chapter 5 making a living

CHAPTER 5 MAKING A LIVING

Subsistence (food-getting) Strategy

A successful subsistence strategy is necessary for

the culture to survive and reproduce itself.

A subsistence strategy must conform

to nutritional needs, social constraints, and

environmental resources.

1. FOOD COLLECTORS USE:

1. Foraging

2. FOOD PRODUCERS USE:

1. Horticulture

2. Pastoralism

3. Agriculture

4. Industrialism

SUBSISTENCE STRATEGIES IN ANTHROPOLOGY

How many strategies?

A culture group generally has one

primary way of providing for its

nutritional needs but may incorporate

supplementary strategies from any of the

other categories.

The Food Collection Strategy:

It relies solely on wild plants and wild

animals for all nutritional needs.

FOOD COLLECTORS ARE ALSO CALLED:

FORAGERS or

HUNTER/GATHERERS

Foraging is based on

a hunting, gathering,

and fishing.

The oldest subsistence strategy

(the FIRST food-getting strategy)

is foraging (hunters/gatherers).

Humans began as foragers millions of years

ago and used this method of getting food

longer than any of the other subsistence

strategies.

Are today’s foragers the same as our ancient ancestors?

NO!

Why not?

Three reasons why food collectors are not relics of the past.

1. Today, food collectors live in marginal environments:

--Arctic region

--Deserts

--Tropical rainforests

2. Today, they interact with food producers.

3. They have been evolving and changing through time

just like all the other culture groups.

� Modern foragers are found only in marginal

environments:

� Survival depends on expert skills and knowledge.

� This strategy supports only small bands of people

and requires a large territory of wild resources

(low population density).

� Life is organized around kinship relationships.

Two examples of the foraging strategy:

The Inuit of the Arctic and

The Australian Aborigines

Inuit �

The Arctic, Land of Ice

Orange areas =

the Inuit homelands

The Inuit culture groups

live in the northern-most

parts of North America

and Greenland.

They’ve successfully

lived in these harsh

environments relying

entirely on hunting for

thousands of years.

Traditional Inuit Way of Life

�They hunt,

fish but do

not do much

gathering.

�WHY?

The Igloo - An effective and creative adaptation to an

environment without other building resources:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aSL9La5ivo&feature=SeriesPlayList&p=733B26B30C93D

F02 How to Make a Perfect Igloo (3:58 minutes)

How to make

a secure

dwelling in 45

minutes

without wood

or stone.

“Subsistence strategy” is best defined as:

A. the pattern of behavior used by a society to obtain food in a particular environment.

B. the poverty level below which members of a society would starve.

C. the knowledge passed on from generation to generation about wild animal behavior and where to find edible wild plants.

whale Hunting 5:38 minutes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAqEK7K5oCQ&feature=related

Sea mammals and fish

make up the majority of

the traditional diet and

provide raw materials for

the clothing, tools, and

fuel for heating needed to

survive in this harsh

environment.

� Small groups of related families spread out over a large,

common territory,

� Nomadic lifestyle (follow migratory animals),

� Men and women do different tasks but there is much

equality between the genders,

� A man and a woman make up the economic unit but a

family also includes children and, sometimes, elders,

� No full time specialists, no political or social hierarchy –

individualism and independence are highly prized.

The Inuit subsistence strategy is associated

with these characteristics:

Contrast the Inuit foraging strategy to the

foraging strategy of the Australian

Aborigines.

Both use the foraging strategy but there is

a very interesting difference.

Australian Aborigines �

Australia, Land of Fire

The Australian Aborigines in the Land Down Under

Pre-Contact Australian Aboriginal Culture

1. 100% food collectors (did not farm or garden),

2. Desert environment (little rainfall: 8” / year),

3. Learned to control fire with fire (ash, germination,

prevention of massive fires),

4. Low population density (1 person per 35 sq. mi.),

5. Nomadic (moved camps throughout the year).

�Who provides the daily calories?

�Men hunted large game but success was

unpredictable and most daily food was provided

by women.

�Each woman collected 15 lbs of vegetable foods

per day and hunt some small game.

