Hunter-gatherer Studies Research Articles

Evolutionary perspectives on technology and technological change

It is my view that many so-called theoretical disputes in archaeology stem from the fact that participants in the debates are actually trying to answer different questions. Thus, I begin this essay with a brief discussion of the problems that most occupy my attention. My main research area is the Pleistocene prehistory of western Eurasia, although huntergatherer studies, both archaeological and ethnographic, inform my research on the Middle and Upper Paleolithic. I am especially interested in how the role of technology in human life has changed over the past 2.5 million years. Over that time artifacts have evolved from simple extensions of the human physical apparatus and relatively peripheral elements in the behavioral repertoire of the genus Homo to a central component in practically every interaction between humans and their environments as well as between humans and other humans. In short, artifacts have been transformed from simple extensions of hands, claws and teeth into material culture. This is obviously a long and complex story, but it is also central to understanding the human condition and how it came about. Evolutionary concepts and models provide some of the best tools for learning about the kinds of long-term processes that engage my interest. Many archaeologists also find them useful for examining processes that unfolded over much shorter time frames, even within the span of a single human generation. In this essay I explore the rationale for applying evolutionary ideas to the study of technology, and some of the ways these ideas have been used. I would not claim to speak for everyone who flies the banner of evolution in archaeology, for they are a diverse and contentious lot. Instead I focus on what seem to be the most productive rationales and approaches. Speaking at the broadest level, concepts and models derived from evolutionary theory have proven or could prove useful in three general contexts. One obvious application arises where there is thought to be a direct connection between technological and biological changes occurring on an evolutionary time scale. The most salient examples are arguments linking changes in artifact form or manufacture techniques to evolutionary developments in human cognition (Coolidge and Wynn 2001; Mithen 1996, 1997; Wynn

Material Culture and Sacred Landscape: The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty

Material Culture and Sacred Landscape: The Anthropology of the Siberian Khanty PETER JORDAN ALTAMIRA PRESS, WALNUT CREEK, CA, 2003 308 PP. $80 HARDCOVER, $29.95 PAPERBACK It seems safe to assume that I am not the only archaeologist who experiences something akin to a pang of longing when I have occasion to pick up an older ethnography. Many of the ethnographers of the early and middle twentieth century devoted almost as much attention to the material culture and environment of the people they studied as the people themselves. For all their shortcomings, these early ethnographies presented a richness of detail that is too often missing in contemporary works of cultural andiropology: settlement maps, illustrations of house patterns, accounts of subsistence techniques, and descriptions of everyday material objects. I was thus perhaps predisposed to have a favorable opinion of Jordan's book and its close attention to Khanty material culture. But this is not a work of vulgar materialism, nor is it a return to the simple descriptive style of many past ethnographies. His primary concern is describing how the Khanty material culture, including landscapes, is 'enculturated' (i.e., given symbolic meaning) through physical transformation or incorporation into the symbolism of social practices. Jordan draws from a number of theoretical strands in an effort to find a middle ground between cultural materialist (socioecological) and interpretive (semiotic) approaches to hunter-gatherer studies. By his own admission, however, the middle ground he proposes leans heavily toward interpretive theories of material culture, which he sees as a corrective to the materialist approaches that have traditionally dominated this field (p. 22). While the terms he uses may be unfamiliar to some readers, his theoretical discussion is clear (free of much of the jargon inherent in the primary works) and even-handed (pointing out some of the limitations and criticisms of these approaches). Jordan contextualizes his edmographic material in broad temporal and spatial scales, placing the Khanty in a macro-regional, longue duree historical context. This history is phrased in the language and perspective of world systems dieory, while extending discussion and credence to its many critiques. While readers anxious to get into the details of the ethnography may wonder why this wasn't incorporated into his earlier theoretical discussion, as an archaeologist I appreciated the inclusion of an extended historical context. World systems theory is appropriate for understanding this history, given that the Khanty paid fur in tribute to the Tatar Khans during the medieval period, were later incorporated into fur tax systems of the Russian and Soviet empires, and today occupy a landscape valued for its mineral resources. Having dispensed with the historical context, Jordan turns to the heart of the ethnography. In addition to material from a 10-month field study of communities on one tributary of the River Ob', he makes good use of other scholarly works and edinohistoric data. …

Politics and Practice in Critical Anthropology: The Work of Richard B. Lee: Introduction

