DEBATES IN ARCHAEOLOGY

Series editor: Richard Hodges

Against Cultural Property, John Carman

The Anthropology of Hunter Gatherers, Vicki Cummings

Archaeologies of Conflict, John Carman

Archaeology: The Conceptual Challenge, Timothy Insoll

Archaeology and International Development in Africa, Colin Breen and Daniel Rhodes

Archaeology and Text, John Moreland

Archaeology and the Pan-European Romanesque, Tadhg O’Keeffe

Beyond Celts, Germans and Scythians, Peter S. Wells

Combat Archaeology, John Schofield

Debating the Archaeological Heritage, Robin Skeates

Early European Castles, Oliver H. Creighton

Early Islamic Syria, Alan Walmsley

Gerasa and the Decapolis, David Kennedy

Image and Response in Early Europe, Peter S. Wells

Indo-Roman Trade, Roberta Tomber

Loot, Legitimacy and Ownership, Colin Renfrew

Lost Civilization, James L. Boone

The Origins of the Civilization of Angkor, Charles F. W. Higham

The Origins of the English, Catherine Hills

Rethinking Wetland Archaeology, Robert Van de Noort and Aidan O’Sullivan

The Roman Countryside, Stephen Dyson

Shipwreck Archaeology of the Holy Land, Sean Kingsley

Social Evolution, Mark Pluciennik

State Formation in Early China, Li Liu and Xingcan Chen

Towns and Trade in the Age of Charlemagne, Richard Hodges

Vessels of Influence: China and the Birth of Porcelain in Medieval and Early Modern Japan, Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere

Villa to Village, Riccardo Francovich and Richard Hodges

The Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers: Key Themes for Archaeologists

Vicki Cummings

For Rick

Contents

List of figures

List of tables

Preface

A note on names

Acknowledgements

1Introduction: Can the study of modern hunter-gatherers help us understand the past?

2Making a living: Hunter-gatherer subsistence

3Moving on up: Mobility and settlement

4Complex issues: Society and social organization

5Thinking about the world: Hunter-gatherer belief systems

6Being in the world: Hunter-gatherer landscapes

7Living in a material world: Hunter-gatherer material culture

8Conclusions: How the study of modern hunter-gatherers can help us understand the past

References

Index

Copyright

List of figures

3.1Characterization of a forager subsistence-settlement system (after Binford 1980, reproduced by permission of American Antiquity)

3.2Characterization of a collector subsistence-settlement system (after Binford 1980, reproduced by permission of American Antiquity)

3.3The spatial ordering in a Blackfoot tepee (after Berry and Brink 2004, 16)

4.1Grave K at Hoëdic showing the structure of red deer antler (after Péquart and Péquart 1954)

5.1The triple burial at Dolní Věstonice (after Klima 1988, 832)

6.1Pentre Ifan dolmen, Southwest Wales

6.2Chumash rock art at Cache Cave, California (photo courtesy of David Robinson)

7.1Tlingit polished wooden box (courtesy of the Penn Museum, image NA3306)

List of tables

2.1Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on hunting

2.2Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on gathering

2.3Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on fishing

4.1A basic description of the differing characteristics between simple and complex hunter-gatherers

Preface

The aim of this volume is to introduce archaeologists studying prehistoric hunter-gatherer communities to key ideas and debates surrounding the anthropological study of more recent hunter-gatherers. The volume covers major themes in hunter-gatherer research, and each chapter presents a summary of anthropological research, interspersed with prehistoric case studies. Throughout the volume, the usefulness of ethnographic analogy is addressed: how does the study of modern hunter-gatherer groups assist us in understanding past societies? Critically, this volume is written from a particular theoretical viewpoint, that of interpretive archaeology, and as such it is focussed on issues of direct interest to that theoretical approach. This volume is thus not concerned to address what hunter-gatherers did, either in the past or present, but why they acted in particular ways. The volume in particular focuses on the symbolic aspects of people’s lives, which it is argued are inextricably and unavoidably intertwined in everyday life. The overall aim of this volume is thus to stimulate debate on the interplay between the anthropological study of hunter-gatherer groups and the archaeological interpretation of past hunter-gatherer societies. Indeed, the volume will suggest that the study of hunter-gatherer groups offers us ways of thinking about many groups, not just hunter-gatherers, in the past.

A note on names

Throughout the volume, I have referred to the names of many different groups of hunter-gatherers. I have had to make a choice with regard to which names to use for many of these groups, and I have decided to follow the names that appear most commonly in the anthropological literature. So, for example, I refer to the Kwakiutl people, not the Kwakwaka’wakw as the people themselves prefer to be called. As this volume is designed as a basic introduction to the anthropology of hunter-gatherers, using these names makes it easier for readers to find out more about these people in the wider literature. No offence is intended by using incorrect names for groups, and I wholeheartedly reject any of the negative connotations which surround some of the names which have been traditionally used anthropologically.

Acknowledgements

I would like to start at the beginning and thank the person who first sparked my interest in hunter-gatherers: Alasdair Whittle is responsible for putting various articles and books on hunter-gatherers under my nose as an impressionable research student. Those initial forays into the world of hunter-gatherers have shaped the archaeology that I have done ever since. Over the last few years, I have spent considerable amounts of time discussing aspects of hunter-gatherer studies with David Robinson, who has also introduced me to the archaeology and anthropology of the Chumash. While I cannot hold him responsible for anything in this volume, it has certainly been shaped by our debates. Discussions with Peter Jordan have also been absolutely invaluable, and I have written this volume alongside editing the OUP handbook of hunter-gatherers with Peter and Marek Zvelebil: Marek sadly passed away before that volume was completed, and he is a great loss to the archaeological community. I have received considerable support from my own institution, the University of Central Lancashire, who continues to actively support archaeological research. Part of this volume was written while on sabbatical, funded by the University, and I am very grateful to my then Head of School, Lee Chatfield, for all his support. This volume has also benefitted from discussions with Oliver Harris, Rick Peterson, Bronwen Price, Colin Richards and Jennie Robinson. Draft chapters were read by Peter Jordan, David Robinson and Graeme Warren, and I am enormously grateful to them for their insightful comments. I am also grateful to Deborah Blake at Duckworth who has been eternally patient with me during the production of the book. Finally, this book is dedicated to my colleague Rick Peterson, for knowing the answer to everything.

1

Introduction: Can the study of modern hunter-gatherers help us understand the past?

Summary of chapter

This chapter gives a brief introduction to the study of hunter-gatherers and sets out why, as archaeologists, we should read and engage with anthropological studies. It details what ethnographic analogy involves, then summarizes the pros and cons of using it. It is therefore an introduction to the issues of cross-cultural analogy in anthropology and archaeology, setting the scene for the rest of the volume.

The aim of the volume

There is an enormous literature on hunter-gatherers, both ‘modern’ groups and those in the past. The aim of this volume is as an introductory text for archaeologists seeking to gain a way into the anthropological literature on hunter-gatherers. This is not a complete and comprehensive guide to the study of hunter-gatherers – it is an enormous field and one that cannot easily be summarized in a short book. Kelly’s Foraging spectrum (Kelly 1995) remains an invaluable introductory yet comprehensive volume, and the recent hunter-gatherer encyclopaedias are also useful introductions to the topic (see Cummings et al., forthcoming; Lee and Daly 1999). Instead, this book offers a taste of the broader literature, with a particular emphasis on issues and ideas relevant to the study of ancient hunting and gathering populations. Indeed, the volume will explore whether or not the study of modern hunter-gatherers is useful for understanding past people (ethnographic analogy: see below). Indeed, it will be suggested that ethnographic analogy with modern hunter-gatherers may be relevant for studying people who not only made a living through hunting and gathering but also agricultural populations, particularly those that were partially mobile and/or small-scale. However, throughout the volume, we continue to address this key question: how useful is ethnographic analogy for understanding the past? This is explored through themed chapters covering issues such as subsistence, mobility, belief systems and social organization. In addition to this, the book is written from a particular theoretical viewpoint. Post-processual or ‘interpretive’ archaeologists have a broad interest in symbolic approaches to the past, and in culturally specificity (contextual archaeologies). This volume fits into that broader agenda by emphasizing issues of interest and relevance to those exploring an interpretive approach. However, there is a tremendous literature on hunter-gatherers from the processual (or ecological) viewpoint, and key approaches from that paradigm are also introduced. It is hoped that this volume may also, therefore, be useful to those more familiar with ecological approaches as an introduction to the kinds of themes that interpretive archaeologists are interested in.

What constitutes a ‘modern’ hunter-gatherer and who studies them?

Throughout this volume the term modern hunter-gatherers is used. It is important to define precisely what is meant by this. Certainly, there are very few people on earth today who make a living solely by hunting and gathering, although there are many people whose ancestors did (Native Americans or First Nations in North America, Aboriginal communities in Australia and a variety of other peoples in Africa, South America, Asia and Europe). However, only 500 years ago, one third of the world had native hunter-gatherer populations (Lee and Daly 1999). Many of these peoples were first encountered by Europeans as part of colonial expansion, and these early encounters were hugely variable (see, for example, Gosden 2004; Leacock and Lee 1982; Lightfoot 2006; Mancall and Merrell 2007). However, the study of people (anthropology) has only existed as a distinct discipline since the nineteenth century, coming of age, along with archaeology, in the early twentieth century (Whiteley 2004). Thus the study of hunting and gathering populations by anthropologists has taken place within a more recent historical and cultural context. Specifically, scholars have only been visiting hunter-gatherers and writing about them in any detail within the last hundred years or so. Many of the earliest accounts were themselves set within very specific agendas relating to the justification of colonialism (see Trigger 1989, Chapter 4). Thus, the vast majority of accounts of living hunter-gatherer populations have been created in the last hundred years and within a particular historical context, that of the colonial or post-colonial era. By this point, these groups had already undergone radical changes, and this theme will be explored in more detail throughout the volume.

The term ‘modern hunter-gatherer’, then, primarily relates to those groups who have been practising some form of hunting and gathering and who have been written about by anthropologists in the last hundred or so years. Moreover, we have access to accounts of recent hunter-gatherers through other means, primarily historical accounts, and other surviving evidence such as photographs, structures and material culture. There are also a number of surviving peoples who no longer practice hunting and gathering but retain knowledge of this lifestyle and/or related beliefs. There is considerable overlap with archaeology, and indeed our knowledge of many modern groups is a combination of anthropological studies, ethnohistorical accounts and archaeological investigations (Whiteley 2004). Therefore, throughout this volume, the term ‘modern hunter-gatherer’ is used to refer to all people who practice or practiced hunting and gathering within the last few hundred years. Accounts may be not only from anthropologists or ethnographers but also from non-academic sources or secondary sources. For the most part, however, the data presented here on modern hunter-gatherers are not derived from archaeological investigations. Instead, the case studies draw on the archaeological record in order to illustrate the potential applicability of ethnographic analogy for understanding the prehistoric past.

Modern hunter-gatherer groups are interesting in their own terms, but throughout this particular volume we consider whether a study of these groups is informative for the study of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Again, some clarity is needed here with terminology. The advent of recorded history is different across the globe, and in many areas directly linked to colonialism. For clarity here, I use the phrase ‘prehistoric’ to refer to a period prior to any form of writing either by or about people, so essentially where our understanding of people is derived entirely from archaeology. In addition to this, the vast majority of the archaeological case studies presented within this volume are from the more distant past. We now turn to the issue of ethnographic analogy.

What is ethnographic analogy?

Quite simply, ethnographic analogy involves a comparison of peoples described or discussed in ethnographies (an ethnography being the description of a study of a particular group of people) with people being investigated through the archaeological record. There are different types of analogy, from straightforward, direct comparisons to more complex, ‘relational’ analogies (see below). In order to locate this particular study, and to understand the different types of analogy, we first need to look at the archaeological use of ethnographic analogy over time, and some of the criticisms of this. Once it is clearer how analogy has been used in the past, it will be possible to detail how we can move forward with it in the future. It is this theme – how useful is ethnographic analogy for understanding past peoples – that is the key theme returned to throughout the book.

There is a long history in the use of the ethnographic analogy in archaeology (see Lane forthcoming). Some of the earliest Antiquarian accounts of prehistory often used newly encountered peoples in the New World as comparisons for past peoples (see Bahn 1996, 50–1). The nineteenth century saw an increased interest in the past, and the beginnings of the development of archaeology as a distinct academic discipline, and from the 1860s onwards this included a growing use of ethnographic accounts. In particular, comparisons were made between modern societies who were not as technologically advanced as the western, European world and ancient societies. Inspired by Darwinian evolution, it was suggested that human societies went through a series of developments from ‘simple’ to ‘complex’. This theory was strengthened by the creation of the three-age system, introduced into Europe in the nineteenth century (Rowley-Conwy 2007). Archaeologists began to interpret the development of societies as uni-linear (Cunningham 2003, 393). This meant that they thought people got progressively more advanced, technologically, economically and socially, and that once a certain stage of development was achieved, they would not revert to earlier technologies or economies (Trigger 1989). Archaeologists were therefore able to arrange modern cultures from simplest to most complex (the simplest being extant hunter-gatherers and the most complex being western Europeans). By doing so, nineteenth-century archaeologists also illustrated the stages through which cultures had developed in prehistoric times. In fact, archaeologists at this time began to rely more on ethnographic analogies than on the archaeological data (Trigger 1989). This attitude tied in with broader political agendas, particularly colonialism, and the widespread annihilation or assimilation of native populations throughout much of the New World.

These ideas were rejected at the start of the twentieth century as part of the new ‘culture-historical’ approach, which sought to understand past peoples not through analogy, but by studying sets of material culture. The culture-historical approach is exemplified by the work of Gordon Childe from the 1920s onwards, who sought to identify past archaeological cultures through object assemblages (e.g. Childe 1940). This approach was enormously influential, but culture-history was increasingly criticized from the mid-twentieth century onwards, and it is this period which is crucial in the story of ethnographic analogy. First, the 1950s saw important work from an ‘ecological’ perspective. Of particular note is Julian Steward’s notion of cultural ecology (essentially human adaptions to the environment: see Jordan 2011, 11–13), but an interest in the environment was also being explored elsewhere (e.g. Clark 1954). Secondly, this work in turn inspired the development of the ‘New Archaeology’ or ‘processual’ archaeology in the 1960s (Binford 1962), which remains significant in many parts of the world today. Thirdly, as part of this, ‘ethnoarchaeology’ was increasingly employed as a way of understanding the past (David and Kramer 2001). Finally, the study of hunter-gatherers really emerged as a sub-discipline in the 1960s (Barnard 2004, 2).

Processualism developed in the 1960s in America, as a backlash against the descriptive archaeologies being written from a culture-historical perspective, while drawing on the new cultural ecology. Binford (1962) suggested that the aims of archaeology should be the same as those of anthropology, namely to study the behaviour, and the social and cultural development of humans. Indeed, his overall aim was for archaeologists to elicit a series of generalizations from the ethnographic record that could then be applied cross-culturally (see Johnson 2010, Chapter 2, for an excellent summary of the aims of processualism). One of the ways in which archaeology could achieve this was through ethnoarchaeology: this is the study of modern peoples with the explicit aim of understanding past peoples. For Binford and other processual archaeologists, ethnoarchaeology offered a way of testing archaeological hypotheses (Cunningham 2003). Binford’s own work among the Nunamiut was driven by his desire to understand the archaeological assemblages that he encountered from the Mousterian period (Middle Palaeolithic). He chose to study the Nunamiut as they, as in the Mousterian, were big game hunters and the two groups lived in broadly comparable environments. Other ethnoarchaeological studies focussed on understanding taphonomic processes and the use-life of objects (David and Kramer 2001, 21).

The 1960s was also important as it saw hunter-gatherer studies become a sub-discipline within the broader remit of archaeology/anthropology. One of the most significant contributions was Man the hunter in 1968 (Lee and DeVore 1968), the publication of a conference on hunting and gathering communities held in 1966 in Chicago. It is generally considered to be a key turning point in the study of hunter-gatherers. In complete opposition of the notion that hunter-gatherers were ‘savages’ (e.g. Childe 1942), living hard and desperate lives, it was now generally considered that hunter-gatherers were in fact the ‘original affluent society’ (Sahlins 1968, 85). This positive sea change in anthropological studies tied into broader societal shifts and is mirrored in developments in archaeology, including the new optimism and confidence brought about by the advent of New Archaeology. After the publication of Man the hunter, a series of important meetings were held: the conference on hunting and gathering societies (or CHAGS for short). These conferences coincided with the publication of fieldwork among contemporary hunting and gathering groups by leading anthropologists, including Lee’s work in Africa (Lee 1979) and Binford’s work in North America (Binford 1978).

The ethnoarchaeology of hunter-gatherers in the 1960s and 1970s was important, and shaped the discipline as we know it today. However, criticisms of the New Archaeology began to emerge in the early 1980s. One of the major criticisms of processualism was the widespread use of ethnographic analogy in understanding the past. It was argued that this involved forcing the archaeological data to fit the ethnographic record, which had been noted as a potential problem back in the 1960s (e.g. Freeman 1968, 262). This did not fit into the call for contextually specific and historically situated archaeological narratives (Hodder 1982). The new post-processual approach also criticized the search for general laws, and the notion that these generalizations could be applied cross-culturally. Post-processual archaeologists also did not like the idea that people simply responded to environmental stimuli like mindless automatons (environmental determinism). Hodder, and others, called instead for more detailed studies of material culture as the way forward in interpreting the archaeological record (e.g. Hodder 1982; Tilley 1991). Human action was meaningfully constituted, they argued, and they also suggested a focus on areas beyond the economy and the environment (see David and Kramer 2001, 54–61). They suggested that there were other areas of past people’s lives which were interesting to explore and discuss, such as what people thought about the world (belief systems and ideologies), the meaning of material culture (beyond the fact that it helped people survive in an environment), the symbolic use of space and the landscape.

After the first decade or so of theoretical discussions, post-processual archaeology has broadened out and now incorporates a whole range of different approaches, which can broadly be called interpretive archaeology. The reality is that while interpretive archaeologists continue to debate the usefulness of ethnographic analogy (Jordan 2006; Lane forthcoming; Shott 1991; Wylie 1985), it is still widely used. However, interpretive archaeology advocates a contextually specific approach to ethnographic analogy, and the use of relational analogy only (see below). There is now an understanding and acceptance that the study of modern peoples is one that is set within a particular epistemological framework, and that extant populations are those which are products of specific historical circumstances, namely the colonial and post-colonial world (Cannon forthcoming). The range of people found today may not accurately reflect the diversity found in the past. Ultimately, however, interpretive archaeologists have accepted that we all use analogy, whether we are explicit about it or not. I now want to move on and outline the different types of analogy, and show how they have been used in different ways.

Analogy

All theoretical paradigms use analogy, but it is important to note that there are different types of analogy. Within these different types of analogy there are also areas which are used more extensively by different practitioners.

Formal analogy is where precise parallels are drawn between different societies. Formal analogy is used by archaeologists who are searching for general laws, or testing hypotheses and this approach led to cross-cultural generalizations favoured by processual archaeology, which assesses the likelihood of similarities between societies (see, for example, Renfrew 1973). There is an assumption in this type of analogy that similar environments generate similar responses (see Binford 2001).

Relational analogy, on the other hand, looks for different manifestations of the same structuring principle. This might be the use of a particular material, as in Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina’s classic study of wood and stone: wood represents the living, stone represents the dead, in Madagascar (the ethnographic example) as well as in late Neolithic southern Britain (the archaeological example: Parker Pearson and Ramilisonina 1998). Direct historical analogy also utilizes this approach, with the assumption that there is considerable continuity from the past into the present (as has been suggested for interpreting the prehistory of many areas of the world including North America, Africa, Australia and northern Eurasia). In the case of direct historical analogy, it has been suggested that this approach is valid because there is continuity between the archaeological subject and the ethnographic comparison (Lane forthcoming).

The reality is, in Johnson’s (2010, 64) words, that ‘formal and relational analogies are two ends of a range of analogical arguments of lesser or greater strength’. Clearly, making assumptions about the past is problematic: we cannot assume that because people do something one way in the present, they necessarily did that in the past. It is rare, however, for archaeologists to use such simplistic assumptions nowadays. Ethnographic analogy is much more sophisticated – whether utilized within a processual or interpretive framework – than this. The issue is not, therefore, which type of analogy we employ – we use analogy whether we like it or not, and most archaeologists now employ relational or contextually specific analogies – but precisely what analogy can tell us.

In a recent article, Cunningham (2003) sums up what analogy can potentially tell us. He suggests that it is useful for ‘translating the archaeological record’ and ‘testing archaeologically derived propositions’. This is the meat of the processual and cultural–ecological approach, and it remains a valid use of analogy. Throughout the volume, useful insights derived from this use of ethnographic analogy are highlighted. However, Cunningham also argues that analogy enables us to go on an ‘interpretive discovery’ as well as raising possibilities of existence which we might not previously have considered (Cunningham 2003, 392). In a similar vein, Julian Thomas (2010) clarifies what ethnographic analogy can tell us. Thomas argues that the archaeological record is very good at enabling us to understand everyday aspects of past people’s lives, such as what they ate, where they lived and how they died. However, archaeologists struggle to look beyond this. ‘This is possibly why archaeologists need to draw on anthropological observations in order to stimulate their own work. … we need the prompting of anthropology in order to know what to look for’ (Thomas 2010, 183 my emphasis). It is this idea of prompting that is very useful to us as archaeologists. Thus, I think it can be argued that ethnographic analogy offers us a prompt, or a ‘way in’, to understanding prehistoric people’s lives. It is not that anthropological (ethnographic or ethnohistorical) evidence is ‘better’ than archaeological evidence; indeed, it is as partial, limited and limiting as the archaeological record. Instead, it offers us new ways of thinking about our evidence, new lines of enquiry which can open up exciting and different ways of imagining the past.

As part of a broader interpretive endeavour, this volume therefore advocates that a study of modern hunter-gatherers can help us to understand past

•variation

•complexities

•fluidity over space and time

•alternative human behaviours

•possibilities of human existence

It is these issues that are discussed in the final chapter.

The aim of this volume is thus to explore these ideas through specific themes, and ultimately to address the ongoing issues of the usefulness of ethnographic analogy for understanding the study of past hunter-gatherers. By the end of the volume, it is hoped that readers will have an understanding of the basic approaches to the study of modern hunting and gathering populations and an idea how to use this to inform our studies of past peoples.

Conclusion

In this opening chapter, the aims of the volume have been stated, and a very brief history of the study of hunter-gatherers has been considered. We now have a definition of the term ‘modern hunter-gatherer’ which will be referred to throughout the volume. We have also considered the issue of ethnographic analogy, and briefly explored how this has been used by past and present archaeologists. It has been suggested that there are different types of analogy, and that these can offer archaeologists different ways of understanding the past. The usefulness of ethnographic analogy from an interpretive background is now explored in different thematic chapters throughout the book.

2

Making a living: Hunter-gatherer subsistence

Summary of chapter

The chapter starts by discussing the ways in which hunter-gatherers find food: through hunting, gathering and fishing. It also details the importance attached to different food stuffs, and highlights, in particular, the significance of meat. The chapter then goes on to detail some of the key ways that anthropologists have characterized different hunting and gathering subsistence economies including the differences between ‘immediate return system’ and ‘delayed return system’ hunter-gatherers and we explore whether these terms are useful when thinking about prehistoric populations. While it is clear that food security is an essential component of life, the chapter then considers the symbolic importance of food, investigating the social role that food plays in people’s lives. The significance of taste is explored through a case study which considers the introduction of farming into Europe at the start of the Neolithic. Finally, the intrinsic link between what you eat and how you understand the world is discussed, which is highlighted with a case study from Upper Palaeolithic Europe, and further developed in Chapter 5. We then evaluate the usefulness of studying the foodways of modern hunter-gatherers for understanding the use and meaning of food to past peoples.

Introduction

Food is an absolutely essential part of life, and as such has featured heavily in studies of hunter-gatherers. In addition to this, it is something that can be studied relatively easily, both among living populations as well as in the archaeological record. The study of what hunter-gatherers ate became very popular with the development of ‘cultural ecology’, an academic movement which was interested in the relationship between the environment and the effect that this had on the social organization of groups. This approach fitted into the broader ‘New Archaeology’ in America in the 1960s, pioneered by Binford (1962), which had a particular interest in the effect of the environment on people. It is relevant to note that Binford, the leading proponent of the New Archaeology, himself studied modern hunter-gatherers, conducting substantial fieldwork among the Nunamiut in order to understand prehistoric populations (Binford 1978). One of the key texts to come out of the cultural ecology approach was Man the Hunter (Lee and DeVore 1968), an influential and important volume which marked a key milestone in the study of hunting and gathering populations.

Since these important steps in exploring how groups utilized their individual environments, considerable research has been conducted on what hunter-gatherers eat. This chapter only offers a brief taste of that broader literature. In particular, it focusses on the importance of hunting, gathering and fishing to communities, in terms of calories as well as in relation to the ways these practices effect daily life. The chapter explores the meanings attached to different foods and practices, both ethnographically and in the past. It is argued that the economic and symbolic significance of meat, plants and fish are not diametrically opposed, but inextricably linked.

Hunting

Meat is an extremely significant part of hunter-gatherer diets, not just in terms of calories gained from eating meat, but also for the raw materials for making objects. As discussed later, eating meat is also very desirable, and there are considerable symbolic aspects to hunting, killing and eating meat. Meat is also important because it can also be stored for long periods of time, by smoking, salting, and in northern climates, freezing. This means that one large game kill can feed many people over a long period of time.

The types of animal hunted by different groups varies according to climate. In northern Eurasia and Arctic North America people rely heavily on reindeer (also called caribou: Rangifer tarandus). This includes the Evenki (Anderson 1999), Chukchi (Schweitzer 1999) and Caribou Inuit (Burch and Csonka 1999). Vast swathes of North American groups who lived on the plains such as the Crow, Comanche and Blackfoot groups relied heavily on buffalo (DeMaille 2001, 6). In other areas, such as Africa, smaller mammals are significant for diet. The Mbuti of northern Congo, for example, primarily rely on duikers (small antelopes), as well as occasional larger animals such as buffaloes and elephants (Ichikawa 1999, 211). Many hunter-gatherer groups eat smaller animals to supplement their diet, dependent on what is available locally, including beaver, rabbit, hare, monkey, squirrel and marmot. These are useful not only for meat but for fur as well. For many groups, then, the hunting of meat provides a substantial proportion of calories consumed (Table 2.1).