�Foragers have the most leisure time

(of all food strategies)

�Each adult spends 17 hrs / week getting food,

�women spend 19 more hours doing chores / week

�men spend 6 more hours making tools / week

�Rest of the time is spent gossiping, spiritualevents, storytelling, political activities, marriageplans.

Australia is a dry country with little

rainfall. But scattered across the

Outback are watering holes.

Indigenous peoples have learned the

secrets of where to find water.

Hollowed out tree trunks and rock

basins hold rain water.

If all else fails, the people can

squeeze water out of “water-holding

frogs that live just beneath the

surface of clay-based wetlands.

Australian Water-Holding Frog

The hot, dry countryside is actually full of life. Macadamia nut provide minerals and protein, people eat roots, seeds,

berries, yams and honey.

Many plants are poisonous and must be prepared properly. Getting fully

nutritious daily meals for generation upon generation required extensive

knowledge about a great many plants and animals. Must know what to

look for, where to find it, when it is available, and how to prepare it.

Kangaroo meat is still popular today, raised on farms, and found in the

supermarket but once was the prized game animal of hunters.

Tea from lemon myrtle provides vitamins. Snakes and moths were on the

menu, too. Another source of protein was large, white grubs, the larvae

of moths. And, along the coast, fish and shellfish.

The Witchetty

grub, a good

source of protein.

Hunting large bats with boomerangshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DDHxO

qFkAs&feature=related

Hunting kangaroo with spearhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwNbwP

VFkSc&feature=related

�small groups of related families organized around kinship ties,

�Self-sufficient, not dependent on other societies,

�Cooperative hunting and share all food & possessions,

�Have few material objects (nomadic lifestyle)

�No full time specialization: No fulltime politicians, police, or

specialty occupations but elder men hold more power and prestige,

�Defined and separate gender roles but contributions of both genders

greatly valued.

Characteristics associated with the Australian

Aboriginal subsistence strategy

The main difference between the Australian

Aboriginal food collectors and the Inuit food collectors is:

Daily calories / by gender

In the Australian Aboriginal culture 80% of the daily

calories are collected by the women.

This is true for most foraging societies but in the Arctic

the men provided 80% of the daily calories because of

the environment.

In contrast to Food Collection

is Food Production

Food production is based on domestication of plants and animals.

Some food producers supplement with hunting/gathering/fishing but that does not make them food collectors, they are still food producers if they grow food.

Food Production

About 10,000 years ago,

a gradual changeover from foraging to a reliance on domesticated plants and animals

as food took place around the world.

Human groups went from being nomadic to living in semi-permanent and permanent

settlements.

Domestication: What is it?

Intentional planting and cultivation of selected plants.

Taming and breeding of certain animals.

� TIMELINE OF DOMESTICATION -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_agriculture_and_food_technology

Food Production: The Three Strategies

1. Horticulture: Human labor only

2. Intensive Agriculture: Animal & human labor (and in modern times, machinery)

3. Pastoralism: Control of herd animals

Horticulture is a food production strategy.

1. It is growing crops with relatively simple hand

tools and methods (human labor only).

2. Definition of horticulture in anthropology:

1. No plows, no draft animals, no machines

2. No fertilizers (move when soil is depleted)

3. No irrigation systems (rely on rainwater)

Industrialism will be dealt with separately

Horticulture

Produces more food per unit of land than foraging.

Supports larger populations than foraging.

Less leisure and more work hours than foraging.

A Horticultural Society: Yanomamö of South America

The Yanomamö�

The Yanomamö

�Venezuela / Brazil (South America)

�Horticulturalists (supplement diet with foraging)

�Semi-nomadic: Start new gardens every 2-3 years and

move their villages about every 5 years.

�No specialized occupations or police or political hierarchy.

�Village is a group of related families organized by kinship.

Village size varies between 50 and 400 people.

Everyone, including women, come and go as they please.

Entire village lives under a common roof called theshabono.

Slash & burn is also called swidden or

extensive agriculture and is part of the horticulture strategy.

Slash and burn technique

� Puts ash (nitrogen) into the soil, makes it fertile.

