Patterns of Subsistence

1
Chapter 7

• Patterns of Subsistence

1
2
What Will You Learn?

• Recognize the relationship between cultural
  adaptation and long-term cultural change.
• Distinguish between the different food-collecting
  and food-producing systems.
• Analyze the relationship between the environment,
  technology, and social organization in cultures.
• Assess the significance of the Neolithic
  revolution.
• Explain the process of parallel and convergent
  evolution.
• Critically discuss mass food production in the
  age of globalization.

2
3
Adaptation and Environment

• Throughout human antiquity it is known that
  humans must have the ability to constantly make
  cultural adaptations to better survive and thrive
  in their natural environments or ecosystems.
  Meeting humans most basic needs are finding
  efficient methods to obtain food, shelter, and
  fresh water.
• Ecosystem- functioning system that is comprised
  of both the natural environment and the organisms
  that inhabit it.

3
4
Adaptation in Cultural Evolution

• Human groups adapt to their environment by means
  of their cultures. However, cultures may change
  over the course of time they evolve. Cultural
  Evolution is the process of cultures changing
  over time.
• The process is sometimes confused with the idea
  of progress- the notion that humans are moving
  forward to a better, more advanced stage in their
  development toward perfection.
• Not all changes turn out to be positive in the
  long run, nor do they improve conditions for
  every member of a society even in the short run.

4
5
Convergent Evolution A Case Study

• The Native American Comanche were from the
  highlands of southern Idaho. They had
  traditionally subsisted on wild grains, small
  animals and the occasional large game that roamed
  the region. They possessed simple technology and
  equipment that was limited to what dogs could
  carry on their backs. They considered their
  shaman (spiritual and medicinal healer) as
  holding the highest social power.

5
6
Convergent Evolution A Case Study

• Eventually the Comanche made a move towards the
  Great Plains region where they encountered a
  larger food supply such as free roaming bison.
• Trade for horses and guns began with nearby
  European settlers.
• Over time Comanche traders began to hold a higher
  power within the group, one above the shaman, as
  they would go on raids to steal horses.
• The society that started small and powerless,
  converged into a powerful and wealthy tribe.

6
7
Convergent Evolution A Case Study

• The history of the Comanche is similar to the
  historical accounts of the Native American
  Cheyenne Indians. The Cheyenne Indians moved
  from the woodlands of the Great Lakes regions
  also into the Great Plains. Unlike the Comanche
  they took up farming, which they later ceased to
  focus on hunting and gathering.
• Both tribes developed similar solutions to living
  in the new environment.

7
8
Convergent Evolution

• Convergent Evolution as outlined by the Native
  America Comanche and Cheyenne is best described
  as the development of similar cultural
  adaptations to similar environmental conditions
  by different peoples with different ancestral
  cultures.

www.shutterstock.com businessman-in-a-gray-suit
funnypaperez.blogspot.com images
www.telegraph.co.uk Donald_Trump_1106836c
themetapicture.com images
8
9
Parallel Evolution

• The other type of cultural evolution apart from
  convergent evolution is parallel evolution. The
  development of farming took place simultaneously
  in Southwest Asia and Mesoamerica. People in both
  regions already had similar life ways. They both
  became dependent on a narrow range of plant
  foods.
• Both developed intensive forms of agriculture,
  built large cities, and created complex social
  and political organizations.

9
10
An Ecosystemic Collapse The Tragic Case of
Easter Island

• Pictured here are the famous moai of Rapa Nui
  or Easter Island.
• Nearly 900 stone statues line the landscape of
  the island.
• Polynesian seafarers settled here some 800 yrs
  ago, they prospered greatly and then faced an
  ecosystemic collapse.

10
11
Cultural Areas

• From early on, anthropologists have recognized
  that ethnic groups living within the same broad
  habitat often share certain cultural traits.
• These groups have been classified as cultural
  areas, which are geographic regions in which a
  number of societies follow a similar pattern of
  life.

11
12
Cultural Areas

• This maps shows the major cultural areas that
  have been identified for North and Central
  America. Within each, there is an overall
  similarity of native cultures, as opposed to the
  differences that distinguish the cultures of one
  area from those of all others.

12
13
Modes of Subsistence

• There are three main modes of subsistence
  patterns. Each mode will involve not only
  natural resources but also the developed
  technology to effectively utilize those
  resources.
• 1.) Food Foraging Societies
• 2.) Food Producing Societies
• 3.) Industrialized Societies

13
14
Food Foraging Organization

• Four elements of food foraging organization
• Mobility
• Division of labor by gender
• Food sharing
• Egalitarian Social Relations

14
15
Characteristics of Food Foraging Societies

• Nomadic.
• Occupy marginal environments (desert, arctic,
  tropical).
• Small size of local groups (less that 100
  members) limited by carrying capacity
• The number of people that the available resources
  can support at a given level of food-getting
  techniques.
• Populations stabilize at numbers well below the
  carrying capacity of their land.
• Egalitarian, populations have few possessions and
  share what they have.

15
16
Mobility

• Mobility of food foragers is strongly limited by
  their difficult living environments which they
  occupy. For instance the distance between their
  food supply and fresh water must not be so great
  that more energy is required to obtain fresh
  water than can be obtained from food.

16
17
Mobility

• As previously mentioned it is necessary for food
  foraging groups to limit their population size
  due to the carrying capacity.
• Often this can create what is called a density of
  social relations meaning that the limited
  availability of resources forces larger groups to
  live together. More people can create more social
  conflicts.