Hunting methods are as varied as the range of animals being hunted. Bow and arrow, including the use of poisoned arrows, clubs and spears have all been used by the Kutse group of the central Kalahari for hunting (Kent 1996). The use of a bow and arrow and spears enables a single hunter to kill animals, and is a frequent way of hunting in both Africa and Australia. There are other documented ways of killing game, especially big game. Blackfoot groups drove herds of buffalo over bluffs or into a corral where the animals could be killed more easily (Kehoe 1999). Large herds of reindeer were hunted in a variety of ingenious ways (Spiess 1979, Chapter 4). In North Alaska, the Tikkerarmiut created a funnel of willows, which the herd wandered into at one end: a series of snares captured up to 200 animals in one go (Gordon 1989). Other groups drove herds into lakes and rivers, where they would be killed by waiting hunters; these carcasses could then be floated to the shore where they were butchered. There are also records of reindeer being driven off cliffs and driven into snow drifts (Gordon 1989). These methods often required a large workforce, first hunters to drive and then kill the animals, and secondly people to butcher and deal with the large number of carcasses being produced in a single event.

Table 2.1  Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on hunting

Meat is a good source of calories, as well as other by-products, and there are a diverse range of methods for hunting. Optimal foraging models have been influential in anthropological studies of hunting and gathering groups (see Kelly 1995, 73–108 for an excellent summary). Quite simply, this involves looking at the potential calorific gains of living in particular environments and then seeing if hunting and gathering groups acquired food in the most efficient way possible. Studies have shown that, for the most part, people do acquire food very efficiently. They usually expend as little energy as possible, while gaining the greatest calorific return. There are exceptions to this ‘efficiency rule’ however, and one of these exceptions involves meat. Many ethnographic accounts highlight the desirability of meat to hunter-gatherer groups. Of course meat is desirable in terms of calories gained (meat contains essential protein and fat for the human diet), but in addition to this, people will go to considerable lengths to acquire meat. Among the Ache of Paraguay, South America, gathering palm fibre and shoots acquires 2,630 kilocalories an hour of effort (Hill and Hurtado 1999). Hunting, however, only gains 1,340 kilocalories an hour (Kelly 1995, 107). Hunting is thus less efficient than gathering, but nevertheless is undertaken and this may be in part due to the desirability of meat as a food stuff as well as the status of meat.

Many hunter-gatherer groups consider meat to be higher status than plant foods or fish. This is partly because of its desirable taste and partly because hunting is considered higher risk than gathering plants or fishing. As such, it is possible for those involved with the acquisition of meat to gain considerable prestige; being good at hunting demonstrates skill and gains social prestige among many groups (Gurven and Hill 2009; Jordan 2006, 92). Among the Ache, men may gain more sexual partners as a result of acquiring more meat (Kelly 1995, 107). Bofi and Aka hunters actually use less efficient methods of hunting small game in order to gain socially and politically; in this case, the most efficient way of hunting would be to use snares but they use nets instead which is riskier and less successful in terms of calorific return (Lupo and Schmitt 2005, 341). This does not work in all societies, however. Among groups in the Kalahari hunting success is downplayed, so that no one individual is able to gain more prestige than anyone else (Kent 1989, 4). However, this specific example relates to a deliberate choice to not have people of higher status within a group (egalitarianism) and is explored in more depth in Chapter 4. Therefore, hunting, and meat in general, seems to have a higher status in hunting and gathering societies than is justified by its calorific contribution only. However, we should be aware that ethnographers have reported that the vast majority of hunting is done by men (not exclusively, and there are notable exceptions: see Bliege Bird and Bird 2008, 678). Thus, there may be gender implications associated with the perceived value of meat (see Chapter 4 for more details about gender relations in hunter-gatherer societies).

In addition to the high status of hunting and meat in society, hunting is also significant because it plays a crucial part of complex relations between people and animals. Hunter-gatherer groups are animist in their belief systems (see Chapter 5 for more details on this). This means that hunter-gatherers understand themselves to be part of the animal world, where animals and humans are essentially interchangeable beings: put quite simply, people and animals are the same on the inside, just different on the outside (Viveiros de Castro 1998). Thus, among most hunter-gatherer groups it is inconceivable to just go out and kill an animal. Instead, special rites need to be carried out in order to keep the spirits of the animals happy (Binford 1978, 413). Among some groups, they must ask the permission of an animal before it can be killed (Ingold 2000, 48). Indeed, ethnographically, there are a whole variety of different rites and processes that must be undertaken before, during and after the hunting of an animal. This is detailed further in Chapter 5, but it is essential that we appreciate the significance of beliefs in everyday actions (Jordan 2006, 95).

Gathering

Plant foods provide a critical component of many hunter-gatherer groups’ diets. It is only groups that live in the most extreme northerly climates that do not gather plant foods at all. Many other groups rely heavily on gathered foods, although there is considerable diversity across the world (Kelly 1995, 66–9; Table 2.2). Indeed, the importance of gathering to these societies has led to the use of the phrase ‘gatherer-hunter’ instead of the more traditional ‘hunter-gatherer’ (Bender and Morris 1988). There are a wide variety of foods that can be gathered and eaten. This includes nuts, berries, fruit, beans, tubers, seeds and roots. For example, among the Ju/’hoansi over two-thirds of their diet is gathered foods, including the staple Mongongo nut (Biesele and Royal-/O/OO 1999, 206). The sheer range of edible plant foods in most environmental zones means that these foods provide an essential and variable range of resources that can be utilized at different points throughout the year.

Table 2.2  Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on gathering

Other things are gathered too; insects are eaten by many groups. In Australia, people eat both witchetty grubs and moths (Flood 1980). While these are not plant foods in our classification of the natural world, they are conceptualized in very much the same way as plants among hunter-gatherers; they are not considered animate beings like larger mammals, and therefore are ‘gathered’ like nuts or berries. We could also include here the gathering of shellfish, which again are considered broadly comparable to plant foods, but are discussed below with marine foods.

Gathering plant foods provides an essential and reliable source of calories for most hunter-gatherer groups, but in contrast to hunting, it is often not regarded as being a high status activity. This may partly relate to the fact that gathering is frequently, although not exclusively, done by women, and they tend, although again not exclusively, to be perceived as being lower status than men (Svensson 1999; and see Chapter 4). This does not mean that people do not appreciate the value of plant foods, or indeed the role of women in collecting them, but it is not as highly prized as meat. Furthermore, although animistic belief systems understand the world as animate, plant foods, while potentially having a spiritual force, are rarely seen as being ‘essentially the same as’ human beings. This means there are rarely a strict range of practices that must be followed before, during and after gathering as there is with hunting. It is also worth noting that hunter-gatherer groups do not always eat absolutely everything that has calorific value. Some foods are deliberately not touched. For example, the Hadza of Tanzania will not eat insects, reptiles, fish or fresh-water molluscs, even though these provide a potential source of food (Kaare and Woodburn 1999; Woodburn 1988).

The one exception to the ‘rule’ that gathered foods are lower status is honey. This is highly prized among many hunter-gatherer societies and considerable effort is spent trying to acquire it (see de Heer 2006). Perhaps the best-known example of honey-loving hunter-gatherers are the Okiek of Kenya, among whom honey is highly prized (Blackburn 1982; Kratz 1999, 221). In a world with very limited supplies of sugar, and in keeping with the West’s desire for sugary goods, it is perhaps not surprising to see that honey is so highly desirable and prized.

Case study: The introduction of domesticated animal and plant foods into Europe

One of the big questions in prehistoric archaeology revolves around the question of why Mesolithic hunter-gatherer populations throughout Europe adopted farming, particularly the incorporation of domesticated plant and animal foods into their diets (Hodder 1990; Whittle 1996; Whittle and Cummings 2007). Quite clearly this was a process, or series of processes, that took place over a vast area over thousands of years, and to try and reduce this to a single ‘cause’ is impossible. There are a wide variety of interpretations surrounding this transition and these different models demonstrate a range of possibilities, but they can be very briefly summarized as:

•People wished to adopt a more settled way of life, which included farming.

•Neolithic people spread across Europe over thousands of years, essentially ‘converting’ or ‘assimilating’ Mesolithic people to a Neolithic way of life as they went.

•Mesolithic hunter-gatherers actively decided to adopt the Neolithic, perhaps because it represented a more attractive lifestyle (whether that related to food, new forms of material culture, or belief systems).

It seems highly likely that all of these different scenarios may have been relevant in different parts of Europe.

One aspect of the transition to the Neolithic that is rarely discussed, however, is that of taste. There is plenty of discussion surrounding the problems and benefits of keeping domesticated animals and plants, versus the relative merits of hunting and gathering. There is also discussion on the symbolic and status benefits of keeping domesticated animals. However, we should consider the fact that both domesticated animals and plants provided a new range of tastes for people eating them. An appreciation of taste is part of an understanding that the world is experienced through all of the senses (Rodaway 1994; Skeates 2010). Taste preferences are strongly influenced by one’s cultural context (Skeates 2010, 4), and of course can change over time, and we will never be able to demonstrate what tastes people preferred in prehistory. However, we do know that people adopted the use of domesticated animals and plants across virtually the whole of Europe, and this may have been in part that these things offered new and various tastes not previously regularly encountered. Domesticated animals, particularly cattle, provided not only meat but also milk, which was not easily available in large quantities in the environments utilized by hunting and gathering populations. Milk could easily have been converted into other products, including cheese, butter and yogurt, all of which are rich in fat (fat being very desirable in hunter-gatherer ethnographies) and each with a distinct and new taste. There is plenty of evidence from Europe to show that people were using milk and milk products from the start of the Neolithic onwards.

Likewise, the introduction of domesticated plants in the Neolithic also offered new tastes (bread being a staple of many cultures’ diets) and made stodgy carbohydrates much easier to produce in large quantities. The other new taste made widely available to people with the introduction of domesticates is alcohol (see McGovern 2009). Domesticated plant species such as barley could easily have been used in the fermentation process; indeed there is clear evidence that this was the case in the Neolithic (Dineley 2000). Alcohol is certainly a new taste and it had additional side-effects which may have been highly valued and appreciated (the ability to enter other states of consciousness: see Chapter 5). While we know that alcohol leads to drunkenness, in a society with no knowledge of the chemical effects of alcohol, this may have been interpreted in quite different ways, with strong connections with belief systems. There is substantial evidence for ritual specialists entering altered states of consciousness as part of ritual practice, as discussed in Chapter 5.

The suggestion that domesticates were adopted in the Neolithic because they provided new tastes to the hunter-gatherer palate is conjecture, but we should not underestimate the non-practical or non-functional aspects of decision making in getting food. Variety in taste, as well as unexpected side-effects, may have been as good a reason as any for the adoption of domesticated plants and animals. Many who have even been on a dairy-free, low carb, alcohol-free diet will testify to the desirability of these foodstuffs in the diet.

Fishing and marine resources

So far we have considered the hunting of animals and the gathering of plant foods, but the use of marine foods are also very important for some hunter-gatherer groups. Indeed, this has led to the use of the ‘hunter-gatherer-fisher’ among some scholars, in order to highlight the economic significance of fishing to these groups. A wide range of marine resources are used by hunter-gatherer groups, including fish, large sea mammals such as whales and seals and shellfish. These groups tend, historically, to be in colder climates, where the water is productive and there are not a range of year-round resources, particularly plants (Table 2.3). Fishing in rich waters enables groups to acquire considerable quantities of fish rapidly, which, like meat, can be stored for use later. Fish can be processed quickly, then smoked, salted or even frozen for consumption later on.

The relative merits of hunting and gathering have been discussed above, and it seems that fishing is perceived in a similar way to gathering, in that it is not considered a risky or prestigious process. However, among those groups that rely very heavily on seasonal fish supplies (see below) fish do play an important part in their mythology, and fish are considered to share many characteristics with humans just as other animals do (animism). This means that there are rules in place when dealing with fish, just like there are with the hunting and killing of animals (Jordan 2003, 115). Groups of hunter-gatherers from the Arctic North are well-known ethnographically for relying very heavily on marine resources (Riches 1982). For example, the Inupiat of Alaska hunt seals, polar bears, walrus, fish and whales (Worl 1999). These larger marine animals are considered as similar beings to people (see Chapter 5) and similar rituals to those involving land animals must be undertaken.

‘When a whale is caught, just the body dies, but the whole whale gives itself to all the people. We believe that when you hunt the animals in harmony you won’t have problems catching the animals’ (Kimmialuk, Inupiat man, from Worl 1999, 64).

Secondly, a number of hunter-gatherers groups of the Northwest coast of America, and the Ainu of Japan, relied heavily on salmon (Inez Hilger 1971; Ohnuki-Tierney 1974). Large harvests of salmon were possible during the spring and autumn salmon runs, and they enabled these groups to develop extraordinarily complex domestic and ritual lives, which we explore further in the following chapters.

Table 2.3  Percentages of food deriving from hunting, gathering and fishing (data from Kelly 1995, 67–9), emphasizing groups who rely heavily on fishing

Immediate and delayed return systems

We now consider the notion of a ‘return system’. This important idea was developed by Woodburn (1988) and was an attempt to differentiate between different types of hunter-gatherer economies. Anthropologists had noted that there were significant differences between hunter-gatherer groups in the way in which they acquired food. Woodburn describes one form of hunting and gathering as an immediate return system. Quite simply, this refers to groups who go out, acquire food and eat it straight away. There is no long-term planning for the acquisition of food, nor the storage of food, instead nutrition is acquired on a ‘hand-to-mouth’ basis. This contrasts with what Woodburn calls delayed return system hunter-gatherers. These groups not only go out and acquire food on a daily basis but they also invest time in longer-term strategies. So, for example, some groups spend time on things that do not have an immediate return; they make nets, traps and weirs which are set up one day, and returned to at a later date. A delayed return system also relates to planning, so large groups of hunters setting up droves to run herds down also takes a long-term investment of time before there is a reward. Delayed return systems also involve storage. As we have seen, some groups store food after big kills of meat or catches of fish, through smoking, drying, salting or freezing.

Woodburn (1988) noted that the difference between immediate and delayed return system hunter-gatherers does not just seem to relate to how people acquire food. Woodburn went on to suggest that immediate return system groups were egalitarian (‘simple’ societies) in contrast to delayed return system groups who were ranked (‘complex’ societies). These important ideas are discussed again in detail in Chapter 4, but there are implications here for archaeologists. There is the strong suggestion in the anthropological literature that particular types of environment dictate how you make a living (i.e. some environments force you to adopt a hand-to-mouth subsistence strategy). This, by implication, would mean that you were forced to be egalitarian. If you follow this logic, then, hunter-gatherers are a product of their environment. This is certainly consistent with the approach advocated by the ecological approach to the past (see Chapter 1). We return to this issue later in the chapter when we assess the usefulness of ethnographic analogy for understanding past diets.

Beyond hunting and gathering: Dealing with domestication and domesticates

It would be easy to assume that modern hunter-gatherer groups only hunt, gather and fish, and that they stand in marked contrast to farming populations who make their living using a very different set of practices. This notion is often perpetuated in archaeology, where there is a tendency to suggest that hunter-gatherers are both economically and socially very different from farmers (but see Finlayson and Warren 2010 and Pluciennik 2005). First, modern hunter-gatherer groups uniformly have one domesticated animal, and that is the dog. This has historical precedence, as the dog was first domesticated by hunting and gathering populations back in the Palaeolithic (Clutton-Brock 1999, 57–8). Thus the dog has been used by hunter-gatherers for thousands of years, both as food and to assist in acquiring food (Koster 2008). In addition to this there are some apparently wild animals which are domesticated, such as the reindeer herds in Eurasia which are tethered and moved around with people (Spiess 1979). There are also examples where wild pigs are sometimes kept as if they were domesticated (Kent 1996); these animals remain ‘biologically’ wild, but this should alert us to a key issue here, especially when we are thinking about the matter of domestication in relation to the past; just because animals are biologically wild does not always mean that they were not subject to treatment more akin to the keeping of domesticates. This can include restricting movement, restricting breeding, assistance with feeding, the introduction of animals into new environments, selected culling and familiarization with humans. There may well have been an intermediate position between animals simply being hunted, and animals being fully domesticated (see Clutton-Brock 1999; Outram forthcoming).

Many modern hunter-gatherer groups also actively assist with the growth of wild plant foods. It is common for hunter-gatherers to burn grassland in order to encourage the growth of tender shoots, which encourage game to the area; the Blackfoot of the Plains (United States) did this in order to encourage buffalo to graze in particular areas (Kehoe 1999, 38). There is also evidence of hunter-gatherers planting wild plants, weeding and tending to them and then harvesting them (e.g. Bird David 1992), very much like agriculturalists tend to domesticated plants (Harris forthcoming). As such, there also seems to be an intermediate position between gathering and full-scale agricultural cultivation which is difficult to fit into our rather simplistic division of ‘hunter-gatherers’ or ‘farmers’. This clearly blurs our distinction of what is a hunter-gatherer and what is not. This also potentially occurred many times in the past. But this did not always (or indeed very often) lead to full-scale domestication; that is, this was not a uni-linear path towards a different subsistence economy (Harris forthcoming). So when we consider modern hunter-gatherer groups, many of the plants and trees that would have been used by past hunter-gatherers are now domesticated in the modern world (nut and fruit trees, roots and tubers and seeds, cereals and pulses).

Various studies, therefore, show that modern hunter-gatherers treat wild plants and animals in a wide range of ways, some of which are broadly comparable to that of agriculturalists. Other studies highlight issues which reveal a different component of hunter-gatherer engagements with animals. It is documented that some modern hunter-gatherer groups who primarily make their living hunting and gathering also keep domesticated animals. The Kutse group of the central Kalahari, for example, get the vast majority of their meat not only from hunting wild animals but they also keep goats from time to time (Kent 1996). However, instead of carefully tending them and looking after them like their nearby pastoralist neighbours, they simply let them out in the morning and hope that they come back in the evening. If they return, this is good, but they are not particularly concerned if they do not as these goats are very much thought of as an emergency backup food, in case hunting and gathering supplies run out, and are thus treated as such. Indeed, it is suggested that these domesticated animals are treated as if they are wild (Kent 1996). All of this reveals considerable flexibility in how hunter-gatherers deal with plants and animals. There is quite simply no ‘one size fits all’; wild animals are sometimes treated in similar ways to domesticates, and when modern groups keep domesticates, they are treated as if they are wild. All of this has very interesting implications for the study of prehistoric groups (both hunter-gatherers and farmers) and further problematizes the notion of a strict dichotomy between these two seemingly different lifestyles (Smith 2001 and see below).

This leads us to a rather unusual situation, but one which still has relevance for the study of prehistoric groups. The Mbuti are a group of hunter-gatherers in central Africa who hunt game in the forest. However, over half of their food comes from the neighbouring Bantu-speaking agriculturalists, with whom they exchange hunted meat for domestic produce (Ichikawa 1999). Indeed, both groups are now reliant on each other, so that the hunter-gatherers rely on farmed produce and vice versa. This has led anthropologists to describe this as a ‘symbiotic’ relationship, where they are mutually dependent on one another. Interestingly, it is suggested that the Mbuti did not live in the forests prior to the arrival of agriculturalists in the region and thus they are actually a product of agriculture, not a response to agriculture (see papers on the ‘Kalahari debate’ which discusses the same issue: e.g. Solway and Lee 1990; Suzman 2004; Wilmsen and Denbow 1990). This highlights the fact that ethnographically modern hunter-gatherer groups live in the modern world, and that the reality of studying hunter-gatherer populations is that they are very much effected by, and a part of, the modern world. Very few peoples nowadays make a living purely from hunting and gathering, and even those that do are not isolated from the broader world. The vast majority of hunter-gatherers, as recorded by ethnographers over the last few hundred years, interacted with farmers in some form or other (Kent 2002). This is a massive field of study (essentially this is the study of colonialism on native populations, including hunter-gatherers: see, for example, van Dommelen 2004). This highlights the problems of using modern hunter-gatherers to understand past populations. Indeed, we now move on to consider the value of ethnographic analogy for understanding the past.

Case study: Statements in bone: Upper Palaeolithic mammoths

Reconstructing prehistoric diets is a problematic issue. Animal bone assemblages give us a valuable insight into diet in the past, but there are issues of preservation. Animal bone does not preserve well in many environments, and there are also likely to be biases in the record relating to pre- and post-depositional practices. Larger bones from larger mammals often survive better than smaller bones. Plant food remains are even less likely to survive. Where we have human skeletal remains surviving we can also use techniques such as stable isotope analysis which gives a general picture of what people ate (Mays 1998, chapter 9, 182–96). However, the study of modern hunter-gatherer groups indicate that what people ate was not just a practical or functional thing: the consumption of food had an important social and symbolic role in society. This gives us, as archaeologists, potential insight into other aspects of people’s lives.

The Upper Palaeolithic period of Europe is a good case in point. This is a long period of prehistory, dating from roughly 40,000 years ago to the start of the Mesolithic c10,000 years ago (Pettitt forthcoming). There are only a limited number of animal bone assemblages from the period, and these are usually preserved in not only very specific types of site, often caves, but also at a range of open-air sites found primarily in eastern Europe. Vast swathes of Europe have very few assemblages at all, and we are even more restricted when it comes to investigating the role of plant foods in the Upper Palaeolithic diet. It seems that people were hunting the large herbivores found in Europe, such as mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison, reindeer, horse and wild cattle (Mellars 1994) and also using smaller animals for meat and fur.

One of the most intriguing sets of sites from this period are the large, late Upper Palaeolithic structures from eastern Europe. This area seems to have been one of the ‘hotspots’ for Upper Palaeolithic populations, a refuge occupied even during the harsh glacial expansions which made parts of Europe uninhabitable at particular points (Pettitt forthcoming). Mezhirich is a well-known site, and one of a cluster of at least 13 sites found around the Dneipr and Desna rivers. It is in Ukraine and was occupied around 15,000 years ago. The site is not only famous for the dwellings constructed of mammoth bones but it also has external storage pits, hearths, midden areas and considerable assemblages of both artefacts and animal bones (Soffer et al. 1997, 51). The remains of over 100 mammoths have been recovered from the site, not only as the main construction material used for building dwellings but also as spreads of material and in storage pits (Pidoplichko 1998). These structures were clearly used for living in and conducting daily life; there is evidence for tool production (stone, bone and antler), clothing manufacture, food preparation and consumption (Pidoplichko 1998; Soffer et al. 1997, 59). Stays were for months at a time, and people returned a number of times to the location and reused the structures.

The dwellings made from mammoth bones are quite extraordinary structures. They were not quick constructions, but carefully built substantial dwellings. The base of house 1 was constructed from mammoth skulls, and the sides were carefully arranged with bones which created a herring-bone effect. In total, house 1 contained the remains of 95 individual mammoths (Pidoplichko 1998).

It is clearly the case that these animals were an important part of people’s diets (see Germonpré et al. 2008), and that the animal bones provided a useful and convenient source of building material, especially when the cold environment meant that there was a lack of timber. But in addition to this, living in a house made of mammoth bones would have made a very strong statement. Imagine the risk involved in hunting the large megafauna of Upper Palaeolithic. Mammoths in particular were massive animals, providing not only enormous amount of calories in a cold and difficult environment but also the successful hunting and killing of a mammoth must have brought considerable prestige to a hunter or group of hunters. Living in a house made from your successful kills would be a powerful statement about your status and ability to provide. It is intriguing that at the site of Mezhirich, while all the houses contained mammoth bones, house 1 contained the most (the remains of 95 individuals as compared with 34 from house 2 and 18 individuals from house 3: Pidoplichko 1998). Reconstructions of the houses therefore reflect this, and house 1 is generally considered to be more visually ornate than houses 2 and 3. This suggests that the house architecture here may have reflected social status (and see Chapter 3 for more on houses).

Mammoths were not small animals, and kills would have been spectacular, risky, if not downright dangerous and the stuff of stories, legends and myths. Prestige may have been gained or lost through hunting activity. The biography of the individual mammoths may well have been known about by the people living in the structures. Imagine living among the remains of a mammoth that you had killed. Mammoths almost certainly played a critical role in dominant mythologies at the time. We know that mammoth ivory was frequently used as plaques for the carving of symbols and motifs, including some examples from Mezhirich (Marshack 1979). Mammoths are also depicted in engravings at sites such as Gönnersdorf. It could be argued that these images depict the straightforward economic significance of these animals, however at Dolni Věstonice, mammoth bone dominates the faunal assemblage, but is rarely depicted in the art from the site (Bahn and Vertut 1988, 156). Instead, it seems more likely that art depicts important and symbolic creatures from mythology, and this would have changed through both space and time. Rock art is explored in detail in Chapter 6, but it adds yet another dimension to living in a structure made of mammoth bone. Thus, mammoths may have been not only important economically, for food and other animal products, but also as statements of a broader way of life. Being a mammoth hunter may have gained you considerable prestige in society, and living in the remains of your kills a powerful statement about your place in society and in the world.

Ethnographic analogy: Understanding past subsistence

The key debate in this volume is the value of ethnographic analogy, specifically how useful the study of modern hunter-gatherers is for gaining insights into past communities. This brief summary of modern hunter-gatherer subsistence strategies reveals a whole variety of issues for archaeologists to consider when thinking about past peoples. First, one of the key insights that the study of modern groups provides is that people do not eat foods just for their calories alone. Certainly, people tend to utilize environments in efficient ways, gaining calories from a variety of sources, but this is not sufficient to explain every hunting and gathering choice. The craving for meat and honey in particular is interesting and strongly suggests that people are driven by a desire for foods which provide specific tastes and privileges (such as social status) in addition to nutritional gains. Indeed, the desire for both meat and sugar is not restricted to hunting and gathering populations (a quick look at our own dietary preferences should confirm this). Therefore, it seems highly likely that there was considerable desire for these foods in prehistory. This must surely give us insights into prehistoric diets, and it was suggested earlier that this may even have played a significant role in the adoption of agriculture. The study of modern hunter-gatherer groups also demonstrates that not all foods are eaten because they have calorific value; some food stuffs among some groups are taboo and deliberately avoided. This does not invalidate ecological approaches to the archaeological record which consider the environment and optimum foraging methods, but does instead highlight that caution, and context-specificity, should be employed if at all possible.

