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Agricultural Origins in the American Midwest: A Comment on Charles

162 AMERICAN ANTHROPOI.OC;lSI‘ [96, 1994

MICHAEL ROSENBERG Universig Parallel Program Universio ofDelaware

1 am in complete sympathy with Charles’s (AA 94905-925, 1992) attempt to synthesize several recent models concerning the origins of agriculture and apply them to agricultural origins in the American Midwest. J think that such a synthesis may be possible and, if so, eminently desirable. My statement that “Rin- dos’s model . . . is [not necessarily] wrong, just [at best] incomplete” (Rosenberg 1990:405) was implicitly meant to make that very point. However, I disagree with Charles’s apparent assignment of roles to the processes detailed by Rindos (1984, 1989) and myself (Rosenberg 1990, 1991a). Moreover, I d is agree with the implications that he appar- ently draws from the archeological data he cites.

Charles’s synthesis (p. 914 ff.) appears to ascribe the origins of agriculture to Rindos’s model and only the subsequent diffuusime ndop tion of agriculture to the model I offered. The problem with ascribing the origins of agricul- ture to the workings of Rindos’s model stand- ing alone is that the coevolution of the neces- sary predator-prey relationships (that culmi- nate in domestication) is predicatedon human behavioral changes (i.e., the intensification of labor input). Rindos’s model makes no effort at all to account for these behavioral changes (see Rosenberg 1990). In his model, the requisite behavioral changes are taken as a given, having developed simply because each was selected for in some specific context, in much the same way as morphological changes occur in biological evolution. There is, however, one cardinal difference between the development of food production (i.e., cultural evolution) and biological evolution. The evolutionary precursors to a given spe- cies had no control over the mechanistic processes governing the appearance of new physical attributes on which selection could operate. The human precursors to agricultu- ralists, on the other hand, did have imniedi- ate control over which behaviors they would engage in, and hence which behaviors would be available for the opetation of direct selec- tion. Rindos refers to this primary selective screen as ‘‘(32.’’ More commonly, it is called “cultural selection” (see Boyd and Richerson 1985; Cavalli-Sforza and Feldman 1981; Dur- ham 1976, 1979, 1991, 1992), and its role in cultural evolution is the major point of differ- ence between cultural and biological evolu- tion.

There is no question that agricultural sys- tems are evolutionary outgrowths of hunting- gathering. However, although degrees of hunting-gathering and food production can be said to constitute a continuum of extrac- tive technologies, they do not represent a continuum in any broader cultural sense. For example, mobile hunting and gathering is typically embedded in a broader culture that stresses food sharing in the context of an “immediate-return system” (Woodburn 1982, 1988) and a “cosmic economy of [demand] sharing” (Bird-David 1992). Food produc- tion, on the other hand, requirps individual or group ownership and the withholding of (at least some) owned property, if for no other reason than to maintain the capital (seed and stock) necessary to continue producing. Yel- len’s (1985:47-48) account of what h a p pened to a specific San hunter-gatherer who began experimenting with stock raising clearly illustrates that the behavioral innova- tions necessary for food production likely carry an extremely high social cost in a hunter-gatherer system. Moreover, points raised by Chase (1989:51 ff.) suggest that this specific point of irreconcilable cultural con- tradiction between mobile hunting-gather- ing and food-producing systems may be just the tip of the iceberg.

My point is that, beyond the often cited implications of Bosenip’s (1965) study, such cultural contradictions also imply the neces- sary existence of some impetus for the behav- iors integral to Rindos’s model. Unless driven by a sufficiently strong impetus (e.g., re- sourcerelated stress), innovative food pro- ducers would not ignore the inevitable social sanctions leveled at them for contraveiiing traditional huntergarherer norms. Thus, in- dividuals would not persist in the innovations, making the innovations unavailable for the operation of direct selection. In the above- mentioned case noted by Yellen, the innova- tive individual in fact abandoned his foray into food production due to such sanctions. Moreover, to the degree that those engaging in unacceptable innovative behaviors are so- cial pariahs in a hunter-gatherer society, the innovative behaviors will not be transmitted to others (e.g., see Boyd and Richerson 1985) unless they too see the innovative behaviors as yielding net benefits (e.g., enhanced sur- vival prospects) that outweigh the high social costs (e.g., ostracism). In other words, in the absence of an impetus, the necessary behav- iors would develop so rarely a3 to make the independent development of agriculture an extremely rare occurrence. That expectation

COMMENTARIES 163

is flatly contradicted by the archeological re- cord.