This volume is a modest offering of esteem and affection to Richard Lee in celebration of his work, his politics, his friendship, his enthusiasm and of the inspirational impact these have had on so many of us, not only those represented in this volume but on many others within and outside of the academy. The current issue developed out of a series of sessions organized by Christine Gailey and me for the 2001 joint meetings of the Canadian Anthropology Society, the American Ethnological Society and the Society for Cultural Anthropology in Montreal to mark Lee's impending retirement (2004) from the University of Toronto where he has been on the faculty since 1972 and where, in 1999, he was granted the prestigious position of University Professor. Thus this Festschrift does not signify the closure of a career, but rather a transition in which Lee will no doubt continue to collaborate with colleagues, mentor and train young anthropologists, conduct fieldwork, produce scholarly work and remain a political activist. In Gailey's words: In its original sense a Festschrift is a celebration in writing by people who have drawn on and grown to appreciate the work of a major figure, at a time when he or she can respond and contribute further to the discussions for which the honoree is so pivotal. For Richard Lee, this demands that writers address a range of issues and controversies that are far from concluded, areas of debate that point to the vitality of a four-fields approach in anthropology and long-term, socially engaged field research, with both agendas committed to redressing oppression. Only in such a way can we ensure that later generations will have an alternative view to seeing human nature as either a biological reflex or a narrow range of attributes serving a global imperium. (personal communication)Many of the papers were delivered in preliminary form at the 2001 conference and some have been added.(1) In addition, Gailey conducted an extensive interview with Lee in 2002; from this she has produced an intellectual biography that follows this introduction. Gailey provides a window into Lee's life enabling us to better understand and appreciate the array of factors and circumstances such as family, education, the radicalized political context of the 1960s and the anti-war movement that have shaped the direction of Lee's life's work. The articles in this volume, written for Lee, each touch upon one or more of the various theoretical, ethnographic and the political strands that run through his work and, more importantly, upon the ways in which these merge seamlessly in Lee's career (broadly conceived). The specific papers and their relation to Lee's oeuvre will be referred to below.Art, Science and PoliticsIn his important 1992 article, Art, Science, or Politics? The Crisis in Hunter-Gatherer Studies published in American Anthropologist, Lee evokes Snow's distinction between the supposedly irreconcilable humanistic and scientific academic subcultures. I wish to borrow and slightly twist Lee's title in order to suggest that his work and that of those with whom he collaborated in the Kalahari and elsewhere have sought to bridge the gulf explicit in Snow's dichotomy. Lee's work, in particular, not only embraces and effectively synthesizes both tendencies but it does so without getting lost in the singular logic of either or indulging in either's excesses. To Snow's distinction, I wish to add, as did Lee, politics. Lee's commitment to social justice, to a politically engaged anthropology, and to activism within and outside of the academy have been consistent hallmarks of his work and practice. In different ways, the majority of the articles in this volume reflect these ideals and practices.Lee's unwavering resolve to understand the nature of human equality and to strive towards its realization underlie his political praxis. The optimism inherent in this position does not spring from naivete but rather from a mature and seasoned realism that endures despite the difficult times and challenging moments that Lee has encountered (see Gailey, this volume). …

The Long Walk IV - Hunter-Gatherers and Anthropology: An Interview with James Woodburn

This interview took place at James Woodburn's home in Cambridge, England, on 30 March 2001, where James has now retired from teaching at the London School of Economics and Political Science. However, on the same day as the interview James drove down to Brighton to attend the ASA conference on `Rights, Claims and Entitlements' held at the University of Sussex. In June 2001 a symposium on `Property and Equality' was held in his honour at the new Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Germany), and James is also a member of the organising committee for the 19th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies (CHAGS 9) held in Edinburgh in September 2002. It is clear that he has no intention of resigning from anthropology or more specifically from hunter-gatherer studies, which he has influenced since conducting field research with the Hadza of Tanzania (then Tanganyika) in the late 1950s and since his appearance at the `Man the Hunter' conference in 1966 and many more hunter-gatherer conferences since then. At the LSE, where he spent most of his professional career, he supervised numerous research projects on hunter-gatherers all over the world but also other projects, including work on pastoral and agricultural peoples in East Africa, the region that he knows best. JW--How many questions do you have, Thomas? TW--I have not counted them. They form a conglomerate, a set of shared questions by some of your colleagues and students whom I have contacted, plus some of my own. I start with your personal ancestry, then your academic ancestry, then move on to the Hadza, then on to questions of methods and theories, to the current and future situation of hunter-gatherers and the study of hunter-gatherers. JW--Goodness me! TW--Shall we start with some genealogical questions, first on personal ancestors and then on to academic ancestors? You studied here in Cambridge, you taught at the LSE and everybody thinks of you as being English, but you told me once that you thought of yourself as being Irish, Northern Irish. Now, to what extent do you think that this Irish ancestry does make a difference, given that you yourself have spent very little time living there? JW--Yes, I think it does make a difference. I value my mixed identity as both English and Irish. And, rather curiously, it has a bearing on how I became an anthropologist. In September 1954 I arrived in Cambridge to take a degree in history. I had spent the previous two years in the army doing my compulsory military service, during which I was trained as a military interpreter in Russian. I greatly disliked the army but liked the language work and wondered whether to give up the idea of taking history and instead to take a degree in Russian language and literature. But all this changed when by chance I wandered into the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology and happened to meet Professor Meyer Fortes. He invited me into his room and I explained my uncertainty about which degree to take--whether I should do history, or Russian or even archaeology which had greatly interested my Irish grandfather who, in my childhood, had shown me wonderful Irish archaeological sites and treasured neolithic arrowheads. At that stage I had almost no idea of what anthropology was. Fortes encouraged me to take archaeology and anthropology. He latched onto two themes, both of which were, as I later came to understand, very important to him. He talked about the significance of grandparent/grandchild relations. He also seized on the fact that I saw myself as being a kind of outsider and assured me that a sense of being an outsider was an important qualification for the study of anthropology. I was entranced by all of this and most of all by the fact that a Cambridge professor was willing to spend an hour of his time talking to me with such enthusiasm about his subject. Although all this happened more than forty years ago, I can remember it with great clarity. …

SAMLING, SAMLERE OG JÆGER-SAMLERE: Primitiv erhvervskultur og civilisationens fix

Collecting is about taking possession of the
 world, an exercise in how to make it one’s
 own, says James Clifford. He refers to the
 accumulation of material objects and to the
 collecting of exotic, curious, rare things that
 museum curators, philatelists, and art-lovers
 dedicate themselves to. Collecting, however,
 is not merely a pastime of an affluent elite.
 Comparative hunter-gatherer studies indicate
 that gathering serves to create an
 existential space of freedom – even in contexts
 where gathering appears primarily a
 subsistence activity. Gathering puts time and