Ethnographic analogy also reveals high levels of variability among modern groups. This works on a whole variety of different levels, from the varied amounts of meat, fish and plant foods in different groups’ diets, to the range of ways in which animals are hunted. Some groups employ or employed very complex methods for hunting and storing food, Woodburn’s ‘delayed return system’ hunter-gatherers, while other groups are more ‘hand to mouth’ (‘immediate return system’ hunter-gatherers). Quite clearly, some of this variety is a result of people living in different environments, and a good understanding of the environmental context of prehistoric groups is therefore essential for understanding the possibilities for resource exploitation. However, this variety cannot be explained by environmental context alone. Are hunter-gatherers really just a product of their environment? If that is the case, then it suggests that they have no autonomy and are passive figures at the mercy of the environment. This was one of the biggest criticisms of the New Archaeology by post-processual archaeologists from the 1980s onwards. Instead it is perhaps more useful to suggest that the environment restrains or enables people in particular ways, but within that environmental niche, people can make a whole series of choices and decisions about what they eat and how they acquire food.

As discussed in the following chapter, what you eat and how you exploit particular resources has an enormous impact on other aspects of life; indeed in the next chapter we explore the issue of mobility, which is directly related to subsistence. Again, this is a choice, not something forced onto people. The variability in subsistence strategies also highlights how problematic it is to label what is an incredibly diverse range of groups ‘hunter-gatherers’; many modern groups would appear to have more similarities with past communities who farmed than hunting and gathering populations (see Kent 1989). This highlights a crucial problem with the study of hunter-gatherers; they are not an homogeneous group of people, but highly variable, and the suggestion that they are somehow in direct opposition to agriculturalists is far too simplistic. Indeed, there is the suggestion that there are many groups of people who can be considered low-level food producers, and this label fits both hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists (see Smith 2001). Again this is an issue discussed later in the volume.

The fact that virtually all ethnographically modern hunter-gatherer groups interact with farming populations demonstrates that the study of these groups for understanding prehistoric groups prior to the advent of farming is going to be problematic. Contact situations always effect people, on both sides, and this is obvious when we see the impact on hunter-gatherer populations when they came into contact with farmers (see, for example, Spielmann forthcoming). All studies of modern hunter-gatherer subsistence are those where farming and farmers are known, and this is quite clearly problematic for studying much of prehistory prior to the advent of farming.

Conclusions

People have to eat. Resource security is an absolutely critical aspect of daily life and efficiency in getting food should not be underestimated. However, the acquisition of food is not just the procurement of calories. Certain foods seem to be much more desirable than other foods, in particular meat and honey, and hunter-gatherers go to extraordinary lengths to get these. Nevertheless, fish and plant foods are also very important in the diet. As we have already begun to explore, animals, fish and plants also all have symbolic roles in modern hunter-gatherer societies. As such, hunting, gathering and fishing is not just about acquiring food, but is part of a broader engagement of people, ideas and the environment, and which can potentially tell us as much about peoples’ belief systems as it can about the ways in which they make a living. Furthermore, it has also been suggested that a simple hunter-gatherer – farmer dichotomy is not helpful in understanding either modern groups or prehistoric peoples.

3

Moving on up: Mobility and settlement

Summary of chapter

The chapter introduces some of the basics of hunter-gatherer mobility. It considers various different types of mobility, and the range of sites produced by different movements through the landscape. There are connections between the types of mobility employed by hunter-gatherers and the environment in which they live, but there are many other reasons why people chose to move around, which are discussed in detail. This chapter also considers hunter-gatherer groups who are sedentary. Many aspects of exploring modern hunter-gatherer mobility are extremely useful for understanding past populations, but once again we explore the problems with the use of ethnographic analogy in this field of study.

Introduction

In 1968, the Man the Hunter editors made two general, and now very famous, assumptions about hunter-gatherers. They were:

1.  They live in small groups.

2.  They move around a lot (Lee and Devore 1968, 11).

Mobility certainly is a key component of hunter-gatherer lifestyles and in this chapter we explore different types of hunter-gatherer mobility. However, there are many different forms of mobility, from groups who are extremely mobile to those who are virtually sedentary. As such, we consider diversity and variability between groups. In addition to this, being mobile is not just restricted to hunter-gatherer groups, and this has interesting implications for the use of ethnographic analogy when considering prehistoric populations. Indeed, the aim of this chapter is to consider a variety of issues surrounding mobility and how these may be relevant for us in understanding people in the past.

It is not surprising that the seminal Man the Hunter conference highlighted the importance of mobility. It had long been noted that many hunter-gatherers are mobile (e.g. Thomson 1939). Indeed, there is a rather romantic image of hunter-gatherers being mobile (Kelly 1992) and there had already been plenty of discussion at a general level on the two extremes of mobility: nomadism and sedentism (Childe 1940). Mobility studies really came to the fore in the late 1960s, part of broader cultural ecological approaches, but highlighted through the work of influential scholars (see David et al. forthcoming). For example, Eric Higgs pioneered ‘site catchment analysis’ which explored how many resources were available from a particular point in the landscape (e.g. Vita-Finzi and Higgs 1970).

The most influential paper on mobility came from Lewis Binford’s ethnoarchaeological work (Binford 1980), entitled Willow smoke and dogs’ tails (this was how an old Nunamiut man summarized his life: he spent half his life looking at the smoke from willow burning on camp fires, and the rest looking at dogs’ tails wagging in front of him as they moved around the landscape). In this paper, Binford claimed there were two rather different types of hunter-gatherer, which related to the type of mobility they used. The first related to what he called ‘residential mobility’. This is where the entire group is moved from one camp to another (Figure 3.1). Binford called this type of hunter-gatherer a forager: a group of people who essentially move many times during the year (Binford 1980, 5–10). These people tend to gather foods daily and then move on once an area is low on resources (also see the last chapter on immediate return systems). This type of mobility can be contrasted with ‘logistical mobility’. This is where individuals or small groups go out from a central camp to get resources, leaving most people behind at the base camp (Figure 3.2). This is a characteristic of collectors who make only a small number of residential moves per year but make many forays for resources not available in the immediate vicinity. Binford (1980, 10–12) notes that these groups tend to use storage as part of their subsistence strategy (also see the last chapter on delayed return systems). Binford (1980, 19) did not suggest that this model was an either/or model, but represented either end of a spectrum that was a useful tool for thinking about how hunter-gatherers moved (and see Binford and Johnson 2002). Indeed, his main aim was to develop tools that were helpful for understanding archaeological sites (Kelly 1992, 45). Perhaps, more crucially, he argued that mobility was a reflection of the environment you lived in, in other words the type of environment you inhabited had an enormous impact on how much you needed to move each year. Thus the type of environment being exploited was the most important factor in dictating mobility. Indeed, a later addition to these ideas of mobility was that of territorial, or long-term mobility, which involved groups moving between different territories over many years, which was what the Nunamiut practiced when following Caribou populations (Binford 1983b). Binford also refers to ‘tethered mobility’ where people are tied to a particular resource such as a waterhole or major supplier of food such as seasonal fish runs (Binford 1980).

Figure 3.1  Characterization of a forager subsistence-settlement system (after Binford 1980, reproduced by permission of American Antiquity)

The environment does, unequivocally, have an impact on mobility. Kelly clearly demonstrates that people living in environments that essentially yield low amounts of edible food must move regularly (Kelly 1995, 122–8). Conversely, people who live in much richer environments do not have to move many times in order to acquire enough food. In very arid environments, food is not the deciding factor but water (Kelly 1995, 126). However, there are notable exceptions to the general rule of thumb that environment directly effects mobility. First, people who live in fairly poor terrestrial environments but rely on fish (such as the Northwest Coast groups of North America) bypass this rule; as discussed later, these groups were virtually sedentary (see below). Secondly, the fact that groups live in rich environments does not necessarily mean that they automatically do not move around much.

One of the most interesting observations of mobility patterns has been observed among many groups and relates to a slightly different type of movement, one which has been named ‘anticipated mobility’ (e.g. Kent 1992b). This idea relates to how much time groups expect to spend at a site when they get there. If they plan on being there for a long period of time they invest considerable effort into building shelters and storage; they also keep the living area clean. Likewise, if a group does not anticipate staying in one location for long they do not spend time on making sturdy structures and often do not carefully dispose of rubbish (Kent 1992b, 639). However, just because a group anticipates living somewhere for either a long or short amount of time, this does not always happen. As discussed below, this has interesting implications for the study of the archaeological record.

Therefore, as discussed in the previous chapter, we should never underestimate the importance of food and water for hunter-gatherers and resource security. However, there are other reasons why people move, other than to acquire access to more food or water. It is to this that we now turn.

Figure 3.2  Characterization of a collector subsistence-settlement system (after Binford 1980, reproduced by permission of American Antiquity)

Why do hunter-gatherers move?

Obviously, one of the major reasons that hunter-gatherers move is to find more food or water. In addition to this, there are other practical reasons for moving. Cooking is obviously an important aspect of preparing food, and running out of firewood for cooking, and also for heat, has been noted as a sufficient reason for shifting camp. Indeed, the lack of any key resource, be it food, water, firewood or other things such as stone for making tools can be reason to move (Yellen 1998). It can be that the base camp is dirty, and it is considered time to move on (see, e.g., Lee 1979, 365–8).

When we come to investigate in more detail how hunter-gatherers understand the landscape (Chapter 6) we see that movement through the landscape is key for knowledge and also gaining access to knowledge. Certainly from a practical point of view, moving around regularly means that you have a good knowledge of what resources are where. In the legend Two Old Women (Wallis 1999), the women of the story are abandoned by their tribe due to extreme hardship and food shortages. However, they remember back to when they were younger and to places where there had been good supplies of food, and making their way there they are able to survive until reunited with their tribe. Thus movements through the landscape were essential for the generation and remembrance of knowledge.

Ethnographically, other reasons are cited for moving and maintaining a mobile lifestyle. The most commonly cited reason is to avoid social tension (Kelly 1992, 48; Kent 1989). Instead of resorting to arguing or fighting with people, individuals or even entire families will simply move elsewhere. This is an excellent way of avoiding social tension which ultimately could lead to interpersonal violence or even tribal conflict, which is documented to have happened among some groups (see Chapter 4). People also choose to move for other reasons. Indeed, the desire to see other people, socially or to exchange goods, seems to be a key driving factor; we return to the importance of exchange below. The reasons for moving can include the attendance of rituals, festivals, ceremonies or special events (Kelly 1992). For example, some people move in order to exchange pigs and other wealth as part of marriage festivals (Lemonnier 1993). Indeed, there are many reasons to move which have nothing to do with resource availability, and these may be particularly relevant for us when thinking about past communities who often lived in resource-rich environments (see case study below).

It is also interesting that many hunter-gatherers describe the value of moving. This is what has been described as the ‘mobility ethos’ (Kelly 1995, 152–3). It has even been documented that some groups who have the choice of being sedentary chose to continue moving around. Many groups actively resist trying to be forced or coerced into settling down (e.g. the Hadza; Kaare and Woodburn 1999). Moreover, formerly mobile hunting and gathering people who have been forced to settle down often describe their desire to still be mobile and say that it is the thing they miss the most about their previous lifestyle. Kelly (1995, 153) says that we cannot suggest that hunter-gatherers move just because they value a mobile lifestyle; he sees it as part and parcel of the desire to find food. I would argue differently and suggest that it is a fundamental part of hunter-gatherer being-in-the-world. Moving is their way of being.

Hunter-gatherer sites and dwellings

Binford was interested in ethnoarchaeology, specifically studying modern hunter-gatherers in order to better understand the past (Binford 1983a). Indeed, it was this desire to be able to get a better understanding of what different sites represented that led Binford to study Nunamiut mobility. In doing this he was able to identify lots of different types of site, which can assist us dealing with hunter-gatherer sites in the archaeological record. It is worthwhile running through these different types of sites.

Base camp. This is a site that is usually occupied for a reasonable length of time, where most of the community stay at one time or another. These vary enormously, but a base camp can be a base location that is occupied for a few days, up to a whole year in some cases (see Kelly 1995, 125). A base camp is important in both residential and logistical mobility patterns and it would typically see not only subsistence activities but also other activities such as making material culture. They consist of dwellings of some description (see below) as well as communal and special activity areas (O’Connell et al. 1991). For example, until the 1960s, an entire band of Ju/’hoansi would camp at a permanent water hole in the winter; often more than 25 people would be found in one single location (Barnard and Taylor 2002, 233). As archaeologists, this is the type of site we are most likely to identify, particularly those base camps that saw long-term or repeated occupation. These sites typically leave archaeological traces such as the remains of dwellings with hearths, and the build-up of material culture such as stone tools which are left over from the wide variety of activities occurring there and domestic waste. Indeed, there has been the suggestion that the longer people live there, the more material is likely to be deposited (but see Kent 1992b). Base camps are frequently returned to many times, resulting in a palimpsest of occupation in the archaeological record.

Hunting camp. This is a smaller-scale camp used by hunters who are in the process of acquiring meat. While it is a temporary and ephemeral camp, people may be there for a while, so for example they may be watching and waiting for a herd to arrive. In addition, a hunting camp may be returned to over the years. Hunting camps do not see the range of activities associated with base camps, although hunters may do things while waiting for the hunt, such as mend tools. There will also be some local food collection other than meat, as the hunters may gather and hunt smaller game while waiting for bigger or more prolific kills. For example, among Netsilik groups, hunting camps varied enormously, but often involved 50 or more hunters, especially if complex driving methods were required to obtain animals (Riches 1982, 33–9). Archaeologically, hunting camps are harder to identify due to the lack of material at sites.

Kill site. This is the site where an animal is killed, and oftentimes butchered. Butchering an animal at the kill site means less needs to be moved back to base camp, thus there may be considerable quantities of animal remains left at these sites, especially if the kill site is one where multiple animals are being hunted (see Chapter 2). For example, among the Nunamiut caribou are killed, then preliminary butchery takes place in situ (Binford 1978, 48–50). This involves removing the abdominal contents and head, then caching the rest for collection later. Sometimes, additional butchery takes place before the animal is transported back to base camp.

Short-stay sites. This type of site is where people prepare and eat food while out gathering or undertaking short-term tasks (like collecting firewood or water), so they are often, though not exclusively, sites used by women (see Chapter 4). These sites may be the remains of a single meal. Unfortunately, such sites are unlikely to regularly survive in the archaeological record.

Special sites. Not all hunter-gatherer sites are simply the remains of practical and subsistence-orientated activities. Nevertheless, there are other sites which have frequently been documented ethnographically, and which may also occur archaeologically. Binford (1983a, 119–20) discusses something he calls the ‘lover’s camp’. This was a campsite where young lovers were allowed to camp, away from the main residential camp, in order to encourage them to hunt at a lean time of year. This kind of site thus contains the remains of subsistence activity, but is a slight variation on those sites mentioned above as they were for a very specific part of society only (and see below).

As discussed in Chapter 5, there are also many different rituals and ceremonies recorded ethnographically among hunter-gatherers. Indeed, modern hunter-gatherers are involved in a whole range of different rituals and ceremonies, and these can all potentially leave traces (see Jordan 2011). Some sites are more visible than others. For example, medicine wheels were constructed by hunter-gatherer groups in some parts of America: these comprise a central stone cairn, one or more concentric stone circles and/or stone lines radiating out from the centre (Berry and Brink 2004, 16). The best-known is the site of Bighorn in Wyoming, but around 70 are recorded in North America. These are perhaps some of the most enduring examples of sites created and used by hunter-gatherers but there are also parallels elsewhere in the world (e.g. Australia). Rock art was also created by many hunting and gathering groups, and the practice of rock art is dealt with separately in Chapter 6. It is important to remember that while we might classify these as ‘ritual’ sites, people would still have been living at many of them, even if only temporarily. Furthermore, many rituals would have taken place at sites listed above such as base camps and kill sites. This suggests that there is not, and was not in the past, a clear distinction between ritual and domestic (Bradley 2005).

This brings us to a consideration of the types of dwelling that hunter-gatherers live in. Just like the wide diversity of people who can be classed as hunter-gatherers, these people live in a diverse range of dwellings. In warmer climates and where people are highly mobile, we would expect fairly ephemeral structures. For example, among the Dobe !Kung (Ju/’hoansi) a serviceable hut can be built in about an hour (Yellen 1998, 56) and may last up to a year. The sturdiest structures were built from branches set around a circular area and covered with a thick layer of grass (Yellen 1998, 63). Ethnographically, there is plenty of evidence for hunter-gatherers using tents or variations on this: essentially a solid but portable dwelling. Tepees are one of the best-known examples. Tepees were essentially portable houses. Prior to the introduction of the horse, Sioux lived in large low tents which housed several families (DeMallie 2001, 7) but after the widespread adoption of the horse, the more familiar tepee was developed which was larger and now housed only a single family: High Plains groups, for example, lived in tepees all year round (DeMallie 2001).

There is also evidence among some groups for more permanent houses and settlements. For example, the Northwest Coast groups built permanent timber houses, and we return to them in more detail below. Some Plains groups, many of whom live in tepees, also lived in houses. For example, while Prarie groups only used tepees during hunting expeditions, the rest of the time they lived in permanent villages (DeMallie 2001, 10). Here houses were dome-shaped earth lodges or lodges covered with bark, hides or mats. A wide variety of permanent structures were constructed by Native American hunter-gatherers using a variety of different materials (see Driver 1969, 116–35).

Just as with mobility, we should not assume that people lived in the same dwellings all year, or from year to year. There is evidence of considerable variation, even within one group. For example, the Caribou Inuit lived in snow houses in the winter, but had tents for the summer months (Burch and Csonka 1999). Nowadays, even though they maintain many aspects of a hunting and gathering lifestyle, they live in modern houses. What is important to understand is that the organization of space within a hunter-gatherer dwelling can inform of us of broader issues other than those that pertain to domestic life. The original and most influential case study of social space was not of a hunter-gatherer dwelling but of the house of a ‘simple’ farmer. Bourdieu’s study of the Berber house demonstrated that domestic space reflects aspects of society (Bourdieu 1971). In the case study he examined, the layout and organization of the house reflected gender relations, in particular the differences between men and women (Bourdieu 1971). Subsequent studies have also shown how belief systems, social organization and political structures can be reflected in domestic architecture (Kent 1990; Parker Pearson and Richards 1994). This can be the same for hunter-gatherers as for anyone else, although it is not documented in all cases (see, e.g., Jordan 2003, 228). Among the Ainu, their houses were built in relation to broader cosmological principles: the front of the house faced scared mountains, and different parts of the house were considered appropriate for different people in society (Ohnuki-Tierney 1974, 32–3). This ordering related to different genders and the status of people within society. The careful ordering of internal space, as well as the activity areas around dwellings, can be seen with other hunter-gatherer groups (Anderson 2006; Figure 3.3).

Hunter-gatherer sedentism

So far we have discussed mobile hunter-gatherers, but sedentary hunter-gatherers have also been recorded by anthropologists. Sedentary hunter-gatherers are those groups where at least part of the population remained at the same location for the entire year (Kelly 1995, 148). This means that some people were still mobile some of the time (this is the most extreme example of logistical mobility), but there was a permanent, or near-permanent base where people lived. Because the community was sedentary, they could also construct more permanent dwellings, so that modern sedentary hunter-gatherers lived in houses in villages (Ames 1994). The best-known modern example of sedentary hunter-gatherers are the Northwest Coast groups of North America (e.g. Tlinglit, Haida, Kwakiutl etc.) and also the Ainu of Japan. Both these groups relied very heavily on salmon which, it has been argued, enabled them to settle down (see Chapter 2).

Sedentism among hunter-gatherer groups has attracted considerable attention over the years for a number of reasons. First, sedentism seems rather counterintuitive because, as we have seen above, groups rely on a broad knowledge of a wide area in order to make a living. However, even when groups were sedentary, people still foraged beyond the immediate area of the village, thus maintaining access to, and knowledge of, a broader area. Secondly, sedentism has attracted interest as it was seen as an indicator of ‘complexity’, supposedly the most advanced form of hunting and gathering groups (see next chapter for more detail on ‘complex’ groups). This is part of the broader notion that hunting and gathering groups were somehow different to farmers and that they represented the most basic of human states (see Pluciennik forthcoming). In this evolutionary scheme (Pluciennik 2005), sedentary hunter-gatherers were therefore the most ‘advanced’ of these peoples. Indeed, sedentism in hunter-gatherer groups was thought to be the result of living in a resource-rich environment, and thus these groups were the pinnacle of hunter-gatherer social development. However, more recently it has been suggested that sedentism may have been forced onto these groups, not through resource abundance, but as the result of the control of key resources in an otherwise resource-restricted environment (Coupland et al. 2010). In the case of the Northwest Coast groups who relied so heavily on

Figure 3.3  The spatial ordering in a Blackfoot tepee (after Berry and Brink 2004, 16)

salmon, if one group settled down it removes that resource area from other mobile groups; this may then have had the knock-on effect of forcing other groups to settle down, until the only sustainable way of staying in the area was for everyone to be sedentary (see Cannon 2002, 329). Thus, sedentism was not the desirable outcome of a long-term move towards ‘settling down’, but in effect a point of no return for hunter-gatherers under economic stress. Furthermore, once you have committed to sedentism, and the reliance on one key resource such as salmon, it is very difficult to return to being mobile and relying on a wider range of resources. Thus one group becoming sedentary can have a huge effect across a wide area; in the case of the Northwest Coast groups, this was from northern California up to southern Alaska (Ames 1994).

While we in the west may consider being sedentary more desirable than being mobile (see Pluciennik forthcoming), as discussed above, many groups value their mobility. Thus, there are serious implications for sedentary hunter-gatherer groups, not only in relation to resource stress. We have already discussed that hunter-gatherers move around in order to avoid social tension. Thus, there is more scope for population growth and pressure, social tension and warfare among sedentary groups, which, as discussed in the next chapter, had serious social and political implications for these groups (and see Ames 1994, 221–3).

While sedentism had the potential to create social, economic and political tensions, these groups also built houses which enabled anthropologists an additional insight into these groups. For example, the Haida are well-known for their houses. These were constructed out of red cedar planks and timbers and were often enormous in size: the largest recorded was roughly 17 m × 17 m (Blackman 1990, 243). The largest ones also had excavated central pits and several terraces around the edge. Where one slept in the house was a direct reflection of status: those of highest rank slept around the perimeter while slaves slept near the fire in the centre (Blackman 1990, 244). We go on to explore sedentary groups in more detail in Chapter 4, but the key point here is that while sedentism may appear to be more desirable than being mobile, the reality is that it can increase resource vulnerability as well as societal stress and tension.

Case study: The Ertebølle of Scandinavia

The Ertebølle of southern Scandinavia are an excellent archaeological example of a group of hunter-gatherers who lived in a very rich environmental niche, and seemed to have practiced residential mobility. The Ertebølle culture dates to the late Mesolithic and Ertebølle settlement is characterized by enormous shell middens (Anderson 2000). These huge piles of shell contained other refuse such as animal bones, fish bones, pottery, stone tool waste and fireplaces, along with human remains in some cases. The site at Ertebølle itself was a vast midden, 140-m long, 20-m wide and 2-m high. It was located along the beach and when excavated, there was evidence for up to ten major episodes of occupation over an 800-year period (Tilley 1996, 15). Although there was no evidence of houses nearby, it has been suggested that this site is the remains of a permanent settlement site that was reused and revisited on a number of occasions in the late Mesolithic (Andersen and Johansen 1986). This site, and others like it, were located close to a wide range of coastal and inland resources and would have made ideal long-term base camps for year-round occupation.

In addition to these large sites, a series of smaller, task-specific locations have also been found, which were occupied seasonally. These sites seem to be used for specific tasks: catching migratory species such as whale, swan, eels, fur-bearing animals like pine marten, cod, duck and seal. For example, the site of Aggersund in northern Jutland was used for catching swans, and at Ølby Lyng on the east coast Jutland, people were catching seals (Blankholm 2008). A larger inland site at Ringkløster was probably a base camp used for hunting wild pig and pine marten. Ringkløster was used repeatedly, but only occupied seasonally (Tilley 1996). Thus, sites such as Ertebølle appear to have been the residential base camp, surrounded by short-term sites for acquiring particular resources. In Binford’s terms, this would make these hunter-gatherers an excellent example of a group practising logistical mobility, where small groups of people left the main base camp to acquire different foods and resources. Indeed, the Ertebølle culture has been paralleled with the Northwest Coast groups, which has led the Ertebølle to be cited as the hunter-gatherer group par excellence from our prehistoric past (e.g. Tilley 1996). However, we should be cautious with this interpretation. The Ertebølle did not find themselves in the same situation to that of the Northwest Coast groups in the sense that these people did not become permanently sedentary. Indeed, it seems quite clear from the evidence that they moved base camp regularly, so while they may have lived permanently in one location for a period of time, nevertheless they still moved elsewhere. This suggests that they were not tied into an economic regime the way the salmon-reliant Northwest Coast groups were, and thus retained flexibility in their economy and mobility.

How, then, should we understand these large shell midden sites? It seems that these sites represent the remains of central places for communities to congregate. This may have been congregations of people yearly (bringing people together from a wider ‘catchment’ area). They may also represent the coming together of ‘groups of groups’ perhaps on a longer-term basis. Shell middens certainly created known locations in the landscape (see Barton et al. 1995), which marked out particular locations in a distinctive way. This would enable people to return to a specific point in the landscape that was not only economically viable but also socially significant. Indeed, elsewhere it has been suggested that these large shell middens in the late Mesolithic are not too dissimilar from monuments subsequently constructed in the early Neolithic, in the sense that they mark out places in the landscape where people came together for a whole variety of reasons (Cummings 2003). Moreover, the presence of human remains at many midden sites suggests rituals going on in addition to everyday domestic life. This suggests that people had affinities with specific places in the landscape, an issue we return to in detail in Chapter 6. This is something that also happens elsewhere in Mesolithic Europe, such as western Scotland and Brittany (Schulting 1996; Schulting and Richards 2002).

