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Thinky thoughts about what lies between foraging and agriculture
I've been having Thinky Thoughts about the racist, colonialist gatekeeping that goes on in archaeology and anthropology around which groups of people get to be called "agriculturalists" and which end up labelled as "hunter gatherers". Sources like wikipedia say the distinction is important because agriculture enables settled living, with higher population densities, and that in turn enables craft specialization, surplus resources, long term infrastructure, having nicer things, and so on.
But there are so many groups of people who did live in permanent or semi-permanent settlements and were able to have some or all of those knock on benefits, but who continue to be classed as "hunter gatherers" because they didn't *farm*. Or they didn't *plant crops*, even though they did maintain and harvest vast stands of edible wild plants. As research continues to turn up more and more examples of people who weren't nomads living sparsely in small groups and collecting only naturally occurring food sources, the "hunter gatherer" category looks more and more like a catch all for "anyone who doesn't make a living like our wheat growing ancestors."
The gatekeeping isn't only about restricting admittance to the sacred precincts of the "agriculturalist" club, it's also about preventing the creation of additional in-between labels to properly encompass the spectrum of strategies humans have used to feed themselves other than farming. Maintaining the dichotomy is vital to preserving the specialness of the agriculturalist in group and the subaltern status of everyone else. Instead, you find half-assed labels like "enhanced," "complex," or "affluent hunter gatherers." Even though the adjective and non-adjective groups share little in common apart from not being farmers. And even though the closer you look, the fewer regular food collecting cultures there were compared to (pick adjective) cultures.
( Read more... )
I originally planned to say something about forest gardens and some of the other people in the world who get classed as (adjective) hunter gatherers instead of farmers or farming-adjacent, but this post has grown too long, so there will be a part 2.
But there are so many groups of people who did live in permanent or semi-permanent settlements and were able to have some or all of those knock on benefits, but who continue to be classed as "hunter gatherers" because they didn't *farm*. Or they didn't *plant crops*, even though they did maintain and harvest vast stands of edible wild plants. As research continues to turn up more and more examples of people who weren't nomads living sparsely in small groups and collecting only naturally occurring food sources, the "hunter gatherer" category looks more and more like a catch all for "anyone who doesn't make a living like our wheat growing ancestors."
The gatekeeping isn't only about restricting admittance to the sacred precincts of the "agriculturalist" club, it's also about preventing the creation of additional in-between labels to properly encompass the spectrum of strategies humans have used to feed themselves other than farming. Maintaining the dichotomy is vital to preserving the specialness of the agriculturalist in group and the subaltern status of everyone else. Instead, you find half-assed labels like "enhanced," "complex," or "affluent hunter gatherers." Even though the adjective and non-adjective groups share little in common apart from not being farmers. And even though the closer you look, the fewer regular food collecting cultures there were compared to (pick adjective) cultures.
( Read more... )
I originally planned to say something about forest gardens and some of the other people in the world who get classed as (adjective) hunter gatherers instead of farmers or farming-adjacent, but this post has grown too long, so there will be a part 2.