17
18
Critical Thought

• Frequent nursing of children four or five years
  acts to suppress ovulation among foragers. As a
  consequence, women give birth to relatively few
  offspring at widely spaced intervals.
• How does this differ from the Western perspective
  on breastfeeding?

18
19
Flexible Division of Labor

• Division of labor exists in all societies.
• Among food-foragers, the hunting and butchering
  of large game as well as the processing of hard
  or tough raw materials are almost universally
  male occupations.
• Womens work in foraging societies usually
  focuses on collection and processing a variety of
  plant foods, as well as other domestic chores
  that can be fit to the demands of breastfeeding,
  pregnancy, and childbirth.

19
20
Food Sharing

• Men and women will both share the fruits of their
  labor. They each provide a different food
  resource that they share with one another.
• Food sharing among members and other nearby
  groups can also provide the basis for creating
  and maintain social allies and networks.

20
21
Egalitarian Social Relations

• Among many food foraging societies egalitarianism
  is an important characteristic.
• To be egalitarian means to have no status
  differences among members of a group. Generally
  the only status differences are with age and sex.
• No one member will accumulate more goods than
  another, thus eliminating jealously and potential
  conflict.

21
22
Communal Property

• Food foragers make no attempt to accumulate
  surplus foodstuffs, which is often a source of
  status in other societies.
• As a result food is typically shared throughout
  the group and no one person or family achieves
  wealth or status that hoarding might produce.

22
23
Rarity of Warfare

• Anthropologists have learned that warlike
  behavior on the part of food-foraging peoples is
  known, but this behavior is a relatively recent
  phenomenon in response to pressure from
  expansionist states.
• In the absence of such pressures, food-foraging
  peoples are nonaggressive and place more emphasis
  on peacefulness and cooperation than they do on
  violent competition.

23
24
Food Producers

• The New Stone Age or Neolithic the prehistoric
  period beginning about 10,000 years ago in which
  peoples possessed stone-based technologies and
  depended on domesticated plants and/or animals.
• This time period marks the emergence of a
  transition to food producing.

24
25
Transition to Food Production

• The Neolithic revolution (transition) began about
  11,000 to 9,000 years ago. It was a time of
  significant culture change associated with the
  early domestication of plants and animals with
  settlement of permanent villages.
• Probably the result of increased management of
  wild food resources.
• Begin the development of simple hand tools for
  working the land.

25
26
Transition to Food Production
26
27
Types of Food Producing

• There are three main forms of food producing
  subsistence patterns
• 1. Horticulture
• 2. Agriculture
• 3. Pastoralism

27
28
Horticulture

• The cultivation of crops using simple hand tools
  such as digging sticks or hoes.
• Slash-and-burn cultivation (swidden farming).
• - An extensive form of horticulture in which the
  natural vegetation is cut, the slash is
  subsequently burned, and crops are then planted
  among the ashes.

28
29
Agriculture

• Agriculture is defined as the cultivation of food
  plants in soil prepared and maintained for crop
  production.
• It involves using technologies other than hand
  tools, such as irrigation, fertilizers, and the
  wooden or metal plow pulled by harnessed draft
  animals.

29
30
Characteristics of Crop-Producing Societies

• Similar to food foragers who stay nearby their
  food resources, food producers reside together
  near their cultivated fields in fixed
  settlements.
• Historically, social relations would have been
  egalitarian and similar to those of food
  foragers. However, as settlements grew larger
  in population size people had to share important
  resources such as land and water, society became
  more elaborately organized.

30
31
Pastoralism

• Pastoralism or animal husbandry is the
  subsistence pattern of raising and maintaining
  herds of domesticated animals, such as cattle,
  sheep, and goats.
• Pastoralists are usually nomadic. They share the
  similar concern of food foragers for finding
  fresh resources not only for their group but
  their herds as well.

31
32
Intensive Agriculture

• As agriculture grows some farming communities
  will turn from small villages into larger cities
  including large centers of market exchange. This
  allows other members of the community to engage
  in other activities.
• Carpenters, blacksmiths, sculptures, basket
  makers, stonecutters.
• Eventually this creates an urbanization.

32
33
Peasants

• As urbanization including new life ways and
  complex culture these dwellers must rely on
  farmers in rural areas for most of their food
  supplies.
• Over time it becomes increasingly important for
  urban dwellers to seek control over rural areas.
  Farmers eventually turn into peasants.

33
34
Peasants (continued)

• A rural cultivator whose surpluses are
  transferred to a dominant group of rulers that
  uses the surpluses both to underwrite its own
  standard of living and to distribute the
  remainder to groups in society that do not farm
  but must be fed for their specific goods and
  services in turn.

34
35
Industrial Food Production

• After the invention of the steam engine about 200
  years ago in England (which replaces human labor
  by machine labor) subsistence patterns changed in
  some regions.
• North America, Europe, Asia will become centers
  of industrialization among areas of intensified
  agriculture.
• This has led to a multitude of technological
  inventions that utilize oil, electricity, and
  nuclear energy.

35
36
Industrial Food Production

• Throughout the 1800s and 1900s, this resulted
  in large-scale industrial societies.
  Technological inventions utilizing electricity
  and nuclear energy brought about more dramatic
  changes in social and economic organization on a
  worldwide scale.

36
37
Large Scale Food Production

• In order to maximize profits, agribusinesses are
  constantly streamlining food production and
  looking for ways to reduce labor costs by
  trimming the numbers of workers, minimize
  employee benefits, and drive down wages.

37