Problems of ethnographic analogy

This chapter has been quite wide-ranging in its consideration of ethnographically modern hunter-gatherer mobility. We return now to consider how useful this is to us as archaeologists. We begin by thinking about different types of mobility. Residential, logistical and long-term territorial mobility can clearly be observed in the ethnographic record, and there have been many studies showing how this operates for different peoples in different environments. These terms certainly provide us with a range of analytical models for thinking about past people’s movements, and something that we can investigate long term through the archaeological record. However, it seems unlikely that we will ever really get a sense of yearly mobility patterns from the excavation of sites alone, although the types of material found at the settlement sites may inform this. What is of real interest to archaeologists is the idea of ‘anticipated mobility’; indeed, this might actually be particularly relevant archaeologically. We discussed above that studies of modern hunter-gatherers have demonstrated that if people anticipate staying in one place, they will invest time and energy in making sturdier structures and storage. It has also been shown that they turn up with material culture suitable for a long stay. However, just because a certain length of stay is anticipated does not always mean that people stay for the intended time. Indeed, case studies have shown that when people expected to stay a long time at a particular location, but then left quite quickly, this resulted in the deposition of fairly large quantities of material culture (see Kent 1992b). It is this principle that seems to be more significant than the idea that ‘the longer people stay in one place, the more material will be deposited’ (Kent 1992b, 641; see Schiffer 1987).

Here, ethnoarchaeology gives us an interesting insight into interpreting prehistoric evidence: it suggests that our interpretation of sites may be problematic in some cases. This may help us understand particular historic circumstances, although again it would be difficult for us to be able to identify the reason or reasons why people chose to move on. Nevertheless, the study of modern groups does demonstrate that the need or desire to move does not always relate to food or resource stress. Indeed, there are many social reasons for moving and ethnography shows us that we must be wary of thinking that people aspire to settle down. There is a clear desire to be mobile. In the past, however, there has been the tendency for narrators on prehistory to suggest that people went from being mobile hunter-gatherers, to more settled (more complex) hunter-gatherers and then finally to settled agriculturalists. This suggests a uni-linear path, and gives a false hierarchy to mobility patterns (i.e. that being fully sedentary is more desirable than being fully mobile). There is a sense that this is a superior lifestyle choice, because archaeologically, we know that sedentism leads to other developments (once known as ‘civilization’). The study of modern hunter-gatherer groups should make us wary of this approach.

Identifying different types of site in the archaeological record, as inspired by the ethnographic record, such as base camps, kill sites and so on, is very useful in its own terms. However, it can also be used to help us move beyond very simplistic identifications of ‘domestic’ sites versus ‘ritual’ sites in the archaeological record (see Bradley 2005 and Jordan 2011). Furthermore, it can be informative for studying not only hunter-gatherer communities in the past but agricultural ones as well, remembering that farming communities frequently move around as much as foraging ones. Indeed, Binford’s detailed drawings of a variety of different sites have genuinely assisted us as archaeologists in getting to grips with what we are finding in the archaeological record.

One of the issues when studying modern groups is that they are a product of historic circumstances. Many people may have been forced into living in particular environments, especially those which are not well-suited for farming (marginal zones). This may, in turn, make hunting and gathering harder, which in turn means that people are forced to move regularly in order to find food. We must therefore be critical when considering how this might inform our understandings of the past. These observations may well parallel particular contexts only, such as the harsher climates of the Upper Palaeolithic, particularly lean times of year, or when people were moving into unfamiliar landscapes (Riede forthcoming). Contextually specific analogies, therefore, can be useful.

Conclusions

This chapter has investigated some of the issues surrounding hunter-gatherer mobility. It has considered some of the key analytical terms used by anthropologists, particularly the ideas of ‘residential’ and ‘logistical’ mobility. The chapter has also explored why hunter-gatherers move: it is not simply about the acquisition of resources, although this is naturally a high priority. However, there are other reasons why people move around. The chapter has also examined the different types of dwelling employed by hunter-gatherers. Here there is considerable variability, and examples of highly mobile groups as well as sedentary groups have been discussed. It is interesting that there is considerable variation within single groups and also over time, suggesting that variability was also highly likely in the past. Finally, we have considered how useful these insights are for understanding the archaeological record.

4

Complex issues: Society and social organization

Summary of chapter

This chapter considers the range of hunter-gatherer societies, focussing on the diversity of social organization found among groups across the globe. The chapter begins by considering how hunter-gatherer societies are organized, covering notions of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ societies and egalitarian and ranked groups. The chapter also considers violence and warfare in hunter-gatherer groups. The chapter then goes on to address the different roles assigned to men and women in hunter-gatherer societies. Finally, there is a brief summary of issues surrounding the study of kinship, and the chapter ends with an assessment of how useful these ideas are for the study of hunter-gatherers in the archaeological record.

Introduction

In previous chapters the focus has been on how hunter-gatherers made a living and where they lived. These areas of interest have always been at the core of hunter-gatherer studies. This chapter now turns its attention to an area of investigation which has seen considerable interest over the last 30 years: social organization. Anthropologists have noted that there is considerable diversity in terms of how society is organized among peoples who make a living through hunting, gathering and fishing. As such they have characterized different types of social organization in a number of ways and explored the impact that different types of social structure has on the aspects of society. As discussed later, social relations are absolutely critical at a number of different levels. They tell you how to act in relation to other people, who you are related to and who you can marry. Your social position dictates what you can and cannot do, how you live and where you live. In short, understanding social organization is key to understanding what life is like for people. This chapter attempts to provide an introduction to the literature on these issues in anthropology. In particular, issues that will be of relevance to archaeologists are highlighted. Thus, the issue of kinship which has seen enormous academic focus for over a hundred years is only briefly summarized here since it is argued that it is of only limited use in the study of the past.

Characterizing society

When Man the hunter was published, Lee and Devore (1968) painted a picture of hunter-gatherers as egalitarian. This was because the classic studies of the hunter-gatherer groups such as the !Kung and the Hadza in Africa had suggested that people were egalitarian, and this led to the idea that the vast majority of hunter-gatherers were egalitarian (Lee and Daly 1999, 4). It also seemed to tie into the idea that hunter-gatherers were the ‘original affluent society’ (Sahlins 1968) and followed on from the notion that ‘simple egalitarian society’ was the point from which social evolution began (Fried 1967). Egalitarianism, therefore, became synonymous with hunting and gathering societies. The first point of note is that while we tend to think that egalitarianism means that everyone is equal, in practice it does not mean that (Wason 1994). Instead it means that people have equal access to different things, primarily food, technology and prestige (Flanagan 1989; Kelly 1995, 296). As discussed in Chapter 7, there is also a willingness to exchange objects so that everyone has access to items of worth in egalitarian societies. Indeed, there are a whole range of strategies in place to reinforce the sharing of food and material culture in particular. For example, among the Cree, meat was shared between people, and it was thought that the animal would be offended if meat was not shared; this ensured that all people had access to this food (Ingold 1996). But just because everyone has equal access to things does not mean that everyone takes advantage of that.

This leads onto the anthropological observation that some groups are ‘fiercely egalitarian’. In effect, they go to considerable lengths to ensure that no one gains more status than anyone else, and the accumulation of food or material objects is unacceptable (Kaare and Woodburn 1999). This can be achieved in a variety of ways: successful hunters can have their kills belittled, individuals can demand that others share (this is known as demand sharing; Peterson 1993) and wives can use sexual humour to keep men in line. This has been reported among the !Kung, Mbuti and Hadza in Africa and the Batek in Southeast Asia (Flanagan 1989, 250). This means that in some groups there was a chief, but all decisions were reached by consensus, so they were essentially egalitarian. Thus, egalitarian groups do have leaders, but the relationship is based not on domination but on trust (Ingold 1999, 404).

In contrast to egalitarian societies, anthropologists also noted that there were non-egalitarian or ranked societies. These were hunter-gatherers where everyone was clearly not equal and where people did not have equal access to things, including food and material wealth. The Northwest Coast groups and the Ainu of Japan are considered classic modern ranked hunter-gatherers, as they had clear social differentiation (Fitzhugh 2003). They had chiefs, who had more power and prestige than other members of society, as well as commoners and slaves, the latter being the lowest ranked individuals in society; this was institutionalized and frequently hereditary inequality (Fitzhugh 2003, 3). This form of social organization is more typically found among agricultural groups (see Sahlins and Service 1960) and as such it was generally thought that ranked hunter-gatherers were rather unusual.

Following on from these notions of egalitarian or ranked societies, anthropologists also describe modern hunter-gatherer groups as either ‘simple’ or ‘complex’ (Price and Brown 1985). This relates not only to their social organization but also to other aspects of their lifestyle. Thus ‘simple’ foragers are characterized by certain key features: they are egalitarian, live in small, highly mobile and fluid bands and rely primarily on unpredictable terrestrial resources. Furthermore, they have a strong sharing ethos, do not tend to store food and do not control key resources (Kelly 1995, 294). These groups can also be described as ‘immediate return system’ hunter-gatherers (Woodburn 1988 and see Chapter 2 for more details; Table 4.1). In contrast, complex foragers are non-egalitarian, who live in large, predominately sedentary groups with a heavy reliance on marine resources, often fish. They have ranked societies where status is passed down through the generations. They are involved in highly competitive events such as potlatch (see Chapter 7), control key resources and are often involved in warfare (see below). Complex hunter-gatherers also have prestige goods and storage. These are classic ‘delayed return system’ hunter-gatherers (Woodburn 1988 and see Chapter 2 for more details; Table 4.1).

While we refer to the notion of social complexity, the reality is that it actually refers to both social and economic complexity, since a key component of complexity relates to the control and distribution of economic resources (Hayden forthcoming). Indeed, for Hayden, the development of complexity centres on individuals who develop strategies to use surplus foods to enhance their social, economic, and political self-interests; he names these people ‘aggrandizers’ and he argues that these are the key players in the development of complex society (Hayden forthcoming). Ethnographically, only a few groups were recorded as being ‘complex’: the Northwest Coast groups of North America, groups such as the Chumash in California and the Calusa of Florida. Complex hunter-gatherers, like non-egalitarian groups, were originally considered the exception to the rule (Kelly 1995, 293).

The Chumash of southern California are a good example of one of the classic ‘complex’ groups of modern hunter-gatherers. When they were first encountered by Europeans, the Channel Island Chumash were ruled by hereditary chiefs (Gamble 2008). They were involved in the intensive exploitation of marine resources, lived in densely populated permanent settlements and had craft specialists who made shell beads (Arnold and Walsh 2010). Indeed, 25 named and permanent villages were recorded on the three largest islands and this meant that the Santa Barbara channel coast was one of the most densely occupied areas of North America (Arnold 1992, 68; Arnold and Walsh 2010). A combination of ethnohistoric and archaeological evidence has revealed incredibly rich material wealth and social life for the Chumash.

Table 4.1  A basic description of the differing characteristics between simple and complex hunter-gatherers

The distinction between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ foragers may therefore appear to be fairly straightforward in anthropological case studies and as such anthropologists have been able to create a checklist of characteristics (see Table 4.1). In recent years, there has also been considerable debate about the emergence of complexity, and the causes behind this. The assumption is that the earliest hunter-gatherers across the globe were ‘simple’ (although this in itself is worth challenging; Sassaman 2004, 263) – so what were the circumstances behind the development of more complex ways of life, especially since many modern hunter-gatherers seem to actively resist social hierarchies developing? This issue has been discussed at length in relation to the Channel Island Chumash of southern California, and there are essentially two competing ideas concerning the reason behind the development of complexity. For Arnold, complex society developed around the twelfth century AD because of notable climatic fluctuations (Arnold and Walsh 2010, Chapter 6). She argues that this led to new ways of organizing labour; in the case of the Chumash, this involved craft specialization (the production of beads) which could then be exchanged for staple foods (Arnold 1992). Exchange was with peoples living on the mainland, and this exchange was controlled by the ownership of the canoes which were capable of making the cross-channel crossings. This model suggests that complex society, specifically chiefdoms, arose out of environmental stress (Sassaman 2004, 244). Others place the development of chiefdoms among the Chumash as much earlier (e.g. Gamble 2008) and debate continues between different parties as to the precise cause or causes for social complexity (see Sassaman 2004, 243–7 for a summary). A similar debate surrounds the emergence of complexity with the Northwest Coast groups. It is often considered that economic change, in this case the intensification of salmon harvesting, led to significant social change. However, it can also be argued that it was the development of social hierarchies that led to the need to acquire more storable food supplies (Sassaman 2004, 240–3). What is clear is that anthropologists and ethnographers have not been able to observe any hunter-gatherers in a process of becoming more complex. Instead, the historical study of hunter-gatherers began at a time when some groups were already ‘complex’, and others were ‘simple’. Furthermore, while with modern hunter-gatherer groups these distinctions seem to be genuine, it is also clear that these people are all essentially a product of recent times (Fitzhugh 2003; Sassaman 2004). The classic ‘simple’ hunter-gatherers are those that have been forced into marginal environments where there is no scope for many of the elements of a complex group such as permanent settlement or storage. Thus, while the vast majority of modern hunter-gatherer groups in Australia, for example, have been classified as ‘simple’, prior to colonization, the vast majority of hunter-gatherers were probably complex (Lourandos 1997). Likewise, those complex groups from the ethnographic record are also a product of modern circumstances. In the case of the Northwest Coast groups, for example, certain aspects of their behaviour became exaggerated as a result of colonial encounters (disease, trade and so on) with resultant changes to society. Therefore, the classification of hunter-gatherers as either egalitarian or non-egalitarian, ‘simple’ or ‘complex’, can now be considered too simplistic. Thus, simple hunter-gatherers are not the norm, but likewise, complex hunter-gatherers are not unusual (Sassaman 2004, 230). This is an issue that is discussed again below.

One of the key components of understanding hunter-gatherer social organization is the presence of different types of violence (Lee and Daly 1999, 5). Violence is found among all hunter-gatherer societies (see Knauft 1987), but in egalitarian or ‘simple’ societies it tends to be between individuals. This is what we might call interpersonal violence or individual acts of aggression. The recognition of violence among simple societies went against early characterizations of these communities as peaceful and egalitarian. Knauft (1987, 459) suggests that overall, life in simple hunter-gatherer societies is fairly peaceful, but it is punctuated by acts of aggression which are frequently lethal (but see Kent 1990). Small-scale interpersonal violence is in direct contrast to ranked or ‘complex’ hunter-gatherer societies where violence is more widespread and often occurs between entire groups. This has been described by anthropologists at its most extreme as warfare. Among complex hunter-gatherers there were different types of warfare. In some instances it simply involved small-scale raiding, with the acquisition of material items of paramount importance; this may be anything from trophies to people (slaves, women and hostages; Donald 2000). Groups also went to war to avenge past offences.

Case study: The search for complexity in

the Mesolithic of Northwest Europe

The last hunting and gathering peoples in Europe were found in the Mesolithic. One of the questions archaeologists have asked about this period is: did hunter-gatherers show any evidence of being complex (Neeley and Clark 1990)? Initially, this interest was partly a desire to provide a backdrop for what came afterwards (the Neolithic), but in recent years there has been a growing interest in understanding these societies in their own terms (see, for example, Conneller and Warren 2006; Warren 2005b). Evidence from this period is highly variable, however. In some areas such as Brittany and southern Scandinavia, there are well-preserved remains including large shell middens and cemeteries. In other areas such as Britain and Ireland, remains are much more restricted. Here two data sets are compared (Brittany and Britain) in order to explore the idea of complex societies in the Mesolithic.

One of the key ways that archaeologists have attempted to identify complex societies is through burial evidence. In Brittany, the two late Mesolithic midden sites of Téviec and Hoëdic have produced skeletal remains (Schulting 1996). The middens themselves are the remains of shellfish, fish and terrestrial resources such as deer and boar and there are suggestions that Téviec was a permanent or semi-permanent settlement site (Schulting 1996, 337). The burials comprise ten graves at Téviec containing a total of 23 individuals (14 adults, one adolescent and eight children), and at Hoëdic nine graves containing 14 individuals (nine adults, five children). Téviec was in use for around 400 years and Hoëdic was in use for 1,400 years (Meiklejohn et al. 2011). The graves contained a variety of grave goods such as bone pins and shell beads, and some of the individuals showed evidence of violence (Schulting 1996). Red deer antler structures were found in six burials, which also had twice as many grave goods on average when compared with the rest of the graves (Schulting 1996, 344; Figure 4.1). There were notable differences in diet between men and women, specifically in relation to the consumption of marine foods, and this has been used to suggest that women were marrying into coastal groups from inland communities (Schulting 2003).

The burial evidence from Brittany has led to suggestions that society in the late Mesolithic was ‘complex’ (Mithen 1994; Scarre 2011, 43; Schulting 1996). Placing these burials against a broader backdrop of life in the late Mesolithic of Brittany – restricted mobility, permanent settlement, reliance on marine resources, potentially high population density, elaborate material culture, complex social life and potentially even warfare – this ticks many of the boxes from the complexity checklist.

In contrast, evidence from Britain and Ireland is much more meagre, consisting almost entirely of stone tools; middens are much rarer and there is very little burial evidence (see Conneller 2006; Meiklejohn et al. 2011). The largest skeletal assemblage from Britain is that from Aveline’s Hole (Schulting and Wysocki 2002), which while Mesolithic in date, actually shares more in common with Upper Palaeolithic burial rites. The remainder of the evidence consists primarily of fragmented remains being deposited in specific parts of the landscape: in caves, fissures, rivers and on middens (Meiklejohn et al. 2011). The skeletal record from Britain and Ireland, therefore, does tell us a story about conceptions of death and connections with place, but not about social organization (Conneller 2006, 163). Other forms of evidence from the Mesolithic of Britain and Ireland can tell us about other aspects of life at the time (see papers in Conneller and Warren 2006), but this rarely relates to social complexity. For example, organic preservation is unusual, and Star Carr remains the best-preserved and most heavily investigated site in Britain (Clark 1954), but remains exceptional in the record. All in all, this has led to interpretations of hunter-gatherer groups in Britain and Ireland as ‘simple’ (e.g. Tolan-Smith 2008, 156).

We should be cautious about making the assumption that a lack of evidence is an expression of a lack of complexity. Drawing on the ethnographic record to illustrate this, potlatches were an expression of extreme social complexity in Northwest Coast groups, and ethnographically we know that they took place, but left very little archaeological trace (Hayden forthcoming). If we look more carefully at the archaeological record from Britain and Ireland, we also find hints of complex behaviour; there is a predominant metaphor of fragmentation which meant that people worked materials in very specific ways (Warren 2006) and the exchange of raw materials over considerable distances (Chatterton 2006) hints at interesting social dynamics. However, the problem here is not the paucity of evidence but the desire of archaeologists to interpret things in specific ways (see Warren 2005a). In the case of the British and Irish Mesolithic, the search for complexity may well be inappropriate. There is no denying that the British and Irish Mesolithic is different from that of Northwest France, both in terms of the archaeology and also in terms of what those societies were like. But instead of an attempt to find the elements of our complexity checklist we should simply explore differences in their own terms. These groups of people had different ways of being and engaging with the world and should not be described as either simple or complex, which are misleading terms and which is too simplistic an interpretation. Further problems with the simple-complex dichotomy are explored in more detail below.

Figure 4.1  Grave K at Hoëdic showing the structure of red deer antler (after Péquart and Péquart 1954)

Hunter-gatherers and gender

The publication of Man the hunter (Lee and Devore 1968) was a key turning point in the study of hunting and gathering populations. However, women were portrayed in very specific ways in this publication, so in the following years there was a massive growth in studies investigating the role of women in hunter-gatherer societies of which the volume Women the gatherer (Dahlberg 1981) was particularly significant. This research was part of a broader interest in the role of women archaeologically and anthropologically (see Sterling forthcoming) which coincided with the growth of feminism. Gender studies in hunting and gathering populations is an enormous area of research and here a few key points only are highlighted.

The first point, and most significant, is that gender is an absolutely essential part of people’s identities and practices (Stig Sørensen 2000). However, gender is socially constructed and does not necessarily relate to biological differences between men and women (Moore 1994). In the West, we tend to think of gender as equivalent to sex, and that there are only two sexes, male and female; there is ample evidence from modern populations to show that this understanding of people is culturally specific (Moore 1994, 820). Instead, being male or female is far from inevitable (Joyce 2008, 21). However, many studies of modern hunter-gatherers have identified gendered roles which equate with our ‘male’ and ‘female’. There have also been studies which show the potential for additional genders among hunter-gatherer societies. The Chumash of southern California have people who would seem to constitute a third gender: these are the ‘aqu’, people who help spirits go to the next stage of life (described as ‘undertakers’; Hollimon 2000). People in this category are both biologically male and female, but the key defining characteristic is that these are people whose sexual activity cannot lead to the production of children, so this can include post-menopausal women, gay men and those who are celibate (Hollimon 2000). Critically, then, this third gender is not permanent and fixed, instead it relates to practice, showing that gender is not always a fixed category (Joyce 2008, 61). Other hunter-gatherer societies record up to seven different genders, showing how complex the assignation of gender can be through both space and time (Hollimon 2000, 181).

There has also been considerable discussion on the role of women in modern hunting and gathering societies. We have already touched upon the fact that women tend to gather plant foods and that men tend to hunt (see Chapter 2). It has also been noted that there are always exceptions to these rules; for example, among the Agta, women hunt and fish (Estioko-Griffin and Bion Griffin 1981). What is important here is that recent studies suggest that many women have considerable status in hunting and gathering communities. This may not translate to doing the same things as men (as in women are often involved in the processing of meat, instead of hunting it – although again this is not always the case) but that those roles are just as valuable and valued as the tasks that men perform (see Jarvenpa and Brumbach forthcoming). Likewise, in those societies where women are primarily involved in childcare, this role is highly valued; again this does not mean that men are not involved in childcare. While we must be cautious about making assumptions both of the role that women play in society, and the value of that role, we should also be wary of painting a picture of egalitarian relations between men and women when this is clearly not always the case (see Kelly 1995, 298). Differences in the ways in which men and women are treated are often difficult to separate out from differences which actually relate more to age than to gender (Flanagan 1989, 257; Hollimon 2006, 436). Furthermore, there have clearly been shifts in gender relations and gender statuses in the post-colonial world (Frink 2007). Nevertheless, gender is a key part of hunter-gatherer’s social identity.

Kinship

Any consideration of hunter-gatherer social organization would not be complete without a discussion on kinship. Kinship, quite simply, is the relationship between people and in anthropology the focus has been on family relationships and the way that those relationships influence behaviour. Kinship has featured prominently in anthropological studies for many years (see, for example, Carsten 2000; Parkin and Stone 2003) and it is impossible to summarize that entire literature sufficiently here, so instead a very brief précis of some key points is provided.

Essentially, understanding kinship relates to three key interest areas (Barnard 1994). The first is group structure which essentially refers to descent. This basically means who you are descended from and as a result of this, where you can live. There are some key terms here in the anthropological literature. Patrilineal descent involves tracing descent through the male line, as opposed to matrilineal descent, where it is traced through the female line. Patrilineal descent is more common among modern groups, but actually bilateral descent (involving both the husband and wife’s side) is the most usual (Kelly 1995, 271). Many hunter-gatherer groups have been recorded as being divided into two social groups, which are often called moieties. Again, one’s moiety can be from the father’s side (a patri-moiety) or mother’s side (a matri-moiety), and a person usually marries someone from the opposite moiety (exogamy). For example, among the Yuwaaliyaay people in Australia there are two different moieties: the light-blooded people associated with the west wind, and dark-blooded people connected with the spring wind (Keen 2004, 151). Moieties are passed down from one’s mother and are exogamous, so a person must marry someone from the opposite moiety (Keen 2004, 151).

The second area of interest in kinship studies relate to alliance and marriage. Among the vast majority of human societies, marriage is the most important way of creating alliances, and therefore establishing one’s place within the wider kin group (Barnard 1994, 798). Marriage affects all aspects of life: who you can and cannot have sexual relations with, who your family are and where you live. Patrilocal societies have the married couple live with the husband’s family, or matrilocal groups have a married couple live with the wife’s family: Kelly showed that patrilocal are the commonest among modern hunter-gatherer groups (Kelly 1995, 271). These are important terms for anthropologists, and important for the people concerned as marriage essentially forges alliances between different groups of people, often across broad areas. For example, among the Miṉong people in Australia, people preferred to marry a relative from a distant community (Keen 2004, 188). When you consider that many hunter-gatherers value the sharing of food and resources among kin (see Chapter 2 and 7), wide kin-based networks strengthens resource security and potential exchange networks.

Finally, kinship also relates to the classification of relatives. In the western world, we tend to classify our kin in relation to biological relationships (Parkin 1997). Our mothers and fathers are those involved biologically in reproduction, and from this basic premise, this then means we have aunts, uncles, sisters, brothers, cousins, nephews and nieces and so on. Half-brothers and sisters are those who share one blood parent, and in-laws relate to the family you acquire through marriage. However, western kinship is rather unusual and anthropologists have studied the fact that for the vast majority of people, kinship is socially ascribed. So, for example, among the Navajo, your mother can relate to the person who raised the child, not necessarily the women who gave birth (Holy 1996, 11). This is further complicated by kinship terminology, as many groups have the same word for people we would assign different kin terms. For example, among the Nharo bushmen, father and father’s brother (uncle) are called by the same term (Barnard 1994, 804). This clearly illustrates the fact that we should not assume that our understanding of kinship is the same as that of other modern, non-western people.