� Once the soil is depleted, they must move on.

Low population density is a necessity.

If the population grows too fast, it will outstrip the resources in its territory.

Cultural practices help keep the population density low (spread out over a large territory).

Peach Palm Fruit

Tree crops can extend

the time people can

stay in one place.

A Horticultural Society:

Traditional Samoa

Samoa Islands are halfway between Hawaii and New Zealand

in the Polynesian region of the Pacific Ocean.

---Independent Samoa (Western Samoa) and

---American Samoa (a territory of the United States)

The two Samoas share language and ethnicity but are culturally

different in some ways:

American Samoans are more likely to emigrate to the U.S. and

observe customs and styles of the American culture.

Independent Samoa more likely to move to New Zealand and to

observe customs and style more associated with the South Pacific

culture region.

American Samoa favors football and baseball.

Independent Samoa favors rugby and cricket.

Go here for more info on Independent Samoa:

http://www.everyculture.com/wc/Tajikistan-to-

Zimbabwe/Samoans.html

Samoa Islands are lush, tropical and made of volcanic rock topped with rich topsoil.

There is lots of annual rain.

If the soil is rich and there’s lots of fresh water, why

isn’t intensive agriculture a viable food-getting

strategy on these islands?

Answer: hilly terrain; 6,000 foot mountains are

not conducive to intensive agriculture.

Horticulture is an adaptation that works for this island environment.

Captain Cook and his men considered Samoans lazy because they did not weed their gardens.

How is their custom not to weed an adaptation?

Answer:

The roots of the weeds keep rain from washing away the soil that’s necessary for growing crops.(This region gets 200 inches of rainwater a year!!)

If people weeded, the erosion would strip the soil

down to the volcanic rock and nothing would grow there.

Not weeding is an adaptation.

(Judging another’s cultural adaptations by one’s own culture is ethnocentric.)

Garden CropsThe Taro

Plant is a

broad lead

plant and

the fruit is

similar to

the potato

(starchy)

TaroTaroTaroTaro

Why don’t the Samoans have to move as

often as the Yanomamo?

Answer: Tree Crops and Fishing

Trees produce crops for 50 to 100 years and allow

people to stay in the same place.

Fishing also can allow people to stay in one place longer because it is a renewable food resource.

Where these renewable food resources are

available, the groups can remain in one area for a much longer time.

Sedentary living means permanent housing and

larger families.

How horticulture impacts culture.

1. Have more food available in a smaller territory than

foragers and supports higher population density but still

small and spread out compared to agriculturalists.

2. More sedentary than foragers but do need to move when

local soil / resources are depleted.

3. Some social differentiation can arise (individuals can gain

prestige by giving feasts with the excess food) but little

specialization exists, sometimes there are permanent

leaders.

4. Must work more hours than foragers but less than

agriculturalists.

Food Production

Pastoralism is a food production strategy

involving the control of herds of animals.(Cattle, camels, sheep, goats, reindeer, llamas, yaks)

Advantages of PastoralismThe pastoral adaptation occurs mainly in deserts,

grasslands, mountains, and some Arctic regions.

Exists where natural plants are not digestible by humans

(grasses – humans do not compete with animals for the

wild food in these areas)

Exists where the environment is not suitable for agriculture.

A Pastoralist Society

The Saami of Scandinavia(The Lapps)

� Indigenous people of

northern Europe, inhabiting parts of Sweden, Norway, Finland and Russia.

� They live in arctic conditions.

� Their livelihood is semi-nomadic reindeer herding (pastoralism)

Saami People (also known as the Lapps)

Saami Territories

A Saami family in Norway around 1900

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/21/life-among-

the-reindeer-herders

Modern day Saami (father and daughter)

p. 101

Basseri:

Pastoralists of

Iran

Basseri�A tribe of about 16,000 (live in tents, each tent is a household)

�Herd goats and sheep in the Shiraz mountain range area.

�Territory = 15,000 sq.mi. (migration routes, the “il-rah”)

�Nomadic, transhumant pastoralists

A. Transhumant Pastoralism

Herd animals are moved at various times of the year to

areas to different pastures.