Charles (p. 915) also states that evidence for the population pressure integral to my model is &not well documented for the American Midwest in the periods preceding the appearance of agricultural economies. Yet, restricting the discussion to only Char- les’s own observations, he also notes the fol- lowing points: ( 1 ) “the reduction in mobility around 5000 B.C. may actually relate to the [previous millennium’s] decreased moisture, when regional productivity would have de- clined.” (p. 910); (2) bluff-top cemeteryinter- ments may have begun as early as the late middle fourth millennium B.C. (p. 912); (3) “[by 2000 B.C., bluff-top] cemetery distribu- tions probably reflect the expansion of rela- tively dense population levels into the secon- dary drainages” (p. 912); and (4) by 2000 B.C., reliance on food-producing economies revolving around domesticates is well docu- mented (pp. 910-912).

Population pressure, in any meaningful sense of the words, can as readily result from the decreasing availability of resources as it can from population growth (see Rosenberg 1991b). Thus, if Charles is correct in his first point, he is as much as saying that in the American Midwest, population pressure ex- isted from the very beginning of the process! Moreover, if Charles is correct in his second point, then to the degree that the presence of corporate groups implies the existence of heritable rights, this would appear to be evi- dence of territoriality (see Charles and Buik- stra 1983; Goldstein 1976; Saxe 1970), at least as early as the late middle fourth millennium B.C. Points three and four speak for them- selves about continuing population growth and the subsequent development of agricul- tural systems.

My point here is that there is nothing in the archeological record for the American Mid- west that is not consistent with the model I have proposed and much that can be con- strued to support it. True, population pres sure (not to mention territoriality) in the prehistoric American Midwest may not be “well documented.” However, the proper question is not: Are population pressure and territoriality “well documented?” Rather, it is: Does the limited “documentation” we do have more strongly suggest their existence, or absence? I suggest that for the prehistoric American Midwest, the available evidence more strongly supports the early existence of population pressure and tern toriality.

I maintain that the impetus behind the shift from hunting-gathering to food produc- tion in both pristine and secondary contexts was consistently population pressure (though the localized manifestation of population pressure win not consistently produce food production). I maintain also that my model explains why, in certain pristine contexts, food production is the outcome of the proc- ess.

Finally, though purposeful goahriented behaviors (by members of a sentient species: H. supias) are integral to the model, this is not “directed” (Charles, p. 91 7) evolutionary change in the commonly used evolutionary sense of that word. I n my model, the aim of the innovators is coping with the proximate manifestations of stress, not adapting to the ultimate source of stress; established innova- tions then constrain subsequent innovation in the face of continuing stress. The necessary precipitating innovation (the establishment of territorial systems) mayverywell be a “natu- ral” type of response, as Charles (p. 915) correctly notes. However, this isjust one more factor in favor of the model and not, as Char- les (p. 915) appwently sees it, cause to reject it.

The origins of agriculture lie both in the evolutionary processes that produced the bio- logical symbiosis we call domestication undin the cultural processes that produced the be- haviors integral to the development of do- mestication. My daerences with Rindos about evolutionary mechanisms aside, Rin- dos’s model does not explain the origins of agriculture; it attempts only to explain the evolution of domestication, which is not the same thing. On the other hand, the model I have offered attempts only to account for the behavioral changes culminating in food pro- duction. Thus, if these two models are to be reconciled, then it must be proposed that they operate in tandem from the very begin- ning to produce agricultural subsistence sys- tems.

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Perception and Evolution: A Reply to Rosenberg

DOUGIAS K CHARLES Department of Anthropology Weslqan University

In Rosenberg’s objection to my earlier characterization of his (Rosenberg 1990) and Rindos’s (1984) models of the origins of ag- riculture, he does not address several of my main points regarding the use ofevolutionary models to explain changes in human culture. First, the scale of the analysis must he taken into account. Rosenberg’s and Rindos’s mod- els differ in regard to the role of human agency. There are thresholds to the rate and degree of change or levels of stress that hu- man populations may be experiencing, below which people do not perceive the changes or the stresses (e.g., a fractional increase in mor- tality rates). A role for innovation makes sense only for situations above those thresh- olds; otherwise, human actions are simply one of many sources of variation, all inde- pendent of the direction of selection. Pristine developments of domestication-based subsis- tence regimes took several thousand years in documented cases (e.g., Smith 1989). Rosen- berg’s reference to the San hunter-gatherer attempting animal husbandry is not an appro- priate analogy for these sequences. Individu-