Following on from the earlier discussion on simple and complex groups, it is important to note that Ingold (1999) has suggested that kinship among simple hunter-gatherers is rather different to that found in complex societies. He suggests kinship is more about the sharing of food, companionship and living together than the specific commitments and obligations of someone with a formalized position within an institution with set rules and regulations (Ingold 1999, 406). Thus, among the Nayaka of India, Bird David (1999, S73) noted that anyone they shared with, they regarded as kin; thus kinship was not created by biological relationships, descent or genealogy, but by practice. Because they engaged with animals on a regular basis as part of an animistic understanding of the world (see next chapter), they also considered some animals, at particular points, kin. Thus we can note that kinship also does not sit in complete isolation but is tied up with other components of life, most notably gender and personhood (Holy 1996). The usefulness of an anthropological understanding of kinship to archaeology is discussed in the next section.

Problems of ethnographic analogy

Understanding social organization is a significant endeavour in archaeology and one that has seen considerable attention since some of the ground-breaking studies from the processual era such as Renfrew’s influential suggestion that chiefdoms developed in Neolithic Britain (Renfrew 1973). Anthropological studies have been important as they have revealed how there is no simple correlation between subsistence economy and social organization, specifically that there are farmers that anthropologists would class as ‘simple’ and hunter-gatherers that could be considered ‘complex’. However, anthropological studies have also demonstrated that in many cases this is not an either/or situation. Many societies, both hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists, have elements of both. Thus, it might be more beneficial to consider simple and complex, the two idealized ends of a spectrum, and that virtually all groups are somewhere between these two extremes. This means that it is not a problem where it has been noted that some hierarchical (complex) systems have some components of that system which are egalitarian (Flanagan 1989, 262). It also gives us scope to follow the suggestion that complexity is something that is relative (Fitzhugh 2003). Thus, the usefulness of concepts of simple and complex are not as opposites; instead we might be able to talk about some groups as ‘more complex’ than others, which also enables us to think about long-term historical trajectories. We should also be aware of the possibility that there may also have been organizational forms in the past for which there are no known anthropological parallel. This is exciting and gets us think about social organization as something that is historically and contextually specific. This is certainly challenging, but again it can be argued that anthropological and ethnographic studies of modern hunter-gatherers offers us a way into thinking differently about people in the past. However, the use of the terms ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ are very unfortunate (Warren 2005a, 74) and if we are to continue to use this basic interpretative framework as a starting point, alternative terms should ideally be employed.

In the past there has been an implication that people will evolve from simple to complex along a uni-linear evolutionary path (see Childe 1940, for example). While originally this was linked to biological evolution, even when the biological component was abandoned, there was still a sense that hunter-gatherers started out with simple social organization and gradually evolved into more complex societies. This is problematic as it is too simplistic and does not reflect the archaeological record (see Warren 2005a). In addition to this there was also the suggestion that social complexity was associated with the beginnings of agriculture, and that as a result complex hunter-gatherers are essentially on the way to becoming farmers (Hayden 1994). This is also problematic as this suggests a simplistic social evolutionary scheme from hunter-gatherer to farmer, from simple to complex (Pluciennik 2005) and it also prioritizes agriculture as the inevitable outcome of social complexity, and as a more desirable way of life. Being a complex hunter-gatherer is not being one step short of being a farmer. Thus, as archaeologists, anthropological studies show us that we should not assume simple, one-way social evolution. Furthermore, as archaeologists, we are able to make suggestions about the long-term histories of groups of people, something that anthropologists find harder to address. Therefore, we can suggest that people make active choices about the kinds of lifestyle that they have, and that included how different aspects of society was organized. Moreover, complexity was not an inevitable outcome of living in a rich environment or a step towards becoming an agriculturalist.

Anthropological studies of hunter-gatherers unfortunately do not help us identify the onset of aspects of complexity. Those studies which have been concerned with the emergence of complexity have primarily drawn on archaeological evidence, and clearly reveal issues of identifying what is the ‘cause’ and what is the ‘effect’ of complexity. Thus it remains much easier to identify societies that are already complex than ones in a state of transition. This basically reveals the problem that using material evidence to identify what is an abstract concept is not a useful endeavour (Warren 2005a). As a broad, conceptual framework which shows the extremes of social organization these concepts may continue to be useful, but the generation of a checklist of generic traits to be identified archaeologically (Table 4.1) will only help us reinforce our own preconceptions of the past (see Kim and Grier 2006).

One of the most important developments in archaeology has been the recognition that there has been a tendency to write a version of the past which focuses on men. The growth in gender archaeology followed a similar interest in anthropological studies (Joyce 2008). As well as investigating the role of women in the past and writing this into our narratives (e.g. Spector 1993), ethnographic studies of modern hunter-gatherers illustrate that there is considerable diversity in conceptions of gender. The emphasis on gender instead of sex is important and means that we can investigate socially constructed roles of people in the past that are not reliant on assessments of biological sex. The knowledge that age in particular seems to be important in the assignation of gendered roles is very useful. However, beyond the basic understanding that gender is socially constructed and may not be fixed throughout a person’s life, the study of modern hunter-gatherers can do little to assist us in exploring the specifics of how that played out in the past; again ethnographic analogy offers us a way into the broader issues, but cannot inform us of the details. These must be done by contextually specific and detailed archaeological investigations of how gender was constructed within each society.

Anthropologists have identified the importance of kinship in society as it frames precisely what you can and cannot do. Just as belief systems tell us your place within the world, kin relations tell you your place within the social world. It is therefore absolutely essential in structuring your place within society and this knowledge is important for archaeologists attempting to interpret the archaeological record. Archaeologists have attempted to explore the issue of kinship in various ways, including through the use of DNA (see, for example, Bentley 2007). DNA, however, can only inform us of biological relations, not socially constructed ones. The positioning of graves in relation to one another can potentially reveal genealogical patternings which may reflect kinship relations, but this can only be effective if used in combination with precise dating techniques which can show exactly who was buried when. Burial evidence explored in this way may also reveal patterns which can be used to identify social hierarchies (Sassaman 2004, 258). However, the major problem with this is that for vast swathes of archaeological time we have no or very limited evidence of burial. For example, with the case study above (the British and Irish Mesolithic, a span of 5,000 years), there are no known cemeteries. Furthermore, we can rarely get precise enough dates to really work out sequences of burial which might inform us about kinship. This makes attempts at understanding kinship very difficult indeed. Identifying kinship archaeologically becomes even more problematic when we consider the possibility that kinship may not have been fixed in life, but was fluid. If one of the defining characteristics of a hunter-gatherer is their mobility (see previous chapter) then people have the potential to move away from kin groups, thus they are able to change kin relations. Unfortunately for us as archaeologists we must accept that the anthropological study of kinship, while interesting in their own right, can do little to help us understand the archaeological record apart from at the broadest scale.

Conclusions

This chapter has considered the issue of modern hunter-gatherer social organization. We have explored the key anthropological concepts of ‘egalitarian’ and ‘ranked’, as well as ‘simple’ and ‘complex’. These terms have been used extensively in the discussions of modern hunter-gatherer groups and do offer us a way of understanding differences in society, but ultimately are problematic for us as archaeologists as they are idealized and abstract. The chapter has also very briefly introduced the studies of both gender and kinship in the anthropological literature. Again, while these offer us invaluable insights into these issues, their application in archaeological case studies is more problematic.

5

Thinking about the world: Hunter-gatherer belief systems

Summary of chapter

This chapter considers the belief systems of hunter-gatherer groups. It begins by considering the notion of ‘animism’, which is the belief that animals and humans are both equivalent spiritual beings, but with different external bodies. The belief that things, other than people, have spirits that can often extend beyond just humans and animals, and we explore some examples of this. We discuss how important animals are in creation mythologies, and as emblems within society. We then move on to discuss the concept of ‘shamanism’, which has been very influential in studies of both past and present hunter-gatherer groups. Finally, the chapter considers some of the rituals surrounding key points in hunter-gatherer lives, including birth, reaching adulthood and dying. As with other chapters, a consideration of how useful the study of modern groups is for understanding past societies is then presented.

Introduction

People’s belief systems have an enormous impact on the way in which they do things, not only in special circumstances such as burying the dead but also in day-to-day life. We have already seen in Chapter 2 how modern hunter-gatherers act in particular ways when hunting animals and dealing with their carcasses. This is a direct reflection of their belief systems, and their spiritual relationship with animals. Indeed, one’s beliefs can have an enormous impact on all aspects of one’s life, thus understanding the beliefs behind people’s actions can be enormously enlightening. Processual approaches have always highlighted the importance of studying the economy and environment within an ecological framework, and certainly in these studies belief systems are not at the forefront of debate. For interpretive archaeologists, however, an understanding of belief systems are of particular significance, and, they would argue, essential for developing a wider consideration of why people act in particular ways. In this chapter, then, we explore modern hunter-gatherer belief systems and then consider if these insights are useful for understanding the past.

Animism

Animism is the belief that people are not somehow separate or different from other beings in the world. This idea is best illustrated by describing hunter-gatherer perceptions of animals. Essentially, in an animistic understanding of the world, people and animals are interchangeable. Both people and animals have spirits which are fundamentally the same; however, their outward appearance (body) is different (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 479). This means that human and animal worlds are not separate entities, but exchangeable and transposable. For example, in his consideration of Amazonian Amerindian conceptions of people and animals, Viveiros de Castro (1998) details how people and animals are thought to be the same on the inside – they all have spirits – but variable on the outside, and it is that bodily difference that explains why different animals and humans act in differing ways (Viveiros de Castro 1998, 478). Therefore, instead of there being a clear distinction between animals and humans (nature and culture), people and animals may well have been interchangeable and all part of the broader spectrum of people, animals, spirits and beings (Ingold 1994; Oma 2010). While this idea works differently for different groups, this general approach has been described as multi-naturalism or perspectivism (Alberti and Bray 2009; Vilaça 2005; Viveiros de Castro 1998), and it has been very influential in recent years.

If boundaries between humans and animals were not clear cut, then there is also scope for humans and animals moving from form to form. Indeed, many cultures describe powerful figures being able to cross the divide between different species in both directions, so animals become people, and people become animals (Bird David 1999; Ingold 2000; Viveiros de Castro 1998). Among the Inuit, they say that at the beginning of time, animals and humans lived together, and changed from one form to another: a few animal species even assumed human form (D’Anglure 1990). This is important when we return to the issue of hunting, because animals may well be powerful beings in their own right, and able to wreak vengeance if not treated properly. They must, therefore, be treated very carefully and appropriately. Among the Shauwnee, Creek, Cherokee and Cree, hunting required special preparation; hunters must be kept away from menstruating women (who were considered very powerful), prepare special bundles of important objects and consider their dreams very carefully (Martin 1999). Once an animal has been killed, they either apologize for killing it, or shift the blame to another tribe, as they do not wish to alienate the spirit of the dead animal. There is the sense that the animal has effectively given itself to the hunter, it has allowed itself to be captured (although there is variation here; see Anderson 2000, for example, which suggests that this is not present among all hunter-gatherer groups). Finally, there are strict rules in place regarding both the butchery and disposal of the carcass (Martin 1999). This careful treatment of animals does not just extend to large terrestrial animals. Among Inuit groups, specific rules were in place for hunting marine animals such as seals, and Northwest Coast groups regarded salmon in the same way (Spencer et al. 1977). Indeed, salmon were, to all intents and purposes, people, and just like people they lived in houses, feasted and threw potlatches (see Chapter 7; Spencer et al. 1977).

One of the most evocative summaries of the animistic approach is Ingold (2000, 68), who says:

‘For the Koyukon, as for other hunting and gathering peoples, there are not two separate worlds, of humanity and nature. There is one world, and human beings form a rather small and insignificant part of it. Given this view of the world, everything depends on maintaining a proper balance in one’s relationship with it. Thus, rather than saying that hunters and gatherers exploit their environments, it might be better to say that they aim to keep up a dialogue with it. It is through a direct engagement with the constituents of the environment, not through a detached, hands-off approach, that hunters and gatherers look after it. Indeed, caring for an environment is like caring for people: it requires a deep, personal affectionate involvement, an involvement not just of mind or body but of one’s entire, undivided being.’

This sums up the relationship between people, animals and the environment more generally; animism is an absolutely essential part of life. It is constant, all-pervading and influences all aspects of life. Meat is not just important, then, in terms of calorific return but also in regards to spiritual wellbeing. Hunting must be done correctly, or the consequences, both practical and spiritual, could be catastrophic. Thus animism is not simply a way of thinking about the world, but the way things are; it pervades every aspect of life.

Animism need not and does not extend only to animals. A common underlying spiritual unity can also be found in relation to substances and materials (things or objects). So, for example, some peoples believe that stones are the remains of ancestral beings (Robinson 2004). For example, among the Aborigines in Australia, particular outcrops are understood as the remains of specific creator ancestors (Taçon 1991 and see below). There are also numerous accounts of stones being animate objects in the present day, growing, procreating and moving around (e.g. Brumm 2004; Kahn 1990; Roe and Taki 1999). Thus the wider notion of animism can be applied to both animals and substances.

The notion of totemism was formed before anthropologists had a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between people and animals (see Lévi-Strauss 1963). It was coined in the nineteenth century and came from studies of the Ojibway in North America and meant, in its simplest form, the worship of plants and animals (David 2002, 21). Thus totemism was originally considered to be a belief system, but is no longer considered in this way in relation to hunter-gatherers (Guenther 1999); instead it has been superseded by ideas outlined above on animism, and with ideas pertaining to shamanism (see below). However, the idea that people have kinship with someone or something, often an animal, which becomes the emblem of a family group or clan (Child and Child 1993) is still relevant. Therefore the use of the word totem is still relevant. David’s (2002, 21) description of a totem is particularly useful: the conceptualization of the world as a structured system, and it links to people within that structure. Thus a totem can be considered as not only the emblem of a group but also the founder with its own designation within kinship systems (see Chapter 4); as such, strict laws are in place in regards to interactions with totems: what can and cannot be done with particular animals.

Creation mythology and understanding the universe

Animals not only play a crucial role in hunter-gatherer society but they also frequently appear in creation mythology (Bierhorst 1985). The way in which in the world was created is important for every society, as it anchors you in the world, and lets you know your place in it. For many groups, a single animal was the creator of the world. For example, among the Inuit, the creator was a raven, a being who was half animal, half human. He brought the world into being by harpooning the land from a kayak, making it stable enough for people to live on (Spencer et al. 1977). Among the Hopi and Cherokee, the creator was a deep-diving animal hero who brought some dirt to the surface that goes on to become the world (Martin 1999). In California, supernatural animals were involved in various acts of creation; for example, in a Coast Miwok story the earth was created when a Coyote shook a blanket causing the primeval waters which covered the earth to dry up (Bierhorst 1985, 114–6). However, not all hunter-gatherers believe that the world was created by an animal. There are plenty of groups who have people as the creator. For example, among the Tiwi in Australia, the creator was a male figure called Purukupali (Goodale 1999; and see MacDougall 1977). These creator animals often go on to play a very significant role in other aspects of religious life, including acting as a crest or emblem of a group.

Creator animals also play an additional and important role in hunter-gatherer mythology. This is the ‘trickster’ (Radin 1972), a morally ambiguous character who is sometimes involved in the act of creation itself but who features in mythological tales (Guenther 1999, 427). Tricksters are not really heroes, as while they can be altruistic, they are also often playful, outrageous and sometimes downright dangerous (Bierhorst 1985 12–14). This seems to tie into broader notions of understanding the world, as many hunter-gatherer groups do not have good and evil as mutually exclusive categories; instead beings are capable of both good and evil, and the Trickster personifies this (Blackburn 1975, 68).

Many hunter-gatherers also share a basic conception of the universe (Eliade 1987; Jordan 2003). The universe is seen as comprising three levels: (1) this realm, the world of the living, (2) the upper world, the world of the mountains and sky, the birds and spirits and (3) the underworld, the world of rivers and caves, and the dead (Guenther 1999, 429). As discussed below, only certain people may move between these different realms. However, there are places where the three realms interconnect: these can be trees (the cosmic tree in Siberia: Eliade 1987, 24–6), rainbows, rivers, mountains or caves (e.g. Keen 1990); for some people the world tree (the tree that stands at the centre of the world) has roots (representing the underworld), the trunk (representing this realm) and the branches (representing heaven: Davies 1988; Ovsyannikov and Terebikhin 1990). This connecting point is known as the axis mundi – the cosmic centre of the world – and is very significant in hunter-gatherer landscapes (see Chapter 6).

It is also important to note that many hunter-gatherers have a different conception of time than ourselves (also see Gell 1992a). For us, creation of the world happened in the distant past, but many hunter-gatherers conceive of creation and the past rather differently. For many, the mythological past did happen, but in some ways is still ongoing. Without wishing to homogenize the Dreaming (see David 2002, Chapter 2), Australian Aborigines have a rather different understanding of time; in many ways the Dreaming is timeless. While the world was created in the past by beings transforming into the universe, this transformation continues to have importance for the people living in it. Creator ancestors are still present in the landscape and thus the Dreaming is past, present and future (David 2002, 26).

Shamanism?

Shamanism is an enormous field of study, and there is a vast literature on different components of it. The notion of a shaman is important in anthropology (in many different cultures, not just hunting and gathering communities), archaeology and rock art studies (see, for example, Harvey 2003b; Lewis-Williams 2002; Price 2001). However, it remains a controversial topic of discussion, primarily because the word shaman was taken from a very specific cultural context: that of the Tungus peoples of Siberia, where a shaman was recorded ethnographically as their religious leader (Harvey 2003a, 1). Anthropologists subsequently realized that many peoples across the world had individuals who fulfilled similar roles in society as the Tungus example, and the term was subsequently adopted to describe a range of beliefs and practices conducted within a broad range of societies.

The basic elements of shamanism are straightforward, and each aspect will be briefly summarized, before we think critically about this approach. Quite simply, one of the key roles of a shaman is to converse with animals, spirits and other beings. Indeed, many shamans have spirit guides who assist them with shamanic work (Achterberg 187, 121–2). Shamans converse with animals and other beings for a whole variety of reasons: to heal the sick, change the weather, control the movements of animals and foretell the future, for example (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996, 11). Basically, then, the role of the shaman is similar to that of many spiritual leaders within society, while fulfilling additional roles dealing with the health and wellbeing of both individual people and society as a whole.

In order to communicate with other beings, shamans are able to move between the different levels of the universe (Eliade 1987, 21). We have already seen how the universe is frequently conceived as being composed of three layers. The key thing here is that other beings often dwell in other parts of the world, so shamans must be able to transcend our realm in order to encounter and communicate with spirits, animals and the dead. One of the key ways that shamans achieve all of this is by entering altered states of consciousness and this can be realized in many ways. Physical or sensory deprivation can lead to altered states of consciousness, such as fasting or sleep deprivation, as well as through increasing the temperature of the body such as entering a sweat lodge which can induce nausea, dizziness and increased pulse (Achterberg 1987, 112–5). Many authors on shamanism also report the use of monotonous auditory aids, such as banging drums or shaking rattles, which can assist with attaining altered states (Achterberg 1987, 117–21). Frenzied dancing can also lead to going into other conscious states. Finally, perhaps the best documented form of reaching an altered state of consciousness is through the use of hallucinogenic substances (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996). Altered states of consciousness help a shaman achieve a trance-like state (Child and Child 1993, 87–8); it is in trance that a shaman is able to communicate with other beings, who, in turn, will be able to assist the shaman in whatever his or her quest is.

One of the key components of shamanism is the performance associated with entering altered states of consciousness and communicating with other beings. This relates in part to the very distinctive material culture associated with shamans. Many shaman put on distinctive clothing and masks; this was particularly common with the Northwest Coast groups (see Suttles 1990) who put on great displays at large public events. Since reaching an altered state of consciousness was key, drumming was used not only to achieve this but also as part of a performance which also included singing, dancing, chanting and magic. Rattles were also commonly associated with shamans. For example, among the Northwest Coast groups, rattles were carved from wood in the shape of powerful beings such as the raven or hawk, and were used in shamanic ceremonies (see Ketchum 1997, 71). Shamans also frequently danced which again helped them get into ecstatic states as well as providing entertainment. Other techniques have been recorded ethnographically, including ventriloquism, firewalking and magic (Harvey 2003a, 12). All these different components combined made shamanic rituals dramatic visual spectacles.

‘So at last they summoned a shaman. And he arrived in his shaman dress and horned hat, warmed his tambourine over the burning embers, then shook it hard. He banged it in an increasing rhythm, himself twirling in the full firelight of the tent, his scared robes twirling, his lips flecked with foam. After a time his soul departed on the sound of the drum to the mountain-top in the western heavens where there is no day but continual night, where there is always mist and the moon is but a thin crescent. And there he communicated with the spirits’ (Riordan 1989, 90).

The notion of a shaman has been very popular in both anthropology and archaeology, and has articulated particularly well in specific areas such as rock art studies (e.g. Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996; Lewis-Williams 2002; Pearson 2002). Ethnographically, there are many accounts of modern hunter-gatherers having a figure or figures who can be described as a shaman. Among many Aboriginal groups in Australia shamans are involved with healing, magical encounters with other beings including ancestors and ritual practices such as rainmaking (Keen 2004, 214–40). To the Chumash of California, shamans were essentially ritual specialists who mediated relationships between people and supernatural powers and sacred places (Bean and Vane 1992). However, there have been a number of important critiques of the concept of shamanism, specifically in relation to its applicability among modern hunting and gathering groups. First, as already noted, the term relates to one specific cultural example, that of Tungus shaman in Siberia. While many cultures have a person who acts very much like a shaman, there is considerable variability across both space and time. There are concerns that the term shaman is being used as a generalized, cross-cultural, universal category: this was one of the major criticism levelled at processual archaeology by interpretive archaeologists (see Chapter 1). It has been suggested that, just as with animism, the basic underlying cosmological beliefs are very persistent and present in a wide range of modern groups. However, the way in which those underlying beliefs are manifest varies enormously from culture to culture (McCall 2007, 227). Cultural-specificity, then, remains crucial in understanding people’s belief systems. Furthermore, there are important differences in relation to the social, religious and political context of shamans and their specific role within society (McCall 2007, 228).

Part of the issue surrounding the validity of the concept of a shaman revolves around how we understand religious beliefs more generally. Eliade (1968, 92) described a shaman as a ‘technician of the sacred’. Certainly shamans in hunter-gatherer society play an important role in mediations with the sacred world, but there is a concern that this kind of approach, implicit in many studies, suggests that the sacred world is somehow separate from the world of the everyday (the mundane world). This idea has been heavily criticized, and indeed detailed studies of modern hunter-gatherer populations suggests that this is not the case at all; the sacred is intertwined in every aspect of everyday life (and see Bradley 2005 for the same discussion in relation to the past). Put quite simply ‘We do not separate our beliefs from other parts of our life. Our spirituality and beliefs permeate our entire existence’ (Blackfoot Gallery Committee 2001, 8).

Clearly, the key components of shamanism articulate with animistic approaches to the universe and the need for mediation between different (animal and human) beings (Harvey 2003a, 7), as outlined above. Indeed, it has been suggested that this was the original and primary function of shamanic rituals: to reinforce reciprocity between human and animal spirits (Hamayon 2003). We can take these ideas as a starting point and consider them in relation to individual hunter-gatherer groups. The usefulness of shamanism in relation to archaeological investigations is considered in more detail below. It is also worth noting here that there is a considerable literature on the effects of introducing new belief systems to hunting and gathering peoples (such as Christianity), as well as the impact colonialism had on native cosmologies (e.g. Schweitzer et al. 2000). This is particularly well documented in North America where a range of new beliefs and practices sprung up in the wake of colonial encounters; these include, for example, the peyote cult and the Ghost Dance (La Barre 1996; Mooney 1991). While these are fascinating topics of study, and these have had a lasting impact on the people affected, there is no room here to explore these in any more detail. However, in terms of understanding prehistoric hunter-gatherers, these studies would be the most informative in relation to big changes in population (for example, the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, which may have involved incoming religious practices as well as a new economic basis).

Rites of passage: From birth to death

There are many important stages in a person’s life, such as birth, puberty, marriage and death. Many of these are marked out by rites of passage ceremonies or rituals by modern hunter-gatherer groups. In a classic study, van Gennep (1960) suggested that there were three key phases to rites of passage: first, the confirmation of one’s existing social status and the removal of that status; secondly, a period of liminality where a person sits essentially outside of society and finally, the reintegration of that person back into society where they are assigned a new social position (van Gennep 1960). These rites of passage therefore articulate with changing notions of personhood (see Fowler 2004, Chapter 4). Rites of passage also structure religious life and are connected to other aspects of hunter-gatherer belief systems. Indeed, these ceremonies are critical for people in terms of their position in relation to one another and within society as a whole (see Chapter 4).

One of the first rites of passage among hunter-gatherer groups is birth, and the birth of a child is often carefully controlled. Among the Hopi, childbirth is sacred; no one may be present at the moment of delivery, although the woman’s mother is involved both before and after the birth itself (van Gennep 1960, 43–4). However, birth does not necessarily mean the child has a place within society. Hopi babies are named on the twentieth day after birth, and it is at this point that the child has a place within society (van Gennep 1960, 44). It has been suggested that this is the case not only because of a high infant mortality rate among some groups but there may also be social and economic reasons: a baby who has not been named is not mourned like named persons, so only a very simple burial takes place before the people move on. Much more complex rituals occur for a named person (see below).

Another important stage in a person’s life is puberty. This is when a child becomes an adult, an extremely important transition in terms of what one can do within society (get married, have children, go hunting and so on). For example, among the Apache, a central event in young women’s lives was the Girls’ Puberty Ceremony (Martin 1999). This ceremony could last many days and was a celebration of becoming a woman. Girls would wear special dresses which copied the dress worn by the Apache goddess of life, the White Painted Woman (Martin 1999): during creation, the White Painted Woman received the gift of menstruation, so the ceremony celebrates the fact that young women have also received this gift. Similar rites surround young men. Among the Mbuti in Africa, the nkumbi is an initiation ceremony for boys reaching puberty. This is a long, drawn-out process, which involves teaching boys the duties and responsibilities of being man, which culminates with their circumcision at a festival (Turnbull 1984). This festival also reinforces connections with the dead, so draws on other aspects of belief systems.