Throughout the year, Basseri men and boys move the

herd up and down the mountain to various altitudes to

take advantage of food sources and water.

Women and children and some men remain at a

permanent village site in the valley.

B. Nomadic Pastoralism

The whole population moves with the herds throughout the year

There are no permanent villages.

General features of pastoralism1. Found in regions that cannot support foraging

or agriculture.

2. Mostly nomadic / some semi-nomadic.

3. Small communities of related families.

4. Must trade with agricultural communities for

necessities.

Food Production: (Intensive) Agriculture

• Permanently residency in one location; intensive use of

the soil and resources of that locality. Cultivates the

same land, generation after generation.

• Definition of agriculture in anthropology:

� Use of plows and draft animals to pull them

� Fertilizers (in modern times, includes chemicals)

� Systems of irrigation (reroute waterways, bring in water)

� Mechanization (machines) are used in modern times

Intensive Agriculture Changes the Landscape

Agriculture supports large populations for many generations.

Involves making artificial terraces and other landforms in place of natural land forms and reroutes waterways.

Such changes impact the indigenous life forms and the geography of the area, plus impact the weather patterns of more than just the local area.

Copyright © 2012 Pearson Education, Inc. All rights reserved

“The Agricultural Revolution”(The Origin of Agriculture)

� First evidence of a changeover to food production

- ~11,000 – 10,000 years ago in the Old World

- ~10,000 – 9,000 years ago in the New World

First Agricultural Centers

Intensive agriculture developed in many areas of the world in a

relatively short period of time about 10,000 years ago.

General features of the agricultural strategyproduce these results:

1. Can support the largest population and has the highest

population density (they produce a surplus of food).

2. Must work longer hours to get nutritional needs met, and

they have the least leisure time.

3. They have the highest potential for society-wide famine.

4. They have the worst diet (least nutritious).

5. Have the most inequality between men and women.


Agricultural Societies

Societies with intensive agriculture are more

likely than horticulturalists to have:

� towns and cities and trade

� a high degree of craft specialization

� complex political organization

� large differences in wealth and power

� And are considered more complex culturally.

Subsistence Strategies and Features Associated with Each Strategy

Tutorials: http://anthro.palomar.edu/subsistence/Default.htm


Why Did Food Production Develop?

� Hypotheses:

1. Population growth pushed people into marginal areas and they tried to reproduce the foods from where they came.

2. Resources decreased around the world as populations grew larger and that forced people to try out new techniques, invent new technology.

3. Climate change made wild grain seasonal and forced human populations to figure out ways to grow food year around.

Food Shortages and Intensive Agriculture

Why are intensive agriculturalists more likely to experience famines?

This refers to society-wide severe food shortages and not occasional lack of food.

What kind of built-in safeguards do foragers have against famines?

Famines and Agriculture

Intensive agriculture is driven by high yields and the need to grow cash crops.

• This strategy emphasizes a few “high-yield” plants,

which are neither nutritious nor drought-resistant

• When these “cash crop” fails, there is no money or

ability to barter and get food elsewhere.

Famines and Agriculture

Market fluctuations

When the demand for the cash crop at the marketplace disappears, there is no other way for a farmer to get money to buy the other foods that they did not grow.

The Agricultural Revolution brought many changes. The Agricultural Revolution brought many changes. The Agricultural Revolution brought many changes. The Agricultural Revolution brought many changes.

1. The first big change was from nomadic to sedentary living.

2. Domestication enabled a higher yield per acre (productivity)

3. The higher yield enabled a larger population and technology enabled the the storage of food year

around to support a larger population on less territory than food collectors require.

4. This led to the development of cities, centralization, and the impersonal enforcement of laws by

bureaucratic layers of government supported by taxes taken from the populace. Kinship is replaced by

the impersonal legitimatized force of government (secular-based, religious-based, or both).

5. It radically modified the natural environment (waterways, clearing of land, replacement of indigenous

species, less variety but more yield per acre, plus technological advances accelerated the rate of

change exponentially).

