human ladder. Their ethno- It is importantto understandthat Aborigineshave graphic interest arose from the fact that they were been constantlymodifying their social and territorialre- thoughtto open a window onto the originsof religion, lations. These can change veryquickly, and Aboriginal- marriage,and property.With the demise of the evolu- ists themselves are only just becoming aware, particu- tionaryparadigm, the worldat largelost interestin Aus- larlythrough the documentationof land claims, of the tralianethnography and leftit to regionalspecialists. disjunctionthat often exists betweenpeople's assertions The claim ofuniqueness emergedagain at the Man the about theiroccupation of a territoryand the historical Hunter conferencein I966, when Murdock,in discuss- record.In the formercase, people tend to say that,be- ing whetherhunter-gatherers are a cultural type,com- cause the Dreaming is "forever"and theynow have the mented:"The Australianevidence, however, makes this religiousknowledge for particular places, theyand their seem dubious. I suggest that we recognize the near ancestors have always been at those places. In short, uniqueness of Australian social organizationand pay theyare as reluctantto allow historyinto theirmyths as more attentionthan beforeto attemptsto explain their we are to allow myth into our histories. However, in sharpdivergence from similar societies elsewherein the givingtechno-economic development pride of place in world" (i968b:336). Instead of being bilateral with a hunter-gathererstudies we are surelymythicising peo- prominentnuclear family,said Murdock, the Austra- ple to a granddegree. Hunter-gatherers are moreremark- lians are unilinear,largely characterised by double de- able forthe way theyallocate naturalresources (the land scent,and have residencerules thatare overwhelmingly and its products)through social relationswhich have as patrilocaland polygynyin a moredeveloped form than is their basic "materialist" teleologythe reproductionof found among other hunter-gatherers.The Australians people, not goods. also posed problems for Woodburn's (I980) dualistic Testart may be correctin seeing Aboriginesas repre- classificationof hunting and gatheringsocieties into im- sentinga picture of "a distant and glorious heritage": mediate-and delayed-return,since theyhad most of the this is indeed how they see themselves.But to concen- featuresof immediate-returnsocieties but uncharacter- trateonly on the natureof "restrictivesocial forms"is to istically protractedmarriage contracts that led him to draw attentionaway fromthe genius of those formsin classifythem with the delayed-returnsocieties. For Tes- dealing with historicalcontingency. Let it be said that tartit is unilinearity,pervasive dualism, and multiplici- Aboriginesmay be the closest thingliving to "natural tous formsof totemismthat mark out the Australians. man," but only if it is simultaneouslyrecognised that Generally,then, the problem is that the Australians' "natural man" has a culturewhich is largelyin accord elementaryforms of religious and social lifeare nothing with what he is rather than what he will become. like as elementaryas once thought:indeed, one well- Aborigines,having perhaps more than anyonerestricted known anthropologistremarked at a recentconference the expansionof culturalforces of production, have also thatDurkheim should have writtenabout the people he developedto the greatestdegree the means formanaging workedwith forreally elementaryforms. natural contingencies (as opposed to cultural ones, What is the realityof this perceiveddifference? Un- which call more and more upon technological inven- doubtedlythere are some unique aspects to the Austra- tion). The vagariesof demographyand the environment lians' situation:principally their occupation of an entire are with each Aboriginalgeneration subsumed under the continentfor a long periodof time with minimal exter- rubricof the Dreaming,in a scheme which is fundamen- nal contact.But is this sufficientto account forthe per- tally religiousand "world-accepting"(cf. StannerI963) ceived difference,or are there distinctive principles and whose generalprinciples have stood the testof time. underlyingAustralian social life? Could it not be that One senses thatif hunter-gatherer experts spent as much the way we have constitutedand reconstructedAborigi- time classifyingmodes of mythical consciousness and nal life is part of the problem?The basic ethnographies religious artefactsas they do technologicalitems, the ofAboriginal life were carriedout in the heydayof struc- reconstructionof the past might be considerablyen- tural-functionalismby anthropologistsworking with hanced. Moreover,this is perfectlypossible, because the Aboriginalpeople who had given up the hunting-and- studyof transformationsover space is on an equal foot- gatheringlife to live in settledcommunities of one kind ing with the study of transformationsover time (Levi- or another.The normativefocus of structural-function- StraussI966:2 56-62). There is no historywithout myth, alist accounts was thus reinforcedin two ways: resi- just as thereis no mythwithout history. dence and land-use practices had to be reconstructed, with the result that common strategiesand particular periodsof the life cycle were emphasisedby informants NICOLAS PETERSON and convertedinto rigidrules by ethnographers;and the Departmentof Prehistoryand Anthropology, variabilityof social practices across the continentwas AustralianNational University,G.P. O. Box 4, frequentlyelided so that the difference,for example, in Canberra,A.C. T. 260I, Australia. I7 viii 87 polygynyrates between the desertand northernAustra- lia was obscured in the creation of an Australia-wide It has long been arguedthat AustralianAboriginal soci- norm. These points having been made, the distinc- eties are unique. In the igth centurythis uniqueness tiveness is not dissolved, but is it a quantitativeor a

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-GatherersI 2I qualitative distinctiveness?Are Aboriginalcultural and ideologiesof patrilineal continuity. Thus I suggestthat if social organisationsnot merelydistinctive but disjunc- there is a key to understandingAboriginal societies it tive with these of otherhunter-gatherers to the extent lies in the centrality of economies of knowledge. that they challenge the loose unity assumed to be Whetheror not such economies ofknowledge were char- created by material constraints? Do they manifest acteristicof Pleistocene hunter-gatherers must surelyre- intensificationand formalisationof featurescommonly main in the domain of speculation, but, adoptingthe foundamongst other hunter-gatherers, or are therereally kind of evolutionaryargument used by Testart,elabora- unique principlesunderwriting their way oflife that put tion and complexitywould suggest that they are rela- them in a categoryall theirown? tivelyrecent appearances. All of the features deemed distinctive are found In sum, I am not persuadedby Testart's centralargu- among one or more hunter-gatherersocieties elsewhere: ment, although I find his analyses highlystimulating linealityas ideology,if not as actuality,is common,if and the questions he asks provocativeand worthwhile. oftenonly weakly developed and usually morefilial than It is a pity that his more extensive treatmentof these lineal; dualism is not unknown; totemismwas "discov- issues is not available in Englishto stimulatethe debate ered" in NorthAmerica; and polygynyis foundfrom the theydeserve. San to the Inuit. Thus in these features,at least, there are no discontinuitiesbut only