In the West, there is an understanding of there being a ‘moment of death’; this is when a person dies biologically (also understood as when the soul leaves the body). However, many non-western groups have very different concepts of death. For many it is more of a process than a specific moment, and there are also stages of death beyond the death of the body. For example, among many Aboriginal groups in Australia, when a person died it is thought that the person’s spirit returns to the country that it had come from, from where it would go to the land of the dead and then reincarnated in another body (Keen 2004, 212). This is a drawn-out process that takes place over an extended time period. Among the Khanty in Russia, Jordan (2003, 220–4) describes how dying takes place in three distinct stages. First, the second soul (of four) of a person leaves their body for the region of the dead. At this stage, the person may still be walking (i.e. alive) but they are considered already dead to some degree. Next, a person’s breath soul (fourth soul) leaves and the body begins to go into another state (often of decay); at this stage the person must be buried. The final stage is reached when the dead person is reincarnated into a newborn baby (Jordan 2003). Death also brings implications for the living. The death of a man in Tlingit society initiated eight days of mourning for the deceased’s clan. The deceased’s widow did no work for eight days and fasted, at the end of which her hair was cut off and burnt, along with her mourning clothes and the marital bedding (de Laguna 1990, 219).

Not all ceremonies in modern hunter-gatherer society are concerned with the life cycle. There are many other recorded ceremonies among modern hunter-gatherer groups. An important example to note is one that represents the rebirth of the world, marking the passing of a year, and looking forward to the next. This ties in with ideas on life and death, rebirth and renewal, but this time in relation to the broader cosmos. For example, among many Great Basin groups, the circle dance took place in the spring or autumn: dispersed groups came together and danced for five days to give thanks for food and looking forward to future bounties (Martin 1999).

Case study: Gravettian burials in Palaeolithic Europe

Burials from the Gravettian period in Europe (29,000–21,000 years ago) are some of the most spectacular from the Upper Palaeolithic. It is also striking that there are considerable similarities in the burials that have been found across Europe. Only a small number are known, but those that have been found are usually accompanied by lavish grave goods, particularly personal ornamentation. In western Europe burials are primarily in caves, while in eastern Europe burials tend to be on the periphery of settlement sites (Pettitt 2011). Only particular sections of society were buried in this fashion: neonates, adolescents and younger adults, primarily men. For example, at Krems-Wachtberg in Austria, one burial contained two 9–10-month-old babies, and a second burial a 0–2-month-old baby (Pettitt 2011, 170). The famous Sunghir burials from Russia include a double burial of two adolescents, a boy aged 11–13 and a girl aged 9–10 (Formicola and Buzhilova 2004). This burial also contained masses of grave goods in the form of beads and perforated animal teeth sewn onto clothing (Gamble 1999). Another famous Gravettian location for burial is that at Dolní Věstonice, Czech Republic. At the site multiple fragmentary human remains were found, but there was also an unusual triple burial containing three adolescents (Klima 1988). Again, grave goods indicating elaborate headgear were found with these bodies (Figure 5.1). Pettitt (2011, Chapter 6) provides a full list of burials from this period.

It is possible to suggest that these burials were not commonplace or what we might consider normal at this time (Pettitt 2011, 210); it seems that excarnation and the circulation of human remains was much more typical of funerary practice. Indeed, there are numerous examples of fragmentary human remains turning up in a variety of contexts from this period. Instead, the notion that these burials were ‘acts of ritual containment’ is appealing (Pettitt 2011, 213). It is possible to go further and suggest that the reason these individuals were buried in such a way was that they were essentially liminal people. There is the possibility that these were people who were in the process of undergoing rites of passage (as outlined above). In the case of the burials of neonates, it can be suggested that they were in the process of being named (becoming people). With the adolescents, these were people who were in the process of becoming adults. In some cases, this may have been a rite of passage associated with the onset of puberty, and the lavish adolescent burials at Sunghir may be the remains of two children in the process of becoming adults who were buried in elaborate clothing suitable for a puberty rite. We should also consider the assignment of adult status to be culturally specific. Hence in some areas, adulthood would be reached at different times than in others (as with the older adolescents at Dolní Věstonice). Finally, the Gravettian burials of adults, with a high preponderance of fully grown and robust males, may be people who were undergoing rites of passage relating to their status. It is tempting to argue they were adults in the process of being elevated to higher status (leaders), but who died in a liminal state before the rites were completed. This would certainly explain the very distinctive age ranges of people who were found in these burials: babies, adolescents and adults, with the lack of older people. Those who died normally (i.e. those who were not in a liminal state in between different stages or states of personhood) would have been fragmented and potentially converted into artefacts, or disposed of in different ways. Indeed, this could explain the wide age ranges of fragmentary remains of individuals from this period.

Figure 5.1  The triple burial at Dolní Věstonice (after Klima 1988, 832)

The use of ethnographic analogy

One of the most interesting aspects of the study of modern hunter-gatherer belief systems is that all groups have some form of animistic belief system. Should we therefore consider all past hunter-gatherers as animists? We should not assume that this was the case, but it certainly gives us a good starting place from which to explore the past. It alerts us to the possibility of animistic interpretations of material we might encounter in the archaeological record: animal remains for example. It enables us to shift our attention from a purely economic approach to one which incorporates wider issues. This is particularly important since modern hunter-gatherers stress that their belief systems are bound up in absolutely everything they do, and everything they encounter. A focus on belief systems also helps us move beyond thinking about the world in simplistic terms, and specifically helps us move beyond the opposition of ritual and domestic in accounts of the past (Bradley 2005). Brück has argued convincingly that many non-western societies such as hunter-gatherer groups do not recognize the difference between ritual action and secular (non-religious) action (Brück 1999). Indeed, Brück argues that ritual acts are seen as being highly effective (i.e. they are functional). We have seen how hunters believe that they must treat hunted animals in very specific ways. This is not just a ritual act, but one that is absolutely essential, not only for success while hunting, and therefore the acquisition of food, but also for subsequent successes. Rituals are therefore not just something extra to everyday, practical life, but a crucial component of practical and everyday life. You cannot have one without the other. This is important for our considerations of the past and for our interpretations of the archaeological record.

The study of modern hunter-gatherer groups also gives us some insights into the ways that other, non-western people conceptualize the creation and form of the universe. We should be wary of directly importing the notion of a three-tier universe and characters such as Tricksters into the archaeological past, but these ideas at the very least indicate alternate ways of conceiving the world and people’s place within that. We should also be cautious when it comes to shamanism. This approach to hunter-gatherer belief systems is useful at the very broadest level, as a way into understanding the potential significance of religious figures within society, but it is also so general that it is not always useful. We must acknowledge the diversity of practices if using this term (Finlay forthcoming), and be aware that there may have been different forms of shamanic practice in the archaeological past. My personal preference is the use of the term ‘shamanistic’ which means that belief systems have elements of shamanism within them, but does not imply the use of the whole shaman ‘package’, which still relates to a very specific cultural context – that of the Siberian Tungus.

A consideration of the importance of rites of passage and changing stages of personhood in modern hunter-gatherer lives is also very useful when considering the past. These modern examples illustrate how easy it is to assume categories such as ‘birth’, ‘adult’ and ‘death’ are universal, when in fact these are culturally specific. They also alert us to the fact that identities are not fixed, but fluid and changeable. We have also explored the possibility that some people can be in-between states (liminal) and this would be a very dangerous time for them and for society. Knowledge of this from anthropology offers us ideas to explore when examining the archaeological record.

Conclusions

In this chapter we have considered hunter-gatherer belief systems, with a particular focus on animism and shamanism. We have also considered the ways in which hunter-gatherers conceptualize the universe: how it was created, who created it and what it looked like once it had been created. The next chapter follows on from this in more detail by considering landscape, which also articulates with belief systems. Finally, this chapter considered key points in people’s lives and the kinds of ceremonies that take place to mark out transitions in life including birth, becoming an adult and then death. It was suggested that the study of modern hunter-gatherer belief systems are very useful as they offer us interesting ways of thinking about past belief systems.

6

Being in the world: Hunter-gatherer landscapes

Summary of chapter

This chapter considers the significance of landscape to modern hunter-gatherers. It begins by showing how knowledge of the landscape is essential not just for finding resources but also as a crucial component of belief systems. The chapter then goes on to explore how many modern hunter-gatherers anchor both myths and morality tales in the landscape. In this way, the landscape acts as a reference system for broader issues within society. We then explore how hunter-gatherers alter the landscape through rock art, before considering the usefulness of ethnographic analogy for understanding prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups.

Introduction

In many ways, the landscape is the thread that ties together all aspects of hunter-gatherer life. As we have seen in the previous chapters, the landscape provides all the resources that hunter-gatherers need. Furthermore, groups move through it regularly and it is an essential frame of reference for hunter-gatherer belief systems. Over the past 20 years, there has been considerable interest in the ways in which hunter-gatherers think about landscape in both anthropology and archaeology (e.g., Ashmore and Knapp 1999; Carmichael et al. 1994; Hirsch and O’Hanlon 1995; Tilley 1994). In this chapter, some of the ways in which modern hunter-gatherers interact with the landscape is explored.

Recent approaches to landscape have shown that it is not a passive backdrop to human activity, instead it has an absolutely essential role in people’s lives. Landscape plays a crucial role in the formation of identity, both at individual and group level (Morphy 1995; Theodoratus and LaPena 1994). Specific places can become very important to people, in relation to individual or groups events that took place there; as hunter-gatherers are mobile, this means that a whole range of places in the landscape are used by people. In this way, the landscape becomes inscribed by the events that took place there and it has its own biography; the landscape therefore is essentially the story of you and your group’s life (Tilley 1994, 27). This means that landscape is also inextricably linked to history as generations of hunter-gatherers have been born, lived and died in the landscape. Modern hunter-gatherer groups have demonstrated excellent knowledge of enormous swathes of the landscape, and knowledge of what happened in those landscapes, not just in their own lifetimes but also in the past. This can often be terrain that to our eyes appears expansive and featureless in northern or very arid climates (Brody 2001) or in dense forests (see Gell 1995).

Because modern hunter-gatherers have an excellent broad knowledge of the landscape, they move knowingly through it. They are very aware of what has happened in the past and in this way, moving through the landscape is a way of accessing memories of the past (Kuchler 1993; Morphy 1995). These memories are anchored in a whole range of different places such as mountains or rocks; some are visually striking, others are not. But the landscape is not just something that is visual; the distinctive form of topographic features such as mountains and rivers are important to people for knowing where they are in the landscape, but sound is also significant in considerations of landscape. For example, Aborigines use sound extensively when moving around the landscape (Hirsch 1995) and the Inuit define space more by sound than vision, particularly in the winter when much of the day is dark (Rodaway 1994). Sound is also particularly relevant for navigation and identification in densely forested environments (Gell 1995). Thus landscapes are experienced in a range of ways by hunter-gatherers and inextricably linked with identity, memory and beliefs. We now move on to explore some of these ideas in more detail.

Landscapes and hunter-gatherers

Living in the landscape is a fundamental part of being human. As we have already explored in the earlier chapters, it is important to know the location of specific resources in the landscape at particular times of the year, which include not just food but also water (see Chapter 2). Chapter 3 explored the importance of mobility and moving through the landscape; this is something that is necessary for many groups, but we also saw that some groups also value moving around. As we come to consider the significance of the landscape, the reason that people like to move should become clearer; it is not just to avoid social tension or meet up with new people, although these things are important. Moving also enables you to experience the land. Experience of the landscape is partly about knowledge, which is so crucial for hunter-gatherer groups. This knowledge includes not only where resources are but also knowledge of sacred locations which are important for spiritual wellbeing and access to important ancestors or spiritual beings. Among many Aboriginal groups in Australia, only the elders know the location of sacred sites. Indeed, sacred sites are important because not many people know about them (Geamer 1994). In addition to this, knowledge of where ritual sites are is very important as a way of gaining power among these groups. Thus, for hunter-gatherers, all activities are undertaken in the landscape and this includes both domestic tasks as well as ritualized events (see Chapter 5).

It should therefore come as no surprise that anthropologists have noted that hunter-gatherers have a very close relationship with the landscape. We have already noted the ‘cosmic economy of sharing’ (Bird David 1992) between humans and animals (see Chapter 2 and 5), but this also extends out to the landscape. For example, the Mbuti say that the forest in which they live is their mother and father; just like a parent, it provides them with food, warmth, shelter and clothing (Ingold 1996). In Australia, Aborigines also have such a close relationship with the land that they say that damage and harm to the landscape can result in harm to individuals (Morphy 1993). In many ways, then, an animistic understanding of the world extends beyond just people and animals to the wider world. People care for the landscape like they care for other people, and it should be respected at all times and treated in appropriate ways.

The landscape also plays a crucial role in relation to mythology. In Chapter 5 we explored varying stories which explained how the world was created, often involving a creator animal or ancestor. After the initial act of creation, the landscape often then plays an important role in what happened next. Aborigines, for example, believe that the ancestors who walked the earth during the Dreamtime (the ancestral and mythological past), often undertook actions which then became landscape features (Silberbauer 1994). Ancestral beings moved through the landscape, creating rivers, lakes and mountains. Sometimes ancestral beings died and their bodies became landscape features (David 2002). Other features were created through the actions of these ancestral beings (fighting, crying and so on). The journey of an ancestral being was also recorded in Dreaming tracks, which joins a number of sites which trace the path of an ancestral being through the landscape (Taçon 2008). The landscape, then, was not only created by ancestral beings, it continues to be the source of all meaning in the world. Bruno David sums up this understanding of the landscape:

‘The landscape of Aboriginal Australia resonates with significance and meaning as it resonates with the powers of the spirit beings of the Dreaming . . . The Dreaming is a cosmology rooted in earthly reality and made concrete by bodily engagement in a world that is the product of the Dreaming. It frames human behaviour; it has ideological and material presence . . . it holds all that is meaningful, in that everything is, by the fact of its very existence, understood in relation to it’ (David 2002, 26–7).

Australian Aboriginal understandings of landscape are unique, but there are some elements which are found in hunter-gatherer engagements with landscape in other parts of the world. Coast–Plateau groups, like most peoples in North America, have stories about creator beings which include both animals and people (see Chapter 5). Again, it was during Creation that many landscape features came into being. For example, among the Okanago, Old One made the earth from a woman, and her flesh became the soil, her hair became the trees, her bones became the rocks and her breath became the wind (Bierhorst 1985, 146). To the Saami of northern Scandinavia, sacred sites are found throughout the landscape, as everything is regarded as living (Mulk 1994). Indeed, these are often distinctive natural places in the landscape (Bradley 2000). This means that to many hunter-gatherer groups specific landscape features are considered to be important (Lane 2008, 240–1). These can include a diverse range of landscape features such as caves, springs, rocks, mountains, streams and rivers (Theodoratus and LaPena 1994).

‘Every part of this country is sacred to my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and every grove has been hallowed by some fond memory or some sad experience of my tribe’ Chief Seattle. (Quoted by Hubert 1994, 16)

Mythology is so intertwined with the landscape that myths become an integral part of the landscape. The Black Hills in America are considered sacred by many groups of native Americans; they are connected to specific myths as well as important celestial constellations (Sundstrom 1996). Indeed, these myths were adopted by tribes moving into the area, demonstrating how powerful landscape mythology can be (Sundstrom 1996). Likewise, in Australia, people do not move into a landscape and impose their own ideas onto that landscape; instead it is almost as if the people are taken over by the landscape and its associated myths, which they adopt (Morphy 1995). This means that hunter-gatherer belief systems which have strong ties with the landscape are specific to those landscapes. These are not portable belief systems, then, but ones embedded in very specific places; you can only be Inuit in that specific landscape (Brody 2001). This means that landscape is an absolutely essential part of one’s identity and belonging, and influences what you can and cannot do.

The moral landscape

The landscape is important in terms of belief systems, myths and creation stories, but among many modern hunter-gatherers it is also the source of tales which tell you how to live. These are essentially ‘morality tales’, and they tell not only stories about many different things, sometimes relating to ancestors or mythological characters, but also of everyday stories of mortal humans. One of the best and most evocative example of this is the stories of the White Mountain Apaches of Arizona, which have been discussed in detail by Keith Basso (1996). The tales told by this group are inextricably linked to the landscape and teach people how to lead a good life; in effect, they have created a condensed form of communication by creating connections between stories, morals and the landscape. This is best illustrated with an example from Basso (1996).

Basso is out with two older men from the White Mountain Apaches when they meet a younger man called Talbert. Talbert is well-respected in the Apache community, but over the last few weeks, after the break-up of a love affair, he has been acting poorly; drinking too much, chatting up women and spreading unfounded rumours on those who have rejected him (Basso 1996). When Talbert meets the two older men he tells them that he has been sober for a few days and wants to get back to normal. However, the subsequent conversation initially confounds Basso. The older men say, ‘So, you’ve returned from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills. So, you’ve got tired of walking back and forth! So, you’ve smelled enough burnt piss!’ Tarbert replies that he could not see for a while. The older men reply, ‘It’s true, Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills will make you wise’. Basso finds out that this exchange relates to two stories about Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills, which are:

Long ago, right there at that place, there were two beautiful girls. They were sisters. They were talking together. Then they saw Old Man Owl walking towards them. They knew what he was like. He thought all the time about doing things with women. Then they said, ‘Let’s do something to him’. Then one of those girls went to the top of one of the hills. Her sister went to the top of the other one. As Old Man Owl was walking between them, the first girl called out to him ‘Old Man Owl, come here! I want you to rub me between my legs!’ He stopped! He got excited! So he started to climb the hill where the girl was sitting. Then, after Old Man Owl got halfway to the top the second girl called out to him ‘Old Man Owl, I want you to rub me gently between my legs!’ He stopped! He got even more excited! So he turned around, walked down the hill and began to climb the other one. Then, after he got halfway to the top, the first girl called out to him again in the same way. He stopped! Now he was very excited! So Old Man Owl did the same thing again. He forgot about the second girl, walked down the hill and began climbing the other one. It happened that way four times. Old Man Owl went back and forth, back and forth, climbing up and down those hills. And those beautiful girls just laughed at him.

Those two same sisters were there again .… Then Old Man Owl was walking towards them. They decided they would do something to him. Then one of the girls climbed into the branches of a big cottonwood tree that was growing there. The other girl went to the top of one of those hills. Then the girl in the tree lifted her shirt and spread her legs slightly apart. She remained motionless as Old Man Owl walked beneath her. Suddenly he looked up! He had noticed something! Now he got very excited! ‘Hmmm’ he thought ‘that tree looks a lot like a woman. I really like the way it looks! I’d best bring it home. I think I’ll burn it down’. His eyesight was very poor … (he was) very nearly blind.

Then, having piled some grass at the base of the tree, Old Man Owl set fire to it. The girl in the tree pissed on it and quickly put it out. Now he was very confused. The other girl, the one on top of the hill, could hear all that Old Man Owl was saying to himself. She was really laughing! Then Old Man Owl did the same thing again. He started another fire and the girl in the tree pissed on it and put it out. He was looking around again. ‘Where’s that rain coming from? I don’t see any clouds! There are no clouds anywhere! Something must be wrong!’ Then he tried one more time and the girl in the tree did the same thing again. Old Man Owl stood there shaking his head. ‘Something must be very wrong!’ he said. ‘I’d better go home’. He walked away with his head hanging down. Then those two beautiful girls joined each other and laughed and laughed. They were really laughing at Old Man Owl! (Basso 1996)

So the conversation between the two older men and Talbert is related to these two moral stories, which are themselves embedded in the landscape. The two older men were essentially saying that Talbert, like Old Man Owl, has been acting like a fool (so, you’ve returned from Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills. So, you’ve got tired of walking back and forth! So, you’ve smelled enough burnt piss!), but unlike Old Man Owl, Tarbert seems to have seen the error of his ways. Thus, a conversation about a landscape feature has passed considerable information between these men. It relates to the present situation on what is appropriate behaviour and what is not, it reinforces existing morality stories in their immediate landscape and connects together people and place. This clearly shows that the landscape is a powerful source of knowledge, mythology and, in this case, morality (also see Kelley and Francis 1994).

Case study: The landscapes of Mesolithic and Neolithic Britain

Evidence from Mesolithic Britain consists primarily of lithic scatters which can tell us about various aspects of people’s lives at this time. However, the significance of the landscape has also been explored in relation to Mesolithic sites in Britain. Of course, the location of sites in the landscape must be partly to do with the resources available in the immediate area, but it is also possible to suggest that landscape features were significant in their own right and that these features were associated with myths, cosmology and belief systems more generally. Phenomenological investigations of known Mesolithic sites in Britain show that sites were carefully positioned in relation to specific landscape features, particularly the sea, mountains and outcrops (Cummings 2003; Tilley 1994). Mesolithic people seemed to have had a particular affinity with the sea, choosing places to stop with views out over the sea. Furthermore, in some parts of Britain, Mesolithic people seem to have been deliberately spending considerable amounts of time on small islands; the most extreme case of this is the tiny island of Oronsay in western Scotland which saw extensive occupation in the Mesolithic resulting in the accumulation of enormous shell middens over several centuries (Mellars 1987). This has even led to suggestions that the island was permanently occupied (Mithen 2000b). Sites like this strongly suggest that people had affinity with particular places in the landscape, so much so that this structured where people lived regardless of what resources were available.

There is strong evidence to suggest that the landscape continued to be symbolically important into the Neolithic, the period when people first started using domesticated crops and animals (Whittle 1996), although it is worth noting that these early Neolithic societies carried on hunting and gathering to a greater or lesser extent (see Cummings and Harris 2011). This is the period when people started doing slightly different things in the landscape: building monuments. One of the most distinctive types of stone monument from the early Neolithic is the ‘dolmen’. Traditionally interpreted as burial chambers, these monuments consist of a massive capstone raised up and supported by uprights (Figure 6.1). It has been suggested that the purpose of these monuments was not the creation of a burial space for the deposition of the dead, but the display of enormous stones (Richards 2004; Whittle 2004). Indeed, at many dolmens, the capstones are absolutely massive stones, weighing upwards of 150 tonnes (e.g. at Brownshill (Kernanstown) dolmen, County Carlow, Ireland). These massive capstones were stones that seem to have been quarried out of the ground and lifted up in situ. It is possible to suggest that these stones were already known locales in the landscape: outcrops that people knew about and visited (and see Cummings and Whittle 2004). Therefore it is possible to argue that people in the Neolithic were converting known locales from the Mesolithic into stone monuments. These may well have been stone outcrops that were associated with particular myths, and therefore particularly suitable for being converted into a stone monument. If we go further still and investigate which parts of the landscape are visible from these early Neolithic monuments, once again we find that the same sets of landscape features are visible, particularly mountains and the sea (Cummings 2009). This evidence seems to suggest overwhelmingly that the landscape was a key referent in these people’s lives. In this particular case, the evidence seems to suggest considerable continuity from the Mesolithic into the Neolithic, and the endurance of myths within that particular landscape.

Figure 6.1  Pentre Ifan dolmen, Southwest Wales

Hunter-gatherer rock art

Hunter-gatherers alter or manipulate the environment in a range of different ways. In some cases, this can include very obvious alterations such as the building of monuments (see Chapter 3) or the burning of large tracts of land. It can also involve more subtle alterations such as careful woodland management. One of the ways in which hunter-gatherers in different parts of the world mark out particular points in the landscape is through rock art. Unfortunately, very few modern peoples still make rock art, and our ethnographic accounts of rock art from the historical period are extremely limited (Taçon and Chippindale 1998, 7; Solomon 1998). However, we know that hunter-gatherers were creating rock art until very recently and this has been recorded among many groups, including Australian Aborigines (David 2002), the Bushmen of Southern Africa (Lewis-Williams 1983) and the Chumash in California (Whitley 1996). There is now a considerable literature on rock art, much of which relates to archaeological approaches (e.g. Bahn 1998; Bahn et al. 1998; Chippindale and Taçon 1998; Flood 1997; Whitley 2005). However, here, some key themes are highlighted, particularly those that relate to the issues already discussed in this, and the previous, chapter.

Rock art is found on walls or ceilings of cavities, usually caves or rock shelters, and also on open air slabs of rock. A whole range of techniques are used for marking the rock, from painting using minerals such as red ochre (these are called pictographs) to carving and engraving (called petroglyphs). Most rock art sites are either petroglyphs or pictographs, but we can also include forms which are much larger in scale which involve adding or removing stones. Intaglios are images created on a grand scale by scraping away the ground to expose the soil beneath; the reverse of this is to add stones to create a monumental image (Whitley 2005). Clearly, then, intaglios share characteristics with other monuments created by hunter-gatherers such as stone alignments and wheels (see Chapter 3). Modern hunter-gatherer rock art is often anthropomorphic (resembles human form) and also can depict animals, ancestors or other mythical beings. A range of abstract patterns and shapes are also depicted.

As we have already seen in this chapter, the landscape is not simply a blank canvas, it is highly significant. Following on from this, rock art is therefore carefully placed in relation to this meaningful landscape, and draws on the meanings inherent in a particular location. This may relate to ancestral myths or stories, creator beings or other non-human entities, as is common with Aboriginal rock art (David 2002; Flood 1997; Stanbury and Clegg 1990). The placing of rock art may also relate to the qualities of the place itself. We have already seen in Chapter 5 that many hunter-gatherers conceive of the world as comprising three tiers: our world, the upper world and the lower world. As such, caves and rock shelters were often understood as entrances into other parts of the universe, particularly the lower world (Whitley 2005, 83). Rock art, then, can be used to mark out potent and important places in the landscape: the rock art drawing on the significance of the place, and the place itself being enhanced by the addition of rock art (and see Bradley 1997). This clearly shows the interconnectedness of hunter-gatherer worlds and the all-pervasive importance of religion across the landscape.

