C H A P T E R 2 6 Hunters and Gatherers Peter Jordan The investigation of hunter-gatherers lies at Emile Durkheim—developed their ideas through con- the core of the archaeological and anthropological sideration of hunting-and-gathering societies (Bar- enterprise, whose central concern is to investigate and nard 2004:ix). The implicit assumption underlying explain the immense diversity among human cultures much of this work is the belief that foragers charac- (Ames 2004:364). Extended periods of human history terize a conceptual baseline in human development have been characterized by societies that lived exclu- (Pluciennik 2005). sively by hunting, fishing, and gathering, and this way As a result, “ideas observed, tested, or refined with of life represents the conditions in which key periods the study of hunter-gatherers have been among the of human evolution occurred prior to the emergence most important areas of anthropological research” and subsequent spread of agriculture and pastoral- (Hitchcock and Biesle 2000:3). These research initia- ism in the Holocene (Barnard 2004:1). It was also tives have included the application of evolutionary as hunters and gatherers that humans developed the ecological theory to human populations (Hawkes et crucial physical and mental capacities that are shared al. 1982, 1997; Hurtado et al. 1985; Winterhalder and by all humans to this day (Mithen 1996). The study of Smith 1981, 2000; Winterhalder 2001), debates about hunting-and-gathering societies has therefore come the origins and impact of hunter-gatherer social com- to serve as a testing ground for general theories about plexity (Ames and Maschner 1995; Hayden 1981; Mas- human evolution as well as to speculate about the chner 1991; Price 1981; Price and Brown 1985; Tesart “original” social, ideological, and political condition 1982; Woodburn 1980; Yesner 1980; see Arnold 1996 of humanity: for a recent review), and the emergence of ethnoar- chaeology (Arnold and Kramer 2001, with references). The world’s hunting and gathering peoples—the Currently hunter-gatherer studies remain one of the Arctic Inuit, Aboriginal Australians, Kalahari, San, few areas of academic research where sociocultural and similar groups—represent the oldest and per- anthropology, archaeology, bioanthropology, and lin- haps most successful human adaptation. Until 12,000 guistic research converge toward “a number of prin- years ago virtually all humanity lived as hunters and gatherers. (Lee and Daly 1999:1) ciples, testable hypotheses, even competing theoretical approaches, to evaluate against the ethnographic and As a result, investigation of forager societies “may archaeological data” (Panter-Brick et al. 2001:9–10). hold the key to some of the central questions about the For archaeologists, the study of the remaining for- human being—about social life, politics and gender, aging societies is often presented as one of the most about diet and nutrition and living in nature: how direct means of understanding extended periods of people can and have lived without the state; how to human prehistory, although it has become increasingly live without accumulated technology; the possibility apparent that present-day hunter-gatherers cannot be of living in Nature without destroying it” (Lee and assumed to represent “pristine survivals” from earlier Daly 2001:1). For example, many present-day hunter- eras of human evolution. Hunter-gatherer societies gatherers live in the least socially differentiated societ- are flexible and innovative in their social organization, ies ever recorded, providing an important point of culture, and belief systems. For millennia many groups comparison for explaining the origin and operation had long and complex histories of interaction and ex- of stratified societies that characterize most of the change with farming and pastoral neighbors, empires, modern world. Many of the great figures in archaeol- nation-states, and the world economic system (Fews- ogy and anthropology—A. R. Radcliffe-Brown, Julian ter and Zvelebil 2001, with references). Nevertheless, Steward, Graham Clark—as well as the great thinkers hunter-gatherer research has become a crucial com- in the wider social sciences—Adam Smith, Karl Marx, ponent of the archaeological discipline, and despite 447 these criticisms and realizations, most would now This economic definition of hunter-gatherer has been agree, that when “due account is taken of historical cir- augmented to include secondary features grounded in cumstances, ethnographic analogies can be a valuable the foraging economy, such as distinct forms of social tool” in hunter-gatherer archaeology (Ames 2004:366; organization, a unique ideology based on uncondi- Arnold and Kramer 2001; Cunningham 2003; Fewster tional sharing among