intensifications.Testart, however,moves beyondlisting distinctive traits to argue D. R. RAJU fora distinctiveunderlying principle of Australian social Departmentof Archaeology, Deccan College life:people may not dispose ofwhat is theirown or what Postgraduateand Research Institute,Pune 411006, theyare "close to." Thus membersof a clan cannot dis- India. I3 viii 87 pose ofthe women oftheir own clan in marriage,nor can theyeat theirown totemwhere theyare responsiblefor At the outset let me applaud Testart foradding a new reproducingit forother clans; the huntercannot distrib- dimensionto the studyof hunter-gatherers. His critique ute the game he kills; and, althoughTestart does not put of the igth-centuryunilineal evolutionism based on it in this way, effectivelymissing the major example of biologicalmodels and ofGordon Childe's Neolithic Rev- this principle,the owners of rites are frequentlydepen- olutionis refreshingvis-a-vis Kabo's (I985 ) articleon the denton categoriesof non-owners to performthem. Mad- food-producingeconomy, wherein it is arguedthat the dock(I974:42) speaksof these kinds of principles as fos- Neolithic Revolution is valid. His concept of the eco- teringmutual dependence,balancing the parochialism nomic structureof storing hunter-gatherers as a separate createdby local rightsand sentiments,while forTestart categorycapable of explaining "agriculturenot as an they are evidence of the collective appropriationof economic factorof radical or universalimportance but nature and a communal organisation.This communal as a technological factor that becomes decisive only organisationis also manifested,he argues,in the prefer- under certainenvironmental conditions" seems plausi- ence forcooperative modes of huntingover technologi- ble and rendersChilde's grand conceptual framework cal innovations that are inimical to such cooperation. untenable. Settingaside reservationsabout and/orqualifications of Testart's review of hunter-gatherercharacteristics- all these points,it does not seem to me that eitherthe economic, technological,and social-from a global per- allegedlydistinctive traits or Testart'sprinciple of intel- spectiveand of the peculiaritiesof the Australiansitua- ligibilitystrike at the core of the distinctivenessof Aus- tion, where social organizationplays a pivotal role, is traliancultures. impressiveand instructiveand should be of the utmost I would have thoughtthat the distinctivefeatures of usefulnessfor prehistorians all over the world. It is un- Australiansocieties and culturesare the elaborationof fortunate,however, that he dismisses the hunter- the religiouslife, the complexityof the culturalstructur- gatherersof the tropical regions of Africaand Asia as ingof the landscape,and the marriageexchange systems. subsistingas such only throughlinks withneighbouring Fundamentalto all ofthese is the importanceof an econ- agro-pastoralists.The Cholanaickens of Kerala lived un- omy of knowledge. This is integrallyinvolved in the til recentlyin caves remotefrom agro-pastoralists, and existenceof polygyny, the distributionof meat, the func- so did the Kadar ofthe Anamali Hills ofTamilnadu. The tioningof unilineal groups,and the organisationof cere- Chenchus of the Nallamalais (von Furer Haimendorf monies. It is also related to territorialorganisation and I943) and the Yanadis of the south-eastcoastal plains of the elaborationof rightsin land. Economies of knowl- India were until the beginningof this centuryhunter- edge, such as are foundin Australia,are quite antithet- gathererspar excellence (Raju I98I, MurtyI98I). ical to the collective appropriationof nature and the While Testart's developmentof the theme of the ar- communal organisationwhich Testart is arguing are ticulation of the economic and social factorsis cogent, unique to it. They in fact lay the groundsfor powers, the second theme,relating the ethnographicpresent to rights,and interestsin ceremonies,land, and people that the prehistoricpast, seems as elusive as ever. The last are exclusoryand the basis of inequality.I would also quarter-centuryhas witnessed a methodologicalbattle argue (see Peterson I986 forelaboration) that theyhelp and theoreticaldebate in archaeology,especially ethno- create a distinctivedemographic regime which makes archaeology(Moore and Keene I983), and a spate ofpub- generationstraced throughmales twice the length of lications has emergedas a resultin both the New World those tracedthrough females, laying the foundationfor and the Old (AsherI96I; BinfordI978, I983; Binford

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 221 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, FebruaryI988 and Binford I968; Flannery I972; Orme I973; Jochim supersededby new and betterfindings. The rich litera- I976; Lee and DeVore I976; Yellen I977; Yellen and ture of the past decade includes an extensivereview of Harpending I977; Gould I978, I980; Schiffer I978; the environmentaldifferences between NorthAustralia Wobst I978; Clark I980; Hodder I98I; Winterhalder and Papua New Guinea (Jonesand Bowler I980) that is and Smith I98I; Vogel I986). Testart conspicuously at pains to explainwhy transferring tropical horticulture evades discussion ofthis literaturein tryingto relatethe to ArnhemLand was hardlyas easy as it seems in Tes- modem hunter-gatherersto those of the past. His global tart'soutdated sources (Golson 1972, WhiteI97I). In conclusions are difficultto accept. He says thatAustra- addition,recent publications reveal the importanceof lia in some sense perpetuatedthe technical stage of the Aboriginal harvestingstrategies with respect to their Palaeolithic. I assume that he means the EuropeanUp- ability to accumulate enough food to provision large per Palaeolithic (thereis no Palaeolithic in Australia).It gatheringsof people in an intensificationof theirsocial should not be forgottenthat the Palaeolithic is not the life; work by Meehan (i982:66), Beaton (I982), and same everywherein the Old World and that the Euro- Lourandos (I985) includes a small sample of such find- pean Upper Palaeolithic was a gloriousperiod compared ings and casts interestinglight on the propositionthat withthe Mesolithic.And what about the environmental Aboriginalpeople neverstored food or, more important, conditionsof Pleistocene Europe? In evaluatingthe Aus- never had enough surplus to maintain more complex tralianhunter-gatherers, Testart takes forgranted envi- social relations.Finally, there is the question ofthe sim- ronmentaldifferences in differentparts of Australia in ple Australian technology:Testart observes that, lack- favourof his argument.Moreover, he attemptsto piece ing bows and blowpipes,they never grasped what can be togetherAustralian ethnographyand European Palaeo- done if you understandthe principleof compressedair lithicarchaeology to arriveat global conclusions.What a power.He forgets,of course,that in theiruse ofartefacts pity!While Sollas's (i 9II) ideas are undeniablynaive, I such as tridentfish spears and boomerangs,Australians wonder if Testart has not fallen into the same trap as had masteredwhat to do about distortiondue to refrac- regardshis "reasoned evolutionism,"the idea thattech- tion as well as some rathertricky problems of aerody- nological developmentis caused by the social structure namics. It occurs to me that a major problem in the of productionin Palaeolithic times-guesswork, pure anthropologyof hunter-gatherersmay be that its propo- and simple. Is this yet anothercase of grab-baganalogy, nentsare not quite as familiarwith the literatureas they and a generalcomparative one at that? mightbe.

CARMEL SCHRIRE ERIC ALDEN SMITH Departmentof Human Ecology,Rutgers University, Departmentof Anthropology, University of New Brunswick,N.J., U.S.A. 27 viii 87 Washington,Seattle, Wash. 98195, U.S.A. 2I VIII8 7

We are indebtedto Testartfor resuscitating the question Althoughmuzh that Testarthas to say is reasonable (if of whethermodern hunter-gatherers and theirToyota- ponderouslyexpressed), I have severalproblems with his owningdescendants reflect significant aspects ofPalaeo- argument.My criticismsfall into two categories:those lithic life.It was, I feared,a question whose time might concerninghis generaltheory of the articulationof eco- have come and gone when I wrotethe essay Testartcites nomic and social forcesand those specificallyconcern- (Schrirei984). Clearlythe matteris still of concern,and ing his discussion of AustralianAboriginal societies. consequentlyI shall tryand answer some of Testart's Settingaside the evolutionaryissue (which is given arguments. only a rudimentarysketch), the majorproble'matique in Testart concentrates his attention on Australian the paper is the relation between technoeconomicfac- Aborigineswho continuedto hunt and gathertheir food torsand social organization.While we can hardlyexpect using a simple technology,no storage,and no farming, a short paper to resolve issues that have concerned despite the absence of constraintson a tropicalagricul- scholars in hundredsof volumes, we can expect better tural system such as is and was practisedjust to their than we get here. Testart's simplisticnotion of causal northin places like New Guinea. He sees a link between explanation-a linear determinismwhereby either the the Aboriginalpractice of lettingcredit for production economic base determinesthe superstructureor vice accrue to someone otherthan the producerhimself and versa-leads him to two unfortunate(and incompatible) theirpatent ban on culturalinnovation. Thus theirsim- conclusions.First, in searchingfor such lineardetermin- ple technologycoupled with theircooperative behaviour ism he relies on highlyaggregated categories ("techno- links them to Palaeolithic societies in theirpre-farming economic level" vs. "social organization");as a result, state ratherthan to societies foundin degradedregions causal mechanisms remain hopelessly obscure. Argu- wherefarming could not have been practisedbecause of mentsover the causal priorityof base vs. superstructure environmentalconstraints. are inevitablysterile unless these categoriesare disag- Interestingthough this stance may be, it is flawedby gregatedto the point where specificcausal explanations outdated sources. Testart's Australiansources are only can be tested. Realizing the difficulty,Testart takes a threein number.One dates back some 8o years,and the second tack: ratherthan causal explanations,he often othertwo were writtensome I 5 yearsago and have been restscontent with statingcorrelations (which he some-

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-Gatherers2 3 times terms "isomorphisms") between economic and by referenceto an existing social/symbolicstructure, social factors.But correlationsare not reallyanswers to which itselfremains unaccounted for. Rather than being anything;they are questions in search of answers. an evolutionaryor historicalmaterialist argument, then, I see two ways out. One is via a more rigorousform of it is a staticone. Second,of the threefactors Testart lists functionalanalysis (Cohen I978), preferablyinvolving a as evidence of social blockage of technoeconomicdevel- specificationof the way in which the preferencesand opment(see above), only the firstfits his thesis; I fail to capabilities of individual actors generatesocial trends see how rules deprivinga hunterof the benefitof his and constraints(Elster i982). (Testartmakes some very own kill can provide disincentivesfor modification of tentativemoves in this directionin his discussion of vegetablefoods (not widely shared, and in the domain of Australian game-sharingrules.) Another escape from women's production)in the directionof horticultureor simplisticlinear determinismis via the recursivelogic forthe preservationof meat once it has been distributed of natural-selectiontheory, wherein the set of traitsex- within a local group.Third, I am not convincedby the istingat any one point in time and the conflictinggoals sparse evidence supplied that the rules governingdivi- ofthe individualsbearing these traits constrain (partially sion ofgame are actually a resultof a generalAustralian determine)the strengthand directionof various selec- proclivityfor social/symbolicoppositions; alternative tive forces (Maynard Smith I978, Boyd and Richerson explanations,some ecological, should certainlybe con- i985). In eithercase, it may turnout that what we call sideredas well. "technoeconomic" factors have greater influence on In conclusion,I suggestthat Testart needs to developa evolutionarytrends than do other sorts of factors,but morerigorous argument, one thatspecifies causal mech- this is a farcry from one-way determinisms, on the one anisms in more detail and that does a betterjob of ac- hand, and acausal correlationsor systemic "articula- countingfor the data bearingon his main claims regard- tions," on the other. ing the effectof game divisions on labor productivity.I Turningto the AustralianAborigines-Testart's "test have no problemin principlewith the notion thatexist- case"-I find that the problems of general theoryjust ing social practices can constraintechnoeconomic de- noted are less evidentwhen he deals with ethnographic velopment or that sharingrules in particularcan have material,but otherproblems take theirplace. The key greateffect (Smith i985), but Testart'sargument is sim- hypothesisis that certain social factorsin aboriginal ply too loose to be convincing. Australia, specifically rules of game division, con- strained or blocked technoeconomic development.In Testart'sview, given a rule (expressiveof a generalstruc- M. SUSAN WALTER tural opposition or complementarityin Aboriginalcul- Departmentof Anthropology, Saint Mary's University, ture)that the hunterhas no rightsto the game he kills, Halifax,N.S., Canada B3H 3C3. 2o viii 87 "thereis no incentive. . . to increase labour productiv- ity,to experimentor to adopt new and eventuallymore Testartargues that since storingforagers are oftenchar- efficacioustechniques." Testart concludes that social acterized by sedentism and social inequality, the factors have blocked or constrainedAboriginal tech- "Neolithic Revolution" was not solely responsiblefor noeconomic development; specifically,he claims that the emergence and spread of nonegalitariansocieties. the sharingrule has impeded (i) efficiency-enhancingRather, domestication of food sources allowed for a improvementsin huntingtools, (2) diffusionof horticul- wider geographicaldistribution of nonegalitariansoci- ture,and (3) storage,specifically meat preservation. eties and the development of states. These are good At the generallevel, Testart'sargument has a number points. However,the extentof departurefrom egalitari- ofinteresting features. From one point ofview, it is fun- anism that foraginghas supportedis still under debate damentallya rational-choice(self-interest) explanation: (Moseley I975, Wilson i98i). Also, the storingforagers individuals(rationally) choose not to investin technical identifiedby Testart (i982) varymarkedly in degreeof innovation because the profits(in food and prestige) social inequalityand sedentism. fromdoing so would not accrue to them(given the game- Localization and predictabilityof resources should distributionrule). From anotherangle, it is a variantof perhaps be added to the conditions Testart considers Marx and Engel's thesis that contradictionswill arise necessaryfor storing foraging. Also, sporadicnatural di- between existingsocial relationsof productionand po- sasters may provoke storage even where resources are tential development of the productive forces; what not seasonal. Testart considers storing incompatible seems to be novel (or,considering "Oriental despotism," with huntingof land fauna because of the greatertime maybenot so novel) is the thesisthat this contradiction, entailed in processingmeat. However, storingforagers rather than leading to social change, remains frozen are frequentlyfishing people, perhapsbecause fishingis fromPaleolithic times on. more oftena low-risk,high-return activity (Lee I968), I leave questions regardingthe accuracy of Testart's and fishingresources are more oftenlocalized. Hunting ethnographyto the Australian specialists and those on requiresmore mobility in generalthan fishing and trans- the technical backwardness of Australia to the ar- portationof processed or untreatedmeat overlonger dis- chaeologists.Some severe problemswith the argument tances. Localization of resourcesnear a home base or in remain. First,Testart has "explained" the anomalous the vicinityof fixed camps occupied in rotationfacili- status of Australians among nomadic hunter-gathererstates women's participationin food processing.Among

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, February1988

storing foragerswomen do all or much of the food ence to the storing/nonstoringdistinction. For example, storage. he sees Australiansas virtuallyunique among nonstor- Testartquestions the usefulnessof the category"for- ing foragersin that theyemphasized unilinearity,dual- ager" because it ignores significantdifferences among ism, and totemism.He acknowledgesthat totemism and peoples lacking plant and animal domestication and clan organizationoccurred among westernAthabaskans similaritiesbetween storing foragers and foodproducers. and southernAlgonkins but attributesthis to influence There has been a tendencyalso to accentuatedifferences fromneighbouring cultivating and/or storing peoples. between egalitarianforagers and horticulturalists.Foir But these non-Australian examples of unilinearity instance,Service (I978) assigns the Aruntato a "band" among nonstorersshould not be dismissed in this way, level ofsocietal complexitydespite the presenceof clans since foragerslike the !Kung also lived close to food that crosscut residentialgroups, while egalitarianhor- producerswithout adoptingunilinearity. In addition,it ticulturalistslike the Jivaroare designated"tribal." Al- is questionablewhether westem Athabaskansshould be thoughhorticulturalists are usually moresedentary than classed as nonstorers(Testart i982). A precise way of nonstoringforagers, both may be markedlyegalitarian distinguishingstoring and nonstoringforagers and/or of and have minimal emphasis on food storage. measuringdegree of emphasis on foodstorage is needed. Testart links the underdevelopmentof Australian Nonetheless,Testart points to issues requiringinves- Aboriginalhunting equipment and techniquesto a lack tigation:why do many more storingforagers than non- ofmotivation of hunters occasioned by theirmethods of storersemphasize unilineal descent,and why do some distributinggame. There is ethnographicevidence, how- nonstorers (including Australian Aborigines) deviate ever,that excellenthunters fared better in competition fromthe more usual nonstoringpattern of bilateralde- forwives. A woman was less likelyto object to marriage scent reckoning? arrangementsif her betrothedwas a superiorhunter. Adult male suitors,who frequentlyarranged their own marriages,could favourablyimpress potential in-laws if MAREK ZVELEBIL theyoutdid rivals in giftsof meat (Tonkinson I978). Po- Departmentof Archaeology and Prehistory,University lygynybrought prestige, economic advantage,political of Sheffield,Sheffield SIO 2TN, England. 2o vii 87 alliance, and greatersecurity in old age (Berndtand Bemdt i964). Failure to providemeat forolder initiated Testart'scontribution can be dividedinto two majorsec- men occasioned punishmentof various sorts including tions. In the first,inspired by the work of Childe, he withholdingof wives (StrehlowI970; BirdsellI975:377- contrastshunting-gathering with farmingas two differ- 79). There was reason for Aboriginalmen to want to ent modes of production.He goes on to distinguishbe- excel in hunting. tween storage-usingforagers and the more common The most sophisticatedhunting technologies would nomadic hunters as two distinct forms of hunter- be expectedin areas where huntingconstituted a major gathereradaptation. In the second section,he considers food source yet presentedconsiderable challenge, as in kinship as a socio-economicmechanism that promotes the Arctic.Is the Australianhunting arsenal so different or hinderseconomic intensification.Using the Austra- from that of other predominantlygathering foragers? lian Aboriginesas an example,he arguesthat theirkin- Testart says that it is "slightly but significantlyin- ship structureand ideology effectivelyprevented eco- ferior." Nonetheless, Australian hunting tools, tech- nomic intensificationand the development of food niques, and knowledge of game appear to have met production.The underlyingquestion is, of course,why aboriginalneeds. Much ofAustralia is desert,population some societies develop or adopt farming(or a storage- densities were low, and some devices might not have using sedentaryforaging economy) while othersdo not. been useful. Relative isolation may have limited dif- Most ofthese pointshave been raisedbefore, either by fusion. Testart himself (I98I, i982a, b) or by others (Sahlins The proposed "cultural ban on technologicalinnova- I974; BenderI978, I98I; Rowley-ConwyI983; Zvelebil tion" is not an altogetherconvincing explanation of the i986). The new elementsare Testart'sskillful combina- failureof horticultureto spread to Australia. Processes