Hunter-gatherer rock art depicts many different things, often in complex multi-period panels (see Figure 6.2). Thus, rock art can be understood as a form of communicating ideas. There is debate regarding precisely what rock art communicates: some argue that rock art is the outcome of particular shamanic practices (see below) so that most art is essentially religious in meaning (e.g. Whitley 1996, 2005). Others argue that rock art can also be educational and decorative, illustrating tracking and hunting methods, or the location of key resources in the landscape (e.g. Flood 1997). Quite clearly, rock art can work on multiple levels at the same time, expressing both practical and spiritual components of hunter-gatherer life. Once again, this further highlights the important point that it is impossible and meaningless to separate out the ‘domestic’ or practical world from the ritual sphere (Bradley 2005).

In recent years, there has been considerable focus on the idea that rock art was made as part of shamanic rituals (see Chapter 5 for a discussion on shamanism). There are different strands to this argument. First, much rock art depicts animals, and we have seen that one of the key roles of a shaman is to move between different levels of the universe and communicate with other beings including animals (Eliade 1987). Animals can assist shamans with various tasks including healing the sick, controlling the movements of game and predicting the future (Clottes and Lewis-Williams 1996). This interpretation appears to be supported by San Bushman rock art in South Africa, where the eland is the most commonly depicted animal; ethnographically, the eland has been reported as being a powerful creature which connected the worlds of the living and the dead in San mythology (Bahn 1998, 230). Shamanic rituals also frequently involve a considerable level of performance, which engages the audience and makes rituals visual and theatrical experiences; the painting of rock art can be seen as a performative act (Whitley 2005, 3), and something which may have worked in parallel with story-telling. There is also the suggestion that rock art production is a result of entering altered states of consciousness, again something that is connected with shamanic

Figure 6.2  Chumash rock art at Cache Cave, California (photo courtesy of David Robinson)

practice (see Chapter 5). This is the idea that when a shaman entered an altered state of consciousness, he or she would experience ‘entoptic hallucinations’; these are visions of particular shapes such as spirals, zigzags or lines (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988). These shapes appear in many hunter-gatherer rock art. It has also been reported ethnographically that rock art was made as part of initiation and puberty rites (Whitley 1996, 25 and see Chapter 5). It is clear that the study of modern hunter-gatherer rock art has offered a number of interpretations for archaeologists to consider. With this in mind, we now turn to a consideration of the usefulness of ethnographic analogy when thinking about past hunter-gatherer groups.

The use of ethnographic analogy

The ethnography of hunter-gatherer landscapes has played a crucial role in recent years and has been used as an inspiration for interpretive and phenomenological approaches to landscape (Lane 2008; Tilley 1994). These ethnographies certainly illustrate how important the landscape is to people, and how it essentially contains all components of a hunter-gatherer world; knowledge of key resources as well as belief systems, myths, mortalities and the history of a group. These are exciting insights for archaeologists to consider when examining the archaeological record. We should, however, be wary of directly applying ethnographic accounts of landscape onto the past. Quite clearly, there are some general points that are relevant for the study of landscapes, but how these ideas manifest themselves are likely to be culturally and historically specific. The Dreaming of Aboriginal Australia superficially seems to have many similarities with how hunter-gatherers in other parts of the world understand the landscape, but a more detailed examination shows that it is a very particular way of understanding the world which may be of fairly recent origin (see David 2002). What we can be sure of is that landscape was meaningful for past peoples. Ethnographic accounts also offer us inspiration for thinking differently about landscapes, but they should be explored in a contextually specific way.

The two tales from the White Mountain Apaches, told to the anthropologist Basso (1996), are very revealing to us as archaeologists who do not have access to such rich stories via the archaeological record. We often struggle to understand why particular places in the landscape have been the focus for so much activity in the past and stories like this give us insights into why this might have been the case. Landscape is and would have been a powerful medium for passing on knowledge and stories, myths and creation tales. We may be able to explore this idea by looking carefully at the types of material evidence left at particular locales in the landscape, and take as a starting point the idea that not everything relates exclusively to subsistence practices. However, an understanding of tales like Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills should also alert us to the possibility that not every place that is significant to people in the past is marked by deposition. Trail Goes Down Between Two Hills was significant in myth and story telling but did not see material culture deposition. This does not detract from the insights such tales offer us, but it does mean that not all places that were important were marked. This idea has been explored in depth in relation to the phenomenology of landscape (e.g., Cummings 2009; Cummings and Whittle 2004; Tilley 1994, 2010) where it has been argued that the visibility of particular landscape features is significant, not deposition at the landscape locales themselves. This approach also has the added advantage that one does not need to excavate in order to explore these ideas, but simply visit sites in the field.

Studies of modern hunter-gatherer rock art are insightful for offering us new ways of thinking about prehistoric rock art. One of the most important points is that rock art does not just ‘mean’ one thing; it can convey multiple messages simultaneously, and this is enormously important for us as archaeologists exploring different interpretations. We should also be wary of studying rock art in isolation (Whitley 2005, 103); looking at rock art in its broader landscape context, and therefore taking into account the literature on the significance of landscape, is the way forward for understanding this type of evidence, both in the present and the past.

Rightly or wrongly, it would be fair to say that anthropological accounts of landscape have had an enormous impact on archaeology over the last 20 years. The influence of ethnographies of modern hunter-gatherer landscapes have not only influenced accounts of prehistoric hunter-gatherers but also accounts of past peoples whose subsistence economy was based on agriculture. I believe that this example in particular shows the real potential of ethnographic analogy for understanding not just specific types of people (hunter-gatherers) but for offering us unique ways for thinking about many different people in the past. It seems likely that other people who relied on the land, agriculturalists for example, would also have found significance and meaning in the landscape. These would not have been the same meanings that modern hunter-gatherers have with landscape, but then the same can be said for prehistoric hunter-gatherers as well.

Conclusions

This chapter has considered the significance of the landscape to modern hunter-gatherers, further exploring ideas laid out in Chapter 5 on belief systems. Studies of modern groups demonstrate unequivocally that landscape is a fundamental part of hunter-gatherer existence. It provides not only food, water, shelter and warmth, but it is also a reference system for social and religious life. The landscape quite literally shapes the people who are living there and in turn, people draw on it in every aspect of their belief systems. The chapter has also examined the alteration of landscape through rock art, which again has been documented among many modern hunter-gatherer groups. It has been suggested that ethnographic analogy has played a crucial role in developing archaeological approaches to landscape as it offers us some real insights into how people, not just hunter-gatherers, conceive of their world.

7

Living in a material world: Hunter-gatherer material culture

Summary of chapter

This chapter considers the range of material culture used by modern hunter-gatherers. It explores the range of different materials utilized by hunter-gatherer groups, with a particular emphasis on organic materials, which often do not survive in the archaeological record. In particular, this chapter emphasizes the fact that material culture is not just functional; many objects also convey religious beliefs and worldviews. Furthermore, many hunter-gatherer objects are used in ceremonies and rituals. Indeed, it is argued that the symbolic and functional elements of material culture are interwoven. The chapter then goes on to consider exchange networks among modern hunter-gatherers and explore the famous ‘potlatch’ events which involved the exchange of large amounts of material culture. We then think about material culture designed explicitly for ceremonial use. Finally, there is a consideration of how useful these observations are for understanding prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups and material culture that we encounter in the archaeological record.

Introduction

It would be unfair to suggest that anthropologists are not as interested in material culture as archaeologists, as there are a number of anthropological considerations of material culture. However, these studies are often subordinate to the study of social relations, and are typically concentrated in the area of art and museum ethnography (Gosden 2010, 111). Certainly, there is plenty of scope for studies of material culture in hunter-gatherer societies (for example, see Jordan 2003 and Keen 2004). In contrast, archaeologists rely very heavily on material culture in order to understand the past. This is particularly important for the very distant past such as the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic when there are only very limited archaeological remains; many types of material culture survive well (stone tools for example), and there are also limited amounts of cave and rock art, burials and other forms of material culture. The study of modern hunter-gatherers gives us insights into these prehistoric remains, but perhaps more significantly, it also gives us insights into the types of material culture that very rarely survive in the archaeological record, in particular organic materials. The use of organics is crucial to modern groups and in many cases, more important than stone. We also discuss that hunter-gatherer mobility, as considered in Chapter 3, has a considerable impact on material culture, as sedentary groups are able to retain more material culture than highly mobile ones (and see Lane forthcoming, table 1.5.5). Nevertheless, there are key themes in the study of modern hunter-gatherer material culture which are useful for archaeologists to consider.

Hunter-gatherer material culture

The archaeological record from the distant past is dominated by stone tools, which endure better than any other type of material used in the past. Modern hunter-gatherers also utilize stone; indeed it was Binford’s desire to understand Palaeolithic tool assemblages which led him to study Nunamiut people’s tools, where he revealed that they owned a whole range of different stone tools which they used for different tasks (see Binford 1978, 1979). Stone tools obviously play a functional role in hunter-gatherer society but studies have also shown that stone tools frequently have additional properties and associations. We have already discussed Aboriginal Dreamtime (see Chapter 5 and 6), where remains of the creator ancestors subsequently turned into topographic features such as rivers, creeks and outcrops. Many of the quarries that are used for obtaining stone for tools are considered to be the remains of Dreamtime ancestors, so that any tool made from a particular source of stone is effectively made from the body of that ancestor (Taçon 1991). This makes particular objects potent and symbolically charged (and see Robinson 2004). Furthermore, the aesthetic qualities of stones are also significant, such as colour and this adds a further dimension to the choice, and subsequent use, of particular stones (Ingold 2007). There are accounts of stones being animate, growing, procreating and moving around (e.g. Brumm 2004; Kahn 1990; Roe and Taki 1999 and see Chapter 5 on animism). This certainly moves us beyond a basic functional interpretation of stone tools. Thus stone tools have a practical value, but can also be considered the remains of ancestors with magical properties. It is worth noting that in many cases, metal tools had often replaced traditional stone ones long before anthropologists documented communities, as metal was frequently traded with incoming colonial populations (e.g. Lee 1979).

Many objects used by hunter-gatherers are made from organic materials, including a whole range of objects made from wood. This includes items used for the collection of food: digging sticks and bows and arrows, and also for travelling, including boats and paddles (Keen 2004, Chapter 3). Wood was also particularly important to the Northwest Coast groups, who used the local hardwoods to make a whole range of different items, from their houses to ornate decorated storage boxes (see case study below). Bone and ivory are frequent by-products of hunting and can also be made into various types of artefacts. For example, Aborigines typically make awls for making clothing and baskets from bone, as well as drills and augers (Keen 2004, 85). Pottery is also used by some modern hunter-gatherers, and it is interesting that this was paralleled in the past, with many known examples of pottery-using hunter-gatherers in prehistory (see papers in Jordan and Zvelebil 2009). Pottery enables a whole range of technologies to be employed in regards to storage and cooking. However, pottery is also bulky and heavy and certainly would be restrictive for very residentially mobile hunter-gatherers.

Another important type of object for hunter-gatherers are baskets: these are light and relatively easy to make, and can be used for collecting, processing and storing food (e.g. Gamble 2008, 175). Beautifully decorated baskets were characteristic of the Great Basin groups and were used for a whole range of different things such as water bottles, winnowing, cooking and eating, and even at mortuary rituals (Fowler and Dawson 1986, also see Bibby 1996). Indeed basketry is widespread among many hunter-gatherer groups and was often designed as long-term-use objects (see Mowat et al. 1992). Other local organic materials play a crucial role in hunter-gatherer material culture sets; for example, among the Ju/’hoansi in Africa, ostrich eggshells are used as canteens for collecting and carrying water: these are fairly durable and the preferred water container (Lee 1979, 122). This is precisely the kind of material that would very rarely survive archaeologically, but is so important to people on a day-to-day basis.

The key thing here is that material culture should not just be considered a response to the environment, or in Binford’s words, as an ‘extrasomatic means of adaption’ (Binford 1962). Instead, material culture is meaningfully constituted (e.g. Tilley 1989). It may well serve a vital practical role in hunter-gatherer communities, but that does not mean to say that it was not also significant in other areas. As already discussed, objects made of stone can contain essences or elements of other beings such as ancestors, and properties and designs can also be important. This leads us to some good examples which really highlight this point. Among the Inuit, people carve ivory and bone, but once the carving is complete, the object is thrown away. This is because the purpose of carving is not to create a finished object, but to bring out the animal or figure within the material: the aim is to reveal this through carving (Carpenter 1973). This reinforces the idea that material culture is not just about creating a functional or practical object, but in this case it is a process that itself is significant. This means that the creation of objects as a process or even performance may be much more significant than the final object (Gosden and Marshall 1999); this can be argued for other types of material, a number of which is discussed in more detail later in the chapter.

Another intriguing aspect of material culture is that it can have quite a dramatic effect on people, and in this case it could be argued that this was actually part of the function of material culture. Of particular interest is the work of Gell (1992b) who discusses the canoes used as a part of the Kula exchange network. While the people involved in this are not hunter-gatherers, this is an interesting case study in terms of understanding material culture. The kula exchange network is very famous and involves the exchange of objects in Papua New Guinea between different social groups (Weiner 1992). People arrive in canoes at a set location in order to exchange goods, but these canoes are not merely a means of transport. They are brightly decorated, and are generally considered to have magical powers (Gell 1992b). Indeed, these canoes are supposed to be so enchanting, it is thought that potential exchange partners practically give away goods, as they take leave of their senses at the sight of the canoes. For hunter-gatherers who have the time and desire to decorate their objects, this may be relevant. Decoration is not just decorative, it may add particular powers or properties to an object. So, for example, among the Yolngu, Australia, material culture which is shiny or bright is thought to be ancestrally powerful (Morphy 1992). In this way, we can understand objects as social actors, which have agency (see Barrett 2001) and can directly affect people. They can even cause people to do specific things.

Case study: In small things forgotten: Late Mesolithic material culture in coastal western Britain

The late Mesolithic was the last period when people relied solely on hunting and gathering in Britain. Late Mesolithic sites found along the coasts of western Britain almost always consist of lithics, with only limited quantities of structural evidence surviving in the archaeological record (Wickham Jones 2004). These sites can inform us when and where people were living and what they were doing. It is intriguing that these late Mesolithic assemblages are frequently characterized by the presence of large quantities of debitage. Bolsay Farm, Islay (Mithen 2000), for example, produced nearly 330,000 lithics, still only an estimated 20% of the overall assemblage (Mithen et al. 2007). This is an extraordinary quantity of material. In West Wales, Nab Head Site II produced a large lithic assemblage even though it has not been fully excavated (David 1990). Many of the lithics date to the early Mesolithic but the site was also visited a number of times in the late Mesolithic (David and Walker 2004, 319), with evidence spanning 3,000 years into the Neolithic. Therefore, it seems to represent a place in the landscape that was returned to time and time again. The assemblage seemed to fall into three discrete zones surrounding an empty area about 5 m across (a possible location for a structure). Another possible hearth was also identified (Aldhouse Green 2000, 32). For the most part, the assemblage consists of flint tools and debitage, with all parts of the reduction sequence present (i.e. people were making tools on site from the raw material; Aldhouse Green 2000, 33). Nab Head has also produced ground stone tools, including three pecked and ground stone axes and a perforated stone disc (David 1990; David and Walker 2004, 325, figure 17.7). Although not all late Mesolithic sites produce massive quantities of lithics (there are plenty of examples of sites which produce small assemblages), it is intriguing that large lithic assemblages are frequently found in the late Mesolithic, particularly when contrasted with later, Neolithic assemblages.

We tend to see evidence such as lithic scatters as the remains of purely ‘domestic’ activity; debitage was quite simply waste and unwanted material, not the deliberate creation and deposition of material culture at specific points in the landscape. Certainly people were producing large quantities of debitage in part due to the nature of the raw material they were using (for most of the coastal zone this was beach flint): beach pebbles were so poor quality that large amounts of debitage would be produced in order to get a few workable flakes or blades. However, it can also be suggested that the production of large quantities of debitage may also have been quite deliberate. Warren (2006, 28–32) argues convincingly that material culture, in this case lithics, articulated wider meanings, identities and relationships within society (also see Cobb 2007). Thus the reduction of flint beach pebbles (and quartz and other workable materials) could well have been a key metaphor in the late Mesolithic. It may relate in part to the powerful metaphor of fragmentation (see Chapman 2000; Chapman and Gaydarska 2006); a number of material things in the late Mesolithic seem to have been fragmented (including bodies) before being deposited (see Chatterton 2006; Conneller 2006). Stone, just like other partible bodies (see Fowler 2004, 66–71), may have dictated to people how it should be treated prior to discard, as well as becoming vehicles for memory (of places, of people, of events and so on). There may be an argument here that the reduction of lithics down into smaller pieces was also in part about performance. It may have been appropriate to knap flint into fragments, and, just as bodies were reduced to fragments, then potentially turned into objects which travelled around with people (see Bradley 1998, 27; Whittle 1996, 202) prior to being deposited. Lithics too, may have required people to reduce the larger pebbles or nodules into fragments, with token pieces moving on with people. The remainder stayed behind, a material expression of a community who had now moved. Finlay describes this as the ‘deliberate choices of discard strategies’ (Finlay 2006, 53). I would argue that there was a clear need among late Mesolithic groups to return to specific locations and leave behind material, fragmented and then discarded in specific ways (see also Cobb 2008, Chapter 6; Conneller 2011, Chapter 3). This was the deliberate articulation of connections with particular things in particular places, relationships, however, that were temporary in nature, and which needed to be concluded prior to people moving on.

We must also consider the significance of object biographies when we think about material culture (Kopytoff 1986). This is the idea that things are not static, unchanging objects, but are involved in quite dynamic processes, including production, exchange and consumption (Gosden and Marshall 1999). Thus, objects, just like people, have biographies: they are born, have lives and then die. This means that objects can acquire their own histories over time, so the people who owned a particular object at particular points may be recounted, as well as what happened to that object and in what context (Joy 2009). Meanings and values can therefore accumulate over time, creating complex networks and connections between people and objects (and see Strathern 1988). A good example of this is among the Northwest Coast groups, where war clubs were kept for many years. Indeed, over time, they were named and had life histories which were recounted when the club was displayed (Spencer et al. 1977). In Southeast Australia, stone axes retained some of the power of their original source when they were converted into objects (Taçon 1991). Axes were also reworked to make other objects and were ‘killed’ prior to deposition with bodies (Brumm 2004, 150). Furthermore, the movement of axes across the landscape effectively created new mythological Dreaming tracks (Brumm 2004, 155). Thus, the biography of an axe was linked to its birth in relation to important mythological places in the landscape, its use and potential reuse by different people and also how it, as an active object, created mythological trackways. Spector (1993) has also described how the biography of an awl was intimately linked to the life history and achievements of its owner.

Another key component of material culture relates to personhood. Personhood, quite simply, is the state of being a person (Fowler 2004). It has been shown that not all people in the world in the present day understand themselves as individuals. Indeed, many people have a very different notion of what it is to be a person: in some societies there are no individuals, but ‘dividuals’, where people consist of more than just their own physical body (see Fowler 2004, Chapter 2). As such, a person can comprise many different things including objects and things which can be both given away and received, thus a person can be conceived as partible (they can be divided up; Strathern 1988). If material culture can be understood as being part of a person, this should affect our interpretation of objects. In a recent study of the Awá of Brazil, González-Ruibal et al. (2011) discuss the importance and role of arrows in society. They suggest that arrows are a crucial part of the self to Awá men. Indeed, arrows are such an intimate part of a person that they must be treated in very specific ways: arrows must be warmed up before being used; large numbers of arrows are carried around, far in excess of what is required for hunting; they are stored very carefully and broken arrows cannot be abandoned in the forest but must be discarded in very specific ways. The making of arrows, they argue, is ‘a technology through which people and things mutually constitute each other’ (González-Ruibal et al. 2011, 15). All of this paints a picture of material culture as meaningfully constituted and moves us beyond the idea that it is purely a technological solution to the practicalities of everyday living. Material culture is intimately bound up in all other aspects of living, being and dwelling and articulates with belief systems, social organization and notions of personhood (Finlay forthcoming).

Sharing, trade, exchange and gift-giving

We now move on to issues concerning the sharing, trading and exchanging of material culture. The exchange of objects within communities and between communities has seen considerable research, and is of particular relevance to archaeologists who can often identify objects in the archaeological record which are non-local and thus potentially the result of exchange networks. It has been noted by a number of anthropologists that many modern hunter-gatherers have what they describe as a ‘sharing ethos’ (Woodburn 1998). This has been noted with the distribution of food, where a hunter is obliged to share the meat he has (see Chapter 4). Anthropologists have also noted that virtually all material culture is shared by the whole community. This means that objects are frequently owned by everyone, and those objects which appear to be owned by individuals are actually shared, by being given away as gifts or gambled with so that everyone gets access to them sooner or later (Lee 1988). Only a few objects are actually owned in these sharing communities, and these are things that are essentially considered worthless, such as a bow in Hadza groups (Woodburn 1998, 53). Others have suggested that this sharing ethos goes beyond just the sharing of food and material culture. Bird David (1992) has described these groups as having a ‘cosmic economy of sharing’ where they essentially see themselves as sharing everything among themselves and with the world in general, which also relates to other beings such as animals (see Chapter 5 on animism).

Following on from this idea of sharing is the issue of exchange. Perhaps the best-documented hunter-gatherer exchange system is that of the hxaro, found among the Ju/’hoansi in Africa (Lee 1979). This trade network is an excellent way of sharing material culture between people, and a way for no one to have more material wealth than anyone else. Essentially, hxaro involves the exchange of goods such as blankets, clothing, pots, arrowheads and decorative items such as beads (Wiessner 1982). Each person has multiple exchange partners, an average of 16, some of whom are local but others who live further away (Woodburn 1998). Prior to an exchange, individuals will drop hints as to what they would like to receive, and a mutually beneficial exchange is expected. How long you are able to keep your gift varies from weeks to years, but ultimately everything you own will be exchanged at some point. The result of this exchange system is that no one individual ever accumulates wealth (Wiessner 1982, 82). Indeed, objects that are desirable are regularly exchanged and people feel equal. This is an excellent example of the sharing ethos. Anthropologists have also noted something they labelled ‘demand sharing’. This is where people demand that you share whatever you have and is an excellent levelling mechanism to ensure that people feel equal (Kelly 1995; Peterson 1993).

However, not all hunter-gatherers have such a defined sharing ethos. One of the best-known anthropological examples involving giving and receiving material culture is the potlatch, the famous gift-giving ceremony found among the Northwest Coast groups. It was recorded ethnographically among many groups such as the Tlingit and Kwakiutl in the past, and even though it was outlawed for a time, it continued to be practiced and it is still practiced today (Kew 1990, 478–9). Potlatches were highly variable, both between different groups who practiced potlatching, and also over time (Codere 1990, 368–9). There is also a suggestion in the literature that the ‘classic’ extravagant potlatches detailed by many ethnographers were actually a direct result of colonial encounters, particularly the decimation of population and influx of new material brought about through trade with colonial peoples (e.g. Piddocke 1965; Suttles and Jonaitis 1990, 86). Essentially, a potlatch was a public ceremonial and social event. They invariably involved the giving of gifts, feasting and some form of social display. The most simple of these may have been smaller-scale events marking a person’s change in their life cycle, such as reaching puberty (Codere 1990). Others were much larger and more lavish affairs, such as memorial potlatches (Kan 1989), and they were particularly extravagant in early colonial times (the Potlatch period 1849–1920). These larger potlatches involved all members of a community as well as a guest clan (de Laguna 1990, 220). The overall aim of the larger potlatches seems to have been to acquire rank and status, specifically to increase a leader’s, and the group’s as a whole, prestige. This was achieved by feasting and the distribution of property. A key element of the potlatch was the giving of precious gifts such as beautifully woven blankets, which demonstrated how wealthy you were. Other gifts could be furs, coppers, money or dishes. At the most extravagant potlatches exotic, rare or unusual foods were consumed and it was recorded that at times people ate slaves and dogs (Spencer et al. 1977). There are also records of the destruction of property (conspicuous consumption; Boas 1897, 353–4). The larger and more elaborate the potlatch, the more prestige was gained and it is recorded that Chief Shakes of Stikine (Tlingit) achieved eight major potlatches in his lifetime, the most ever recorded (de Laguna 1990, 220).

One of the key elements of the potlatch was the preparation beforehand. For particularly large potlatches, food and material wealth would need to be accumulated. Again, considerable emphasis was placed on this aspect in older accounts: ‘the interest-bearing investment of property’ (Boas 1897). In order to be able to give both food and gifts at a potlatch, a surplus would need to be accumulated beforehand, and this was achieved by taking loans of objects which would be repaid with interest (Suttles and Jonaitis 1990, 85). However, the lavish potlatches as described by anthropologists such as Boas which occurred during the potlatch period were a direct result of the decimation of population as well as the influx of large numbers of prestige objects, especially blankets and copper (Codere 1990, 369). These were rather exceptional events and not typical of the potlatch as a whole; indeed many describe the potlatch in rather different terms. Often they were fairly small-scale affairs involving only elements of a community. They played an important role in redistributing wealth within society, so that material objects could be converted into food; certainly some people were able to gain status, but ‘the feeling at the bottom of the potlatch is one of pride rather than greed’ (Piddocke 1965). There are also accounts of ‘play potlatches’ which were more about fun, theatrical ceremonies, feasting and socializing (Codere 1990, 369). Thus, in many ways, potlatch was a form of exchange and while prestige was clearly acquired, it also facilitated sharing.

Case study: The carved wooden boxes of the Tlingit

The groups of the Northwest Coast of North America (such as the Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Bella Coola and Kwakiutl) produced some of the most distinctive material culture sets of any group of hunter-gatherers. Virtually all material culture was made from the hardwoods of the region (cedar and spruce). This included their houses, canoes and carved ‘totem poles’ for which they are famed (Spencer et al. 1977). They also used wood to make many tools as well as large wooden boxes which were used not only for storage but also as furniture. Many of these boxes are elaborately decorated, particularly those which are used to store ceremonial objects and prized possessions (Shearer 2000, 23).