6. Higher productivity and efficiency changed the social environment:

1. Led to high population density which enabled a society to expand its territory through war but

also led to disease and famine.

2. Led to specialized and complex labor diversification. Specialization led to the expansion of the

arts, medicine, science, law, etc. Longevity and quality of life improved.

3. Led to complex trade with other societies and tolerance of multiculturalism.

4. Led to complex political systems with centralized authority and a permanent hierarchy that

controlled resources, which produced an impersonal society and class / caste social structure.

(Which, in recent history, led to backlash revolutions aimed at obtaining individual liberties &

justice along with a worldwide trend toward democracy.)

Question: Which of the following is NOT generally associated with agriculture?

a) Sedentary villages

b) Larger populations

c) An increase in social equality across the society

Answer: cAgriculture, especially commercialized forms of agriculture, is associated with social inequality that is not present in foraging or horticulture societies.

(This is true even when we think about the ancient state-level societies of the Inca, the Egyptians, and the Sumerians (to nameonly a few). All were intensive agricultural societies. All had social classes, sometimes even castes, and each class rung of the social ladder had a different level of access and opportunity. These classes often were expected to perform a specialized trade / job and that was true for all born into that class or caste.)

Why / how is it that food collectors and horticultural societies did not exhibit the same level of social inequality that we see throughout the history of agricultural societies? What is built into the agricultural system that results in social inequality?

Agriculture produces surpluses of food and releases a good deal of the

population to perform other tasks (specialization).

It supports a centralized system of administering the surplus, which

leads to complex social, economic, and political organizing principles

for the society as a whole. (bureaucracy)

Control over the surplus can lead to one or more groups within a society

having more access and opportunity. (hierarchy / social classes).

Social inequality is the result and it is built into this system of food-

getting.

Industrialism is the process of

mechanization of production.In this system, the focus moves away from producing food for

one’s own family to producing goods and services for the

marketplace. This makes both food and labor into commodities,

and changes how we look at food.

Impacts of an industrialism on society

1. The focus of production away from food to the production of goods and services.

2. Significant environmental stress: Consumption must constantly expand; standard of living rise higher.

3. Occupational specialization shifts labor from its independent status among subsistence strategies to a dependent status as a wage earner.

4. Smaller elite / managerial classes oversee, control, and distribute the product of the workplace (rich are richer, but represent a smaller percent of the population).

5. Increased inequality (larger gap) between classes and between countries.

Bringing it Back Home:

Globalization and Food Choice

In the past most of the food choices on our tables

were locally grown.

Today, some 80% of the fruit consumed in the U.S.

is produced in only two states – Washington and

California.

In the fiscal year 2007, the U.S. imported 70 billion

dollars’ worth of food.

Bringing it Back Home:

Globalization and Food Choice

Fruits and vegetables are available year-round from

places as far away as India.

This global food network exerts a high price and a high

carbon footprint.

The average tomato produces three times as much carbon dioxide than a locally-grown one.

Quick Quiz

Which subsistence strategy supports the lowest population density?

A. Transhumant pastoralism

B. Intensive agriculture

C. Foraging

C. Foraging

Which food-getting strategy continually cultivates the same land over and over again and uses plows, fertilizers, and water control?

A. Horticulture

B. Pastoralism

C. Intensive agriculture

C. Intensive Agriculture

Productivity: “yield per person per unit of land”

The productivity of any given environment is directly related to:

A. The number of energy sources within it.

B. The number of people living in it.

C. The technology used to exploit it.

C. Technology

“Yield per person per hour of labor invested” refers to:

A. Population density.

B. Efficiency.

C. A sedentary subsistence strategy.

B. Efficiency

Anthrozoology“Anthrozoology is the study of interaction between living

things. It is a modern interdisciplinary and burgeoning field

that overlaps with a number of other disciplines, including

anthropology, ethology, medicine, psychology, veterinary

medicine and zoology. A major focus of anthrozoologic research

is the quantifying of the positive effects of human-animal

relationships on either party and the study of their interactions.

It includes scholars from a diverse range of fields, including

anthropology, sociology, biology, history and philosophy.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthrozoology

chapter 5 making a living

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