tion of archaeologicalevidence and anthropologicalob- wherebyforaging has been replaced by food production servationsand his insistencethat the social structureof have probablyinvolved competitionfor land as well as production,mediated by kinshiprelationships, has acted voluntaryadoption by foragersof horticulture. Horticul- as a means of social controlon the developmentof food turalistsmay frequentlyhave prevailedover nonstoring production.In my view, however,Testart goes too farin foragersin such contestsbecause theyoften have advan- drawing the distinctions between nomadic hunter- tages of numbersand more formalizedleadership. Since gatherers,storing hunter-gatherers, and farmerswhile no indigenousdevelopment of horticultureoccurred in not goingfar enough in consideringthe implicationsof Australia, foragersthere lacked competitionfrom im- social control over the use of resources in a hunter- mediateneighbouring horticulturalists while foragerson gatherersociety. othercontinents did not. Perhapsthis relatesto the per- I agreewith Testartthat lumpingall hunter-gatherers sistence of foragingin northernAustralia. togetheras one typeof society,characterised by a "band Testart comments on the considerable diversity level of organisation,"a "hunting-gatheringeconomy," among foragersthat cannot be accounted forby refer- and "nomadism," does not do justice to theirdiversity,

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-Gatherers125 especially when seen in diachronic perspective. But has chosen to emphasise one of the more controversial ratherthan stresstng"ruptures," as Childe did and as and probablymostly erroneous aspects ofChilde's work, Testarthas done, one should stress the continuityand a distinction,moreover, that is unnecessaryto the more variationthat more appropriatelydescribe the evolution originaland interestingfeature of Testart's model, the of hunter-gatherersocieties towards intensiveforaging notion that kinship relationshipsand ideology control or farmingin manyparts of the globe. Neitherof the two resource intensificationin hunter-gatherersocieties. "ruptures"observed by Testart-that betweennomadic This notion is certainlynot new (see, e.g., Sahlins I974; foragersand sedentarystorers and that betweenfarmers BenderI978, I98I), but Testartadds to the discussionby and hunter-gatherersin general-can be supported givingus a concreteillustration of the way such formsof eitherby archaeologicalevidence or by more theoretical social control worked and by insistingthat the social considerations. environment,the social structureof production, was re- Regardingthe first"rupture," Testart exaggerates the sponsible for the rate of technologicalchange towards differencebetween storersand nomads. It is not true the end of the Palaeolithic and in the Mesolithic-in that the connection between sedentism and storageis other words, by bridging(in some cases) or failingto simple and obvious (footnotenotwithstanding). On the bridgethe ruptureshe has definedearlier. And here we contrary,it is complicatedand subtle.Nomadic hunters, returnonce again to the archaeologicalproblem: how to primarilydependent on meat, do in factmake extensive recognisein the archaeologicalrecord kinship patterns, use ofstorage in northemlatitudes (Eidlitz I969, Binford ideology,and social structuresto the extentof allowing I978). Other foragerscan make only occasional use of us to decide whetheror not they aided intensification. storage, even though they appear to be sedentaryor No solution has yet been foundto this problem. transhumant.The issue is furthercomplicated by the Finally,Testart's model has some interestingimplica- difficultiesof the recognitionof storage,sedentism, and tions forthe organisationof hunter-gatherersociety in socio-economic inequalities in the archaeological rec- general.Implicitly, it challengesthe notion of the egali- ord. Contradictoryclaims forthe presenceor absence of tarian "band-level" society as the norm for hunter- such featureshave been made forboth the Palaeolithic gatherers,effortlessly maintained given a reasonable and the Mesolithic. state of equilibrium.Rather, it seems to suggestthat a The second "rupture,"generally known as the Neo- degreeof social controlis requiredto maintain hunter- lithic Revolution,is equally implausible in many parts gatherersociety in an egalitarianstate-a set ofrules to ofthe world.Ethnographically, we have in manyareas of provide the disincentiveto intensificationand the ac- the world societies dependent on semi-domesticated cumulation of wealth. Taking the argumenta step fur- resources (the Lapps, some tropical cultivators)or so- ther,one could ask what effortand energyare expended cieties utilising a mixture of wild and domesticated in supportof the egalitariansociety. Are the relevant resources. Neither of these fit Testart's normative formsof social controlembedded in the social structure, categories.Archaeologically, as often as not we have not requiringany special support,or does it in facttake faunalassemblages with a mixtureof wild and domestic additionaleffort to symboliseand enforcethem? Consid- fauna in cultural contexts that are clearly transitional erationssuch as these will perhapsallow us eventually between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic (Zvelebil to view the social developmentdiachronically in terms i986). The question arisinghere is at what juncturethe of the relative costs of maintaining an open, non- organisation of production shifted from the hunter- stratifiedsociety as opposed to promotingthe develop- gathererto the food-producingmode. The shiftwas prob- ment of social and territorialcircumscription. ably gradual,and the evidencefor the most partdoes not supportthe notion of a clear break. Further,it is not true,to my mind,that storers"have the same economic structureas cultivatorsof cereals, Reply theformer doing with wild resources(products of gather- ing,fishing, etc.) exactlywhat the latterdo with domes- ticated ones." Hunter-gatherersharvest wild plants, ALAIN TESTART fish,and game; at best, they manipulate the environ- La Bosse, 60590 S6rifontaine,France. 25 IX 87 ment to increase the productivityof their resources. Cereal farmersmanipulate domesticated plants them- Certainlyit was a perilous undertakingon my part to selves: theycontrol their reproduction and can increase attemptto summarizein only a few pages the analyses theirproductivity through selective breedingas well as and reflectionsthat have takenup two books (thesecond environmentalalteration. As Testartnotes, forager stor- of nearly6oo pages) and a numberof articles.For briefly age and agriculturewere in some ways parallel develop- reportingthe conclusions without presentingall the ments (in that theyincreased productivity or reliability factson which theyseem to me to be based, I have been ofresources), but thispoint has been made before(Harris accused of jumpingto conclusions. Thus Linkenbachis I977, Zvelebil i986). surprisedthat no mentionis made of the worksof other In summary,one can findlittle evidence forTestart's scholars on the articulationof economy and society; I assertion of a double rupturein the development of would point to my second book (i985b:I7-54), which hunter-gatherersocieties. It seems, in fact,that Testart begins with a long critical appraisal of prior work on