Feasting was an important component of a potlatch (see Swanton 1908, 440–2). Among many societies, there are very specific rules in place in regards to what foods can be served in which vessels and to whom, and reading the ethnographies of these groups this seems to be relevant for these groups. For example, there is an example of a wooden bowl that was used to serve oil or pieces of fish in ceremonies (de Laguna 1990, 212). This bowl is carved with designs as well as a bear’s head at each end of the bowl (Figure 7.1). It was impregnated with grease to such an extent that it has a luscious glossy shine. We know that crests were an important component of Northwest Coast society; they were representative of a clan’s lineage and included the bear. Crests appeared in different guises at potlatches, with dancers often imitating a crest and also wearing a mask of that animal, or woven blankets and emblem shirts with the crest on them. But crests were more than just emblems of a clan; they were more than simply a way of identifying one’s lineage and therefore one’s place in society. These animals were not just emblems but understood as kin: they were understood to be quite literally one’s brothers and sisters. Crests were also supernatural beings whose spirits permeated objects (Holm 1990, 604). This meant that objects could have a symbolic and supernatural component to them: indeed, it is recorded that some articles were treated as if they were alive (de Laguna 1990, 223). We could therefore suggest a more nuanced interpretation for this wooden bowl. If a bear-kin resided in the bowl, then consuming the contents of the bowl could give one characteristics of a bear. It was also presumably a risky business eating from an object that was both potentially animate and supernatural (and see Kan 1989, Chapter 2, on analogies between boxes and bodies). The glossy sheen on the bowl may have also been enchanting to those eating out of it. Perhaps, over time, this bowl became an important object in its own right as the biography of its use was remembered and drawn upon. Perhaps it had been used in particularly successful or lavish potlatches. What should be clear is that ethnography gives us some possible insights into ways of thinking about material culture beyond the functional, but as archaeologists, we can use this information as inspiration for understanding objects such as the carved Tlingit wooden box.

Figure 7.1  Tlingit polished wooden box (courtesy of the Penn Museum, image NA3306)

It is important to note that not all things can be exchanged or given as gifts. This relates to the anthropological idea of ‘alienable’ and ‘inalienable’ possessions. Inalienable objects are essentially objects that cannot be exchanged (e.g. Weiner 1992). These are objects that are transferred between people in very specific ways, so often things are retained by one person or group, and are subsequently passed down between generations. These may be things that relate to individual or group status and they are invariably linked with social identity; they may also relate to the idea of authenticity (like paraphernalia associated with a position, such as a shaman, or rank, such as a chief). In this way, there is a strong link with the biography of particular objects (Weiner 1992, 7–11). A good way of controlling the movement of inalienable objects is by making sure that these transactions take place within the ritual sphere. This ensures that things are done correctly and controls the transmission of inalienable objects (Weiner 1992).

This brings us neatly to a discussion of ceremonial material culture, mostly inalienable objects which have seen considerable focus in the anthropological literature. It is important to note that many of these objects are designed for use in specific ceremonies, and this is because performance is crucial in the use of material culture. ‘It is through the drama in the performance of actions relating to the object that meanings are created and made explicit’ (Joy 2009, 544).

Carved masks are recorded among the Northwest Coast groups. For example, among the Nuxalk people, masks were understood as manifestations of supernatural entities (Leip 1999). They were used in ceremonies and were one component of costumes that were used as part of story-telling events in public performances such as potlatches. Crucially, these masks could only be worn as part of a costume, and they could only be worn by the owner of the mask (Leip 1999, 279). In this case, the use and meaning of the object was directly linked to the owner of that object; without an owner (who had to be given the mask in the correct fashion), the mask was unusable (Leip 1999). Among the Nitsitapiisinni (Blackfoot), one of the most important pieces of material culture is the sacred bundle. These consist of items given to people by spirit beings and are used in ceremonies (Blackfoot Gallery Committee 2001). They are so important that they are regarded as living beings and need to be treated in very specific ways; in particular, people are quiet when they are close to the bundles and women care for the bundles as if they were a child (Blackfoot Gallery Committee 2001).

Material culture is also significant as clothing. Again, there is obviously a functional component of clothing, but clothing is also a powerful form of communication. Many Native American groups made striking clothing out of tanned hides, which was frequently lavishly decorated with beadwork, tassles, fringing and fur (Berry and Brink 2004). These were often worn along with headdresses, again some of which were lavish and containing feathers and furs; clothing communicated meaning about a person’s status (Berry and Brink 2004). Tattoos were also used to convey status (for example, as recorded among the Tlingit; Jones 1914, 69). The Kwakiutl of the Northwest Coast also decorated their bodies with paint, and even practiced head deformation in the past (Spencer et al. 1977). The Haida, also Northwest Coast, were renowned for their jewellery (MacDonald 1996). Even hairstyles were used to communicate meaning; among the Blackfoot a front topknot on a man, for example, indicated that he kept an important sacred bundle (Blackfoot Gallery Committee 2001, 37). A Tlingit shaman wore his hair tied into knots and balls; his hair was thought to be the seat of his power and if it was cut off, it would kill him (Kan 1989, 62). Thus among many groups the body is an important medium for the expression of identity and status (Spencer et al. 1977).

Problems of ethnographic analogy

The ethnographic study of material culture is very useful for demonstrating the significance of organic material. We occasionally get glimpses of this in the archaeological record (for example, at the Mesolithic site of Star Carr in Britain where organic preservation revealed a wide variety of organic objects; Clark 1954). At Star Carr we were able to see an aspect of prehistoric material culture that we rarely encounter; of particular note are the carved antler frontlets, which may well have been worn as ceremonial headgear by a shamanistic figure as part of the practice of moving between the interchangeable worlds of animals and humans (Conneller 2004). However, the type of preservation found at Star Carr is rare, and thus the ethnographic record offers us useful insights into the types of material we might expect to find in particular environments. As archaeologists, we can too easily place too much emphasis on stone tools and so while we are very unlikely to encounter the range of objects that anthropologists can study in the archaeological record, we can at least consider what kinds of objects are missing.

However useful this is, the study of material culture among modern hunter-gatherer groups is still limited in many ways and it could actually benefit from the approaches outlined here. It is the general approaches to material culture used by both archaeologists and anthropologists that have provided the basis of most of the key issues discussed here. This includes ideas such as object biographies, the relationship between personhood and objects and an understanding that not everything can be exchanged. While modern hunter-gatherer examples have been used to illustrate these points, the majority are better documented through archaeological or non-hunter-gatherer case studies (using examples such as the kula). This is therefore one area that hunter-gatherer studies could usefully explore.

Conclusion

In this chapter, we have considered the material culture of modern hunter-gatherers. We have looked at the range of material culture used by hunter-gatherers, both organic and inorganic. It has been suggested that material culture was not just practical or functional but also related to belief systems and personhood. The chapter has also considered what can and cannot be exchanged and shown how the giving of gifts is important not only economically but also in negotiating social relations. We have also examined material culture produced exclusively for ceremonies and the most famous ethnographic gift-giving ceremony of all: potlatch. It has also been suggested that more general approaches to material culture could very usefully be employed in the study of hunter-gatherer objects.

8

Conclusions: How the study of modern hunter-gatherers can help us understand the past

Introduction

In this chapter, we return to the issue of the usefulness of ethnographic analogy. Drawing on the debates on the relevance of studying modern hunter-gatherers for understanding past groups as discussed throughout the volume, this chapter suggests that there are many important ideas to be gleaned from a study of hunter-gatherer ethnography. A combination of the more traditional ecological approaches with those promoted by an interpretive archaeology offer us a range of valuable insights that can help us explore prehistoric societies.

Thinking about ethnographic analogy

In Chapter 1, a brief history of the use of ethnographic analogy was presented. From an early use by archaeologists who understood the evolution of society as being along a one-way path from simple societies through to civilization, it was first fully utilized by those who followed a cultural ecological approach in the mid-twentieth century. This was then developed by the processual movement from the 1960s onwards, which also saw the development of ethnoarchaeology as a distinctive sub-discipline. Analogy has also been important to interpretive archaeological approaches which have been prevalent in many parts of the world since the 1980s. In Chapter 1 it was noted that all archaeologists use analogy, so the key question being asked was: what, precisely, can analogy tell us? Throughout the volume, different aspects of modern hunter-gatherer life have been explored, and we have seen which analogies are the most insightful for understanding past populations. We now return to this issue more broadly: what are the advantages and disadvantages of using ethnographic analogy for understanding the past?

Certainly, as we have seen throughout different chapters, there are many problems with using ethnographic data to help us understand past societies (and see, for example, Zvelebil and Fewster 2001). First, it is clear that even the very earliest accounts of hunter-gatherers from historic periods were written during a period of colonization which had already had far-reaching effects on native populations. This included a high mortality rate from disease or warfare or both, the removal of people from native lands, radical changes to flora and fauna (for example, the introduction of the horse in North America and the massive reduction in buffalo populations) and dramatic changes to native belief systems. Furthermore, these earliest accounts of hunting and gathering peoples were by incoming peoples who were writing from a very specific cultural context, specifically as colonizers who invariably had their own agendas. Even early anthropologists were writing from a very particular historical context. By the time anthropologists were seriously engaging with critical thinking and the nature of interpretation, very few hunter-gatherers survived and those that did were absolutely a product of modern circumstances living in a modern world. Clearly, then, modern hunter-gatherers are just that: modern people, albeit with some differences when compared to modern western people.

Secondly, even a superficial examination of modern hunter- gatherers demonstrates that these are a hugely diverse group of people. Lumping together people who live in a varied range of habitats, utilize completely different resources and demonstrate radically different social structures is highly problematic. The previous chapters have clearly shown enormous diversity in so many different aspects of people’s lives that it has led many scholars to question where there really is such an entity as a ‘hunter-gatherer’ (e.g. Pluciennik 2005; forthcoming). Clearly there are people who acquire their food primarily through hunting and gathering, but beyond this basic point there is so much diversity that it is very difficult to argue that there is an all-embracing definition for a ‘hunter-gatherer’.

Thirdly, while there is huge diversity among modern hunter-gatherer groups, we also know that these groups are only a tiny fraction of peoples who once made their living by hunting, gathering and fishing until relatively recently. This suggests that there was even greater diversity in the past, which we no longer have direct ethnographic access to. With such a small sample available to us, what kinds of possible human behaviours might we be missing? Taking into account these problems, where does this leave us in regards to ethnographic analogy?

There are some elements which the range of modern hunter-gatherers do seem to share. The reliance on hunting, gathering and fishing of course, as well as animistic relations with the environment are shared by most groups, and these similarities offer us an interpretive starting point for understanding past groups. Quite clearly, investigating diversity in the present is useful and can encourage us to explore diversity in the past. Knowing that there are many different outcomes for people who make a living from hunting and gathering is a useful way of approaching the past. If we accept that analogy is central to all archaeological interpretation anyway, the key, then, is to think as critically as possible about the use of analogy and to use it as a way into exploring diverse social groups in the past.

Throughout the volume, terms used widely in the anthropological literature have been introduced and explored. This includes notions of ‘immediate and delayed return systems’, and ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ social organizations. These terms already appear in the archaeological literature, particularly notions of simple and complex. The issue is whether this is appropriate and useful. Notions of immediate and delayed return systems do seem to be very useful terms for describing different strategies of getting food. However, very few modern hunter-gatherers are either immediate or delayed return system hunter-gatherers: the vast majority employ both approaches. Furthermore, the extremes of either immediate or delayed return systems can be seen as the result of recent circumstances. Indeed, those modern groups that are primarily immediate return system hunter-gatherers such as the !Kung in Africa, while once touted as classic examples of what life would have been like in prehistory (e.g. Lee 1979), are now considered to be atypical. It is fair to say that these groups are an excellent example of hunter-gatherers who have been radically affected by modern circumstances because these people and the way in which they get food is almost certainly a result of very recent historical events. In the case of the !Kung, this is being forced into marginal areas by adjacent farming groups (Solway and Lee 1990; Wilmsen and Denbow 1990). Likewise, the classic delayed return system hunter-gatherers such as the Northwest Coast groups were also the result of rather unique historical circumstances, this time resulting in a heavy reliance on fish and sedentism, both possibly the result of increasingly complex social relations brought on by colonial encounters (Sassaman 2004). Previously it was suggested that this form of hunting and gathering society was unique, but there is strong evidence to suggest that prior to colonization, many hunting and gathering peoples would have used delayed return systems as they were utilising extremely rich environments (for example in Australia; see Lourandos 1997). Thus, the idea that immediate return system hunter-gatherers were the norm and delayed return system hunter-gatherers an exception can be discarded. The extreme examples

of both seem to be the result of recent events. This potentially leaves the majority of hunter-gatherers as employing a mix of immediate and return systems. Perhaps, then, these terms are useful as the extreme end points of a spectrum, and we should use these terms more as a way of understanding different strategies for acquiring food, that could be used simultaneously, or at different times of the year, as people saw fit.

Likewise, the terms simple and complex are equally problematic if we see them in either/or terms. Certainly we have seen that some groups are not as socially complex as other groups, but this could more usefully be seen as a spectrum rather than oppositions. It seems likely that some prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups had less hierarchical social relations than other groups, and of course there is considerable scope for variation over both time and space, but to classify groups according to these abstract concepts is highly problematic. There are also issues associated with the terms ‘simple’ and ‘complex’. The spirit within which these phrases were coined was not designed to be derogatory: to the contrary, a simple hunter-gatherer was one unencumbered by the complexities of demanding social stratification. However, it is certainly the case that these terms are not ideal for expressing abstract notions of social organization and should be discarded (Warren 2005a). This leaves us with the question of what words or phrases should replace them, something to which there is not an easy answer.

Furthermore, there is an implicit idea in some, particularly older accounts, that hunter-gatherers are those people who have not yet taken up agriculture. In this sense, they are ‘leftovers’, people who have not encountered agriculture or not yet been persuaded or forced to take it up. Nevertheless, there is a sense, especially as hunting and gathering groups were increasingly surrounded by agricultural groups and in many cases were being actively coerced into becoming farmers, that these people will eventually and inexorably become involved in agriculture. Thus, there is the sense in some accounts that there is a development, from simple hunter-gatherer, to complex hunter-gatherer and finally to agriculturalist (see Pluciennik 2005). There are many different problems with approach, and this has been raised in different chapters throughout the book. As we have already discussed in Chapter 1, the idea that there is uni-linear development from hunter-gatherer to farmer was very much part of a nineteenth-century way of thinking about the world and human development. Even removed from the negative connotations of that particular intellectual paradigm, the idea that people progress or move from hunter-gatherer to farmer persists in the literature. This is problematic because it not only prioritizes the economy over every other aspect of life but it also assumes that farming is somehow a better or more superior way of life, that will ultimately lead to ‘civilization’. It also continues to promote the idea of either/or, in this case that people were either hunter-gatherers or farmers, and it also reinforces the idea that changing subsistence economy was a one-way trip.

A clear illustration of the fallacy of the idea of uni-linear development from hunter-gatherer to farmer is the Punan foragers of Borneo (Hoffman 2009). This group of hunter-gatherers appear to once have been agriculturalists who have taken up a foraging way of life. Essentially, desirable natural commodities such as wood, resin, rattan and bezoar stones are located in the dense primary forests of Borneo, but these are difficult for the island’s sedentary farmers to reach. Nevertheless, these items are highly valuable to agricultural groups as they can be exchanged for essentials such as salt, tobacco, cloth and iron with foreign traders. A specialist group of people who were once farmers appear to have emerged on Borneo who now spend their time acquiring these goods. They then swap these goods with agriculturalists, who in turn exchange the goods with traders. A by-product of their exploitation of this trading niche is that they can no longer farm, so have taken up hunting and gathering as their primary form of subsistence economy (Hoffman 2009, 141–2). This illustrates that there is not a universal, uni-linear evolution of people from hunter-gatherer to farmer. It also shows, once again, that modern hunter-gatherers are very much a product of the modern world.

Beyond hunter-gatherers

Throughout this volume, the case studies have explored anthropological ideas in relation to prehistoric and therefore archaeological examples. However, some of the case studies dealt with people who made a living from agriculture. There is certainly an issue as to when a hunter-gatherer can no longer be classed as such and should be considered an agriculturalist. There is considerable debate on this matter within both anthropology and archaeology (see, for example, Cummings and Harris 2011; Kent 1989; Smith 2001; Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy 1984, 1986). However, it can be argued that the study of modern hunter-gatherers is also relevant for gaining insights into peoples who make their living, either in part or in full, through agriculture. Indeed, hunter-gatherer ethnography has been used extensively by Neolithic scholars who use it to offer insights into people who were clearly using both domesticated animals and plants to a greater or lesser extent (see, for example, Tilley 1994, 1996). Kent (1989) convincingly argued that the thing that defined a group’s worldview was not how they made a living, but how mobile they were. This can be seen to work not only archaeologically, where it is clear that many Neolithic peoples in Northwest Europe were still mobile, but also anthropologically, where it is clear that those sedentary groups, such as the Northwest Coast groups, were very different to more mobile hunters and gatherers. Thus, it can be argued that the study of modern hunting and gathering groups is useful not only for understanding prehistoric hunter-gatherers, but also for other peoples who made their living either in part or completely, from farming. Analogy is a useful endeavour, and relational analogies allow for us to compare aspects of people’s lives which share some similarities, without relying on similarities in all aspects of life. The primacy placed on the economy by processual archaeologies is no longer necessary; interpretive archaeologists are increasingly drawing on economically diverse groups to understand hunter-gatherers, agriculturalists, and those who fall somewhere between. This approach has been advocated within this book.

Likewise, then, the study of non-hunting and gathering peoples may inform our understandings of hunter-gatherers. At certain points in the volume, some examples have been taken from agricultural societies. This related particularly to the ordering of domestic space (Berber House: Bourdieu 1971) and studies of material culture (Kula: Weiner 1992). There are plenty of other studies of agricultural societies which could greatly enhance our understandings of hunter-gatherers. There is also an entire literature which relates to hunter-gatherers which this volume has not considered at all; these relate to ‘indigenous archaeology’, covering issues such as cultural resource management, the involvement of indigenous peoples in the production of knowledge and the legislation surrounding indigenous peoples and their land (see, for example, Smith and Wobst 2005). While there has not been the space to explore these issues in this volume, this is another fascinating area of investigation, which can help us further refine our understandings of the present and the past.

Conclusions

There is no escaping from the fact that we all use analogy in order to interpret the archaeological record. As discussed above, there are inherent problems of using ethnographic analogy. So what, ultimately, can analogy tell us?

Cunningham’s recent article on ethnoarchaeology suggested that ethnographic analogy is useful for ‘translating the archaeological record’ and ‘testing archaeologically derived propositions’ (Cunningham 2003, 392). We have seen this quite clearly in Chapter 2 and 3 where it was shown that ethnographic analogy has been very useful for helping us understand the archaeological record. There have been a range of important observations about modern hunter-gatherers that assist us in translating the archaeological record. An interpretive archaeology relies on understanding the archaeological record as much as a processual one, and these insights are therefore invaluable. For example, we have seen how important the acquisition of food is to people. However, interpretive archaeology highlights how food also plays a highly significant role in spiritual and ritual life; indeed, the two are intertwined. We have seen how the environment is very important in shaping how hunter-gatherers do things, but again, the environment is not the only thing that influences choices and decisions about different aspects of life. Likewise, mobility fulfils both a practical and social role. It has been argued, therefore, that elements of both a more traditional processual use of ethnographic analogy combined with an interpretive archaeology enable us to get the most out of ethnographic analogy. There is no doubt that it assists us in translating the archaeological record.

Cunningham (2003) also argues that ethnographic analogy enables us to go on an ‘interpretive journey’ which raise possibilities of existence which we might not previously have considered. Ethnographies open up a range of potential worldviews which our own cultural viewpoint does not necessarily let us envisage. To return to the quote in Chapter 1: ‘Archaeologists … need the prompting of anthropology in order to know what to look for’ (Thomas 2010, 183). This has been the bulk of the content presented in Chapters 5, 6 and 7, and is very much in keeping with the overall aims of an interpretive approach. This has highlighted issues which are not only interesting in their own right but also affect all other aspects of life. Therefore, it has been argued that it is not possible to really understand an economy unless it is placed within a broader understanding of society’s belief systems, social organization and symbolic use of space, landscape and material culture. Thus, belief systems are interesting to explore in their own terms, but they also inform all other aspects of a person’s life. The broad notion of animism, for example, is of crucial importance to understanding what people not only thought of in terms of their own place in the cosmos but also for interpreting why people hunt in particular ways, make particular types of material culture and move through the landscape. This holistic approach can then be explored through contextually specific examples in the archaeological record. Ethnographic analogy, then, as part of a broader interpretive endeavour, and also utilising the insights gained from ethnoarchaeology, can help us understand past variation, complexities and the possibilities of human existence, both in the present and in the past.

There are now very few hunter-gatherers left in the world. Those that do survive are part of the modern world. The challenge for anthropologists now is how to progress studies of people who were until recently hunting and gathering. The solution seems to be a combination of methods and approaches: the analysis of ethnographic and ethnohistoric texts, fieldwork, and increasingly, archaeological investigations (see section 7 in Cummings et al. forthcoming). These are exciting times, then, where anthropology, history and archaeology can come together and move forward (Garrow and Yarrow 2010). Ultimately, the goals of both archaeologists and anthropologists studying hunter-gatherers are the same: an interest in what life was like for people other than ourselves.

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Index

Aggrandizers  59

Agriculture  see Domesticated foods

Ainu  23, 24, 46–7, 57

Alcohol  22

Altered states of consciousness  22, 82–3, 108–9

Analogy  5, 9–11, 132, 136

see also Ethnographic analogy

Ancestors  84, 97, 98–9, 106, 115

Animal-human relations  see Animism

Animism  18, 19, 23, 70, 76–9, 85, 91, 98, 140

Anticipated mobility  40, 52

Axis mundi  81

Base camp  42–3, 50

Baskets  116

Belief systems  75–93

Binford  6–8, 14, 36–9, 42

Biography  96

Birth  86–7

Burial  88, 89–91

Ceremonial material culture  127–8

Chiefdoms  60, 70

Childcare  67

Chumash  59–60, 66, 84, 106, 108

Clothing  128

Collectors  see Logistical mobility

Colonialism  3, 6, 9, 28, 86, 132

Complex hunter-gatherers  25, 57–61, 62–5, 69, 70–2, 135

Complexity  see Complex hunter-gatherers

Creation  79–81, 110

Creator animals  80

Cultural ecology  6, 10, 14, 25, 32, 36

Culture-history  6

Death  87–8

Delayed return systems  see Return systems

Descent  68

Dogs  26

Dolmens  104–5

Domesticated foods  20–2

Dreaming (The)  99, 109, 115

Dwellings  45–9

Ecological approach  see Cultural ecology

Egalitarianism  17, 56–7, 61, 67, 70

Ertebølle  50–1

Ethnoarchaeology  6–8, 42, 52–3

Ethnographic analogy  4–5, 8–11, 31–4, 52–4, 70–4, 91–3, 109–11, 129–30, 131–40

Exchange  122–5

Fishing  22–4

Foragers  see Residential mobility

Game  15–16

Gathering  18–20

Gender  18, 19, 65–7, 72–3

Gifts  122–5, 127

Gravettian  89–91

Hadza  20, 42, 56, 57

Haida  49

Hoëdic  63, 64

Honey  20, 32

Houses  see Dwellings

Human-animal relations  see Animism

Hunting  15–18, 77, 92

Hunting camp  43–4, 50

Immediate return systems  see Return systems

Insects  19

Interpersonal violence  see Violence

Interpretive archaeology  8–9

Inuit  77, 80, 97, 117

Ju’/hoansi  19, 43, 45, 116, 122

Kalahari  27–8

Kill site  44

Kinship  67–70, 73–4, 79, 126

Kula  117

Landscape  95–105, 120

Liminality  86, 89–91

Lithics  see Stone tools

Logistical mobility  38–9, 51

Mammoths  29–31

Man the hunter  7, 14, 35, 56, 65

Marine resources  22–4

Marriage  68–9

Material culture  83, 113–30

Mbuti  28, 57, 87, 98

Meat  15–18, 43, 78

Medicine wheel  45

Mesolithic  50–1, 62–5

Mesolithic-Neolithic transition  20–2

Mezhirich  29–31

Mobility  35–47, 49, 97, 137

Moiety  68

Morality  100–3

Myths  98–100, 105, 110

New archaeology  see Processual archaeology

Nomadism  see Mobility

Northwest Coast  23, 48–9, 57, 61, 83, 115, 120, 125–6, 128, 134

Nunamiut  7, 14, 16, 36, 38, 42, 44, 114

Object biographies  120–1

Optimal foraging  16–17

Personhood  70, 86, 91, 121

Plant foods  18–20

Post-processual archaeology see Interpretive archaeology

Potlatch  123–5, 127

Pottery  116

Prestige  17, 30–1

Processual archaeology  6–7, 9, 14

Puberty  87, 90

Ranked society  see Complex hunter-gatherers

Residential mobility  36–8, 50

Return systems  24–5, 58, 134–5

Risk  17, 23, 30, 126

Rites of passage  86–8, 89, 123

Rock art  45, 84, 105–9, 111

Salmon  23, 61, 78

Sedentism  47–50

Shamanism  81–6, 92, 107–9, 128–9

Sharing  57–8

Simple hunter-gatherers  25, 56–65, 69, 70–2, 135

Social evolution  see Uni-linear development

Social organisation  55–67

Sound  96–7

Spirits  82

Star Carr  129

Stone tools  114–15, 118–19

Storage  15, 25, 38

Sunghir  89

Symbiotic  28

Taste  21–2, 32

Territorial mobility  38

Téviec  63

Time  81

Tlingit  123, 125–6, 128

Totemism  79

Trickster  80, 92

Uni-linear development  5–6, 53, 71, 136–7

Universe  80–1, 82, 92, 107

Violence  41, 61–2, 63

Warfare  see Violence

White Mountain Apache  100–3, 110

Women  16–7, 65–7, 72

Wood  115, 125–6

Copyright

Bloomsbury Academic

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First published 2013

© Vicki Cummings, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Vicki Cummings has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

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ISBN: 978-1-47250-414-2