close kin and the perception of and Zvelebil 2001). the environment as giving its resources unconditionally My aim in this chapter is to focus on the emer- to the human collective (Ingold 1988; Lee 1992; Solway gence and increasing diversification of research into and Lee 1990; Bird David 1992). These three elements— foraging societies, and to explore the relevance of this economic, social, and ideological—also converge in the research for archaeology. I draw a broad distinction popular archetype of egalitarian foragers. If these mo- between (1) general research into societies that hunt bile band societies represent a distinct and ancient form and gatherer, which includes some of the early “classic” of human existence, then hunter-gatherer studies can documentations of ethnography (Boas 1966), and (2) define its focus as being on an “original” way of life that hunter-gatherer studies as a specialized and rigorous once characterized all humanity, a conceptual baseline scientific approach to foraging societies whose aim is to measure off more recent developments. to generate general predictions about all hunter-gather- Since the 1960s decades of active research into hunt- ers as exemplars of an archetypal social and economic ing-and-gathering societies has revealed a much more form of organization. An important subtheme running confusing picture and subjected some of these enduring through the chapter is an examination of the ways in images of timeless, pristine, egalitarian hunter-gather- which knowledge of, and debates about, contemporary ers to a robust and ongoing critique. In almost every hunter-gatherers have influenced and have been drawn case, forager behavior and social organization have into archaeological research into foraging societies. been shown to vary well beyond the scope of the simple “mobile band” model outlined above. Fundamental HUNTER-GATHERERS: differences in subsistence, prestige, social complexity, SOME WORKING DEFINITIONS relative affluence, interpersonal violence, and gender For Western researchers, some of the best-known and roles have also been documented, and there are impor- recently documented hunters and gatherers include tant differences in diet, health, demography, worldview, the Australian Aborigines, the Arctic Inuit (who live and storage practices. Researchers are still struggling in a long arc from eastern Siberia, through north- to account for and explain this diversity, including the ern North America to Greenland) and the Northwest degree to which there is anything distinctive enough Coast groups in North America. In particular, the San about these societies for the term “hunter-gatherer” to (Bushmen) peoples of the Kalahari region in southern have analytical utility or theoretical significance (Burch Africa have seen intense attention from researchers, as 1994:452). More recently, debates have therefore shifted have the foragers in the belt of African tropical rain away from defining what typical foragers are or do, to- forests in Zaire, Congo, the Central African Republic, ward producing better explanations of the processes Cameroon, and Gabon. Various other hunter-gatherer generating this observed diversity and variability. It is groups exist in East Africa, the Americas, Siberia, In- no longer sufficient “to use one or two model hunter- dia, and Southeast Asia. gatherer groups as ‘model foragers’” (Kuhn and Stiner Idealized images of these surviving hunter-gather- 2001:99), and increasingly the subsistence-based term ers are often presented as a stark contrast to the dense “hunter-gatherer” has come to serve as “a ‘minimal’ urban reality of most contemporary humanity (Lee definition, a starting point on which to graft a more and Daly 1999:1). But do these romantic ideas about nuanced understanding” (Panter-Brick et al. 2001:2). foraging societies represent a category with analytical These developments are traced below. utility—is there anything distinct about hunter-gath- erers as opposed to pastoralists or agriculturalists? In CULTURAL ECOLOGY, JULIAN STEWARD, strict terms, “hunter-gatherer” refers to a taxonomic AND THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN classification based on an economic mode of subsis- HUNTER-GATHERER STUDIES tence (Pluciennik 2004). For example, Winterhalder The emergence of modern hunter-gatherer studies can (2001:12) defined forager subsistence as “derived from be traced back to pioneering work of Julian Steward non-domesticated resources, species not actively man- (1936, 1938, 1955), “The Social and Economic Basis aged by themselves or other human beings.” of Primitive Bands,” and to a series of conferences 448 peter jordan (Lee and DeVore 1968) in the late 1960s “which had Steward notes, the details of these “simpler cultures” tremendous