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 1 CURRENT ANTHROPOLOGY Volume 29, Number I, February1988 hunter-gatherersfrom a Marxistperspective. Similarly, I tween game-sharingrules, exogamy,and totemism.But would referRaju, who findsit "unfortunate"that I set he has misread me here, overlookingthe fact that after aside the hunter-gatherersof tropicalAfrica and Asia, to the passage on isomorphismof social formsI changethe my I98I article,in which I developedmy argumentsin subject and returnto the question of the relation be- depth. Zvelebil remindsus that even nomadic hunters tween economy and society: relative to this question had recourseto storage,but this is a centralissue in my the point of resolution is obviously the social formof argument that I have dealt with repeatedly,distin- productionbecause it is at once a social formand eco- guishingdifferent functions of storagedepending on the nomic in nature (whereas the other isomorphicforms type of society (i982a:i6i, I69, et passim; I985a:II- lack this dual character).I agree that I am "obsessed"- i2). Schriretakes me to task on the question of Austra- as he claims-but I would ratherthat it be with logic lian techniques and does not hesitate to suggestthat I thanwith somethingelse. I ask myselfwhether the "ob- am unfamiliarwith the literature;doubtless she over- session" thathe believes he detectsin me "with drawing looks the summarycharacter of this article and, if she a causal link betweeneconomy and social organization" were to take a look at the pages of which I have only is not instead the echo of his own obsession with not summarizedthe conclusions,might judge otherwise(on being able to do so. huntingtechniques, see i982b:97-I29, which contains Legros's comment is certainlythe best informedbe- a discussion of the boomerangthat I have "forgotten"; cause he has read the two works that the presentarticle on food preservationand harvestingtechniques, see attemptsto summarize.He congratulatesme on my cri- i982a: I67-73; etc.). The possibilityof an aboriginalhor- tique of the notions of the Neolithic Revolutionand the ticulturein northernAustralia remainsopen to debate, band. I am not sure,however, that he has entirelyunder- but I do not think that the views of those who estab- stood the theoreticalreorganization that I proposein my lished the basic similarity of the tropical environ- second work. In termsof the first,the case of the Tut- ments of southem New Guinea and northernAustralia chone and the westem Athapaskansmore generallywas can be so easily labeled "outdated." Even if Jonesand mixed and difficultto classify (Testart i982a:i.2o); in Bowler (cited by Schrire) have been able to show particular,it was difficultto understandwhy these soci- significantdifferences, it must not be forgottenthat hor- eties were so inegalitarianwhen the developmentof ticultureis eminentlyadaptable, as the extraordinary storagewas apparentlyso limited (comparedwith that ecological and agriculturaldiversity of New Guinea at- on the NorthwestCoast). This difficultyno longerexists tests.It is always advisable to specifyunder what condi- with the new theoreticalapproach that I propose(i985 b tions such-and-suchdevelopment seems possible or im- and the second part of this article)because here the so- possible; it is all a question ofnuance, somethingthat is cial formbecomes the firstcause; thus it becomes con- not much in evidence in Schrire'scomment. ceivable fora social formto exist withoutthe society's To this firstdifficulty is added another,that the theo- developingall its potentialitieson the level of produc- retical perspectiveof my firstwork is not that of the tion. Supposing that the westernAthapaskan societies second and thatI have not,I think,concealed my uncer- and those of the Northwest Coast were structuredby tainties,my changes of mind, or my self-criticism.All analogous social forms,one can conceive that the latter this has made the commentators'task very difficult.' had been able to develop an economic structureof stor- Those among them who are familiarwith my earlier age thanks to theirfavourable milieu, whereas the for- work (Walter,Arcand, Legros) seem somewhat less put mer displayed all the indices of a similar society (ine- out by the new perspectivesthat I propose.Walter offers qualities, attenuated formsof the potlatch, privileges temperatecriticisms and poses sensible questions thatI associated with formsof propertyin certainplaces, etc.) can at the moment answer only in part,and she takes but lacked as stable a productivebase because of envi- due note ofthe question (whichI considercentral) of the ronmentalconditions. It would simply be a matterof differentpositions of unilinearity among the Australians one ofthe effectsof blockage ofwhich I speak at the end and among other nomadic hunter-gatherers.Arcand of the presentarticle. In the second partof his comment seems especiallycharmed by the criticalpart of my work Legrosseems disappointedthat I have had no recourseto and would settle, I think,for a philosophical position the conceptof mode ofproduction, but on thissubject he close to a generalizedscepticism. In spite of the gener- allows himselfto be misled by words; what I here call ally sympatheticcharacter of his comment,he occasion- "the social formof production" is exactlythe same thing ally raises some strangecriticisms. Thus, he arguesthat thatI called "social relationsof production" in my I985 my assertion"It is clear thatthe privilegedaspect of the work. The change of vocabularywas not to please CA problem,in which everythingis interconnected,cannot readersbut primarilyto facilitatean intellectual exer- be otherthan the formof the social structureof produc- cise I considered salutary-determiningwhether my tion" does not followlogically from what precedesit and ideas would still seem valuable in a differentformula- is even contradictorywith my idea of isomorphismbe- tion. It was, beyond that, an effortat simplificationin view of the controversythat is always aroused by the employmentof a concept borrowedfrom the Marxist I. To thesedifficulties must be addedthat the translation of a text tradition. originallyconceived in Frenchwas sentto commentatorswithout an Englishversion of its figurei, whichin myview representsthe Ingold's commentproceeds from a moreprofound and essenceof what I wantedto say. well-known differenceof opinion. Discussion of the

This content downloaded from 193.54.110.35 on Sat, 22 Mar 2014 15:22:17 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TESTART Social Anthropologyof Hunter-Gatherers| 27 definitionof hunter-gatherersseems to me in largepart ematics and physics,I hoped to accountfor an identityof idle, and I do not see that Ingold's insistence that the structureacross domains withoutrecourse to the idea of economic implicates the social allows us to advance a causal link. Need I underlineonce again that the do- even a step. Who does not know this? And how does it mains ofwhich I am speakingare neverglobal ones such precludeproposing a definitionin economic or technical as the economy or social organizationin general but terms?In another connection,Ingold, who reproaches partsof them, pieces carvedout of the ensemblefor pur- me for not being familiarwith contemporaryethnog- poses of analysis? There is probably a fundamental raphy,seems for his part not to be familiarwith the philosophical difference,for instead of a microeco- earlierethnography; otherwise he would probablyhave nomic explanation (appealing to "individual actors" known that the question of the unilinearityspecific to and their eventuallyrational choices) I seek mainly a central and western Australia, associated with clans macroeconomic one in terms of social structuresand called "local" and with conception or birth totem- forms.Nevertheless, I grantSmith a criticismthat I my- ism, is a classic one thathas long been recognized(see n. selfrecognized as well foundedin the course of writing I7) if not well studied. And as he views me as moving the article:that of the threefactors of social blockageof backward, I will quite willingly allow him to forge techno-economicdevelopment in Australia considera- valiantlyahead. tions of the game-sharingsystem in factallow the direct Astonishingly,Zvelebil criticizes me for conceiving explanationonly of the first.This criticismarises from the Neolithic Revolution as a fundamentalrupture the fact that I have presentedin this article only the when my main conclusions consist in minimizingthe simplifiedcore ofthe otherwisecomplex argumentation importanceof that rupture, but in anotherconnection he developedin my I985 work.Having alreadysummarized raises the very interestingquestion of how a rupture too much,I refuseto summarizeany moreand will sim- might be identifiedfrom archaeological data. I would ply say this: if it can be shown (as I attemptedto do in point out that thereare two kinds of rupture.One is in the work just cited) thatgathering and otherproductive the technical or productiveapparatus of a society and activities are subsumed by a social formanalogous to is susceptible to identificationin archaeological se- that to which I have called attentionwith regardto quences. The otherhas to do with social forms,and this hunting,is it not possible to speak of a generalblockage is the sort of rupturethat I considerfundamental. It is of all technical developmentin hunting,gathering, or never directlyidentifiable, for the emergenceof a new othersectors of the economy? social formmay very well not be translatedinto any As forthe specialists on Australia,Morton and Peter- importanttechnical or productivechange where there is son comment especially on the part of my article that blockage by the environmentor may be translatedinto relatesto that continent.I do not thinkthat what Mor- such decisive changesonly aftera lapse oftime thatmay ton says about the importanceof religionin Australian be considerable.Taking these structuraland diachronic societies contradictsmy theoreticalproposals. I agree shiftsinto account makes the constructionof definitive thatthe Australianhunter has some interestin the prod- archaeologicalmodels rathercomplex and theirverifica- uct ofthe hunt(Walter raises the same question),but the tion a difficultproblem, but this would not be the first point is that this interestis, as Mortonrecognizes, indi- time that a science proposedhypotheses verifiable only rect; in the long termit assumes the priorrenunciation throughtheir indirect consequences and by means of an of his direct interest,that is, the renunciationof his extendedmethodological detour. catch. One way or another,every hunter-like every Several commentators(Smith, Arcand, Linkenbach) producer-must recoversome partof his interestin any find"my" dichotomyof economy and societytoo simple society,and it is the particularmodalities whereby this or too classical, but no one seems to notice that this interestis finallysatisfied that vary fromone type of oppositionfigures in the questions I ask but not at all in society to another.It is these eminentlysocial modali- the answers I propose. What I considerdeterminant, in ties that most interestus. I cannot judge the extentof fact,is a social formidentifiable at a numberof levels the disagreementbetween Petersonand me with regard economic, sexual, and symbolic. This is veryfar from to the major characteristicsthat can appropriatelybe the simplisticdeterminism for which I am criticizedin attributedto Australian societies. He points out that thatit is a formthat is in itselfnot economic thatdeter- totemism has been "discovered" in America, but he mines a causal relationwithin the economic domain. I does not overlook the extraordinaryprofusion of the thinkthat my criticshave allowed themselvesto be led phenomenonin Australiain comparisonwith the situa- astrayby the terms (or form)of the question, but the tion in the New World (on this subject see Testart formulationof a question is always provisionalinsofar I985b:257-343). Among the peculiarities of Australia as the developmentof the concepts that permitan ade- he cites the marriageexchange systems, but what are the quate responsedoes not permitcriticism of its terms. moieties,sections, and othermatrimonial classes if not The notion of isomorphismis, it seems, not verywell compoundsof unilinearity and dualism?As forhis men- understood,in particularby Smith,who takes it forcor- tion of "the complexityof the culturalstructuring of the relation. Correlation is among facts; isomorphismis landscape," I again see no contradiction,for what is it amongforms, structures, articulated ensembles that can that structuresthe culturalrelationship to the land if it be accounted forin termsof a simple principleof intel- is not all that mythologyand ritual that is expressed ligibility.In borrowingthe termfrom the fieldsof math- preciselyin terms of clan and totemic affiliation?Per-

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haps the differencebetween our characterizationsarises BOYD, ROBERT, AND PETER J. RICHERSON. I985. fromthe fact that mine is more analytic, in a sense Cultureand the evolutionaryprocess. Chicago: Uni- breakingdown the salient aspectsof Australian societies versityof Chicago Press. [EAS] intowhat mightbe called theirbasic elements.One final BURCH, E. S. I986. Propertyrights among the Eskimos word: I am surprisedthat Petersonfinds the complexity ofNorthwest Alaska. Paperpresented to the 4th In- suggestiveof recentdevelopment "adopting the kind of ternationalConference on Huntingand GatheringSo- evolutionaryargument used by Testart,"for I have em- cieties,London School of Economics,September 8- ployedno such argumentand have always held thatthe I3. idea ofan evolutionfrom simple to complexis one ofthe CAUVIN, J.I985. La question du "matriarcatprehis- erroneousviews of the evolutionismof yesteryear. torique" et le role de la femmedans la prehistoire. Travaux de la Maison de l'Orient (Lyon) I0:7-I8. CHILDE, V. G. I949 (I925). L'aube dela civilisation europeenne. Paris: Payot. ReferencesCited I953 (I935). L'orientpr6historique. Paris: Payot. I954. "Early forms of society," in A history of A L T H U S S E R, L. I 965. Pour Marx. Paris: Maspero. technology,vol. i. Editedby C. Singeret al. Oxford: ALTHUSSER, LOUIS, AND ETIENNE BALIBAR. I970. ClarendonPress. Reading Capital. London: New LeftBooks. [DL] .I96 II954). De la pr6histoirea l'histoire.Paris: AS HER, R. I96I. Analogyin archaeologicalinterpreta- Gallimard. tion. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology I 7:3 I 7- I963 (I95I). Social evolution.London: Watts. 25. [DRR] I964 (I936). La naissance de la civilisation. BAHUCHET, C., AND J. M. C. THOMAS. I985. "Conser- Paris: Gonthier. vation des ressourcesalimentaires en forettropicale CLARK, J. D. I980. "Earlyhuman occupationof African humide: Chasseurs-cueilleurset proto-agriculteurs savannah environments," in Human ecology in d'AfriqueCentrale," in Les techniquesde conserva- savannah environments.Edited by D. R. Harris,pp. tion des grainsa' long terme.Edited by M. Gast, F. 4I-47. New York: Academic Press. [DRR] Sigaut,and C. Beutler.Paris: CNRS. COHEN, GERALD. I978. Karl Marx's theoryof history: BEAN, L. J., AND T. C. BLACKBURN. Editors.I976. A defense.Princeton: Princeton University Press. Native Californians:A theoreticalretrospective. [EAS] Socorro:Ballena Press. COHEN, YEHUDI A. I974. Reprintof 2d edition.Man in BEAN, L. J., AND K. S. SAUBEL. I96I. Cahuilla eth- adaptation: The culturalpresent. Chicago: Aldine. nobotanicalnotes: The aboriginaluses of oak. Uni- [AL] versityof CaliforniaArchaeological SurveyAnnual DUCOS, P. I976. "Communautes villageoises et origine Report3:237-45. de la domestication en Syro-Palestine." 26me Co]- BEATON, j. 1982. Fire and water: Aspects ofAustralian loque du IXeme CongresInternational des Sciences Aboriginalmanagement of cycads.Archaeology in Pre-et Proto-historiques,Nice. Oceania I7(I):5I-58. [CS] . I978. "'Domestication' definedand method- BENDER, B. I978. Gatherer-hunterto farmer:A social ological approachesto its recognitionin faunalas- perspective.World Archaeology IO:204-22. [DRR, MZ] semblages,"in Approachesto faunal analysis in the I 98 I. "Gatherer-hunter intensification," in Eco- Middle East. Editedby R. H. Meadow and M. A. nomic archaeology.Edited by A. Sheridanand G. Zeder. PeabodyMuseum ofArchaeology and Ethnol- Bailey,pp. I49-57. BritishArchaeological Reports In- ogy,Harvard University, Bulletin 2. [TI] ternationalSeries 96. [Mz] EIDLITZ, K. I969. Food and emergencyfood in the cir- BERN, JOHN. I979. Ideologyand domination:Toward a cumpolar area. Studia Ethnographica Uppsaliensia reconstructionof Australian Aboriginal social forma- 32. [Mz] tion. Oceania 50:I18-32. [JM] E L S T E R, JO N. I 9 8.2. Marxism, functionalism, and game BERNDT, R. M., AND C. H. BERNDT. I964. The world theory.Theory and Society I I:45 3-82. [EAS] of the firstAustralians. Chicago: Universityof FLANNERY, K. V. I97 2. The cultural evolution of civili- Chicago Press. [Msw] zations. Annual Review of Ecologyand Systematics BINFORD, L. R. I978. Nunamiut ethnoarchaeology. 3:399-426. [DRR] New York: Academic Press. [DRR, MZ] FRIED, MORTON. I967. The evolutionof political soci- I 983. In pursuitof thepast: Decoding the ar- ety:An essay in political anthropology.New York: chaeological record.London: Thames and Hudson. Random House. [AL] [DRR] GODELIER, MAURICE. I973a. Modes de production, BINFORD, S. R., AND L. R. BINFORD. I968. Newper- rapportsde parenteet structuresdemographiques. La spectivesin archaeology.Chicago: Aldine. [DRR] Pens'e 172:7-3-I. [AL] BIRDSELL, J. B. I975. 2d edition.Human evolution:An I973b. OkonomischeAnthropologie:Unter- introductionto thenew physical anthropology. suchungenzum Begriffder sozialen Struktur Chicago: Rand McNally College PublishingCom- primitiverGesellschaften. Reinbek bei Hamburg: pany. Rowohlt. [AL]

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GOLSON, J. I972. "Land connections,sea barriers,and ical Studies 9.) Osaka: National Museum of Eth- the relationshipof Australianand New Guinean pre- nology. history,"in Bridgeand barrier:The natural and cul- KROEBER, A. L. I939. Cultural andnatural areas ofna- turalhistory of TorresStrait. Canberra: Research tive NorthAmerica. Berkeley:University of Califor- School of PacificStudies. nia Press. GOULD, R. A. Editor.I978. Explorationsin ethnoar- KUNKEL, P. H. I974. The Pomo kin groupand the polit- chaeology.Albuquerque: Universityof New Mexico ical unit in aboriginalCalifornia. Journal of Califor- Press. [DRR] nia AnthropologyI:7-I 8. . I980. Livingarchaeology. Cambridge: Cam- LAYTON, R. I983. "Ambilineal descentand traditional bridgeUniversity Press. [DRR] Pitjantjatjararights to land," in Aborigines,land, and HAMILTON, ANNETTE. i982. "Descended fromfather, land rights.Edited by Nicolas Petersonand Marcia belongingto country:Rights to land in the Australian Langton,pp. I 5-32. 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MADDOCK, KENNETH. I970. "Myths of the acquisi- Canberra:Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. tion of firein northernand easternAustralia," in [JM] Australian Aboriginal anthropology. Edited by . I986. Australian territorialorganization. Ronald M. Berndt, pp. I74-99. Perth: University of Oceania Monographs30. [NP] Western Australia Press. [JM] RADCLIFFE-BROWN, A. R. I930-3I. Social organiza- . I974. The Australian Aborigines. Harmonds- tion of Australiantribes. Oceania 7:34-63, 2o6-46, worth:Penguin Books. [NP] 322-4I, 426-56. MARX, KARL, AND FRIEDRICH ENGELS. I970. Se- . I968 (i952). Structureet fonctiondans la lected worksin threevolumes. Vol. 3. Moscow: Prog- societe primitive.Paris: Editionsde Minuit. ress Publishers.[DL] RAJU, D. R. I98I. Earlysettlement patterns in Cud- MAUZE, M. I986. Boas, les Kwagul et le potlach: Ele- dapah District,Andhra Pradesh. Ph.D. diss., Univer- ments pour une reevaluation. L'Homme 26(4):2i-63 sityof Poona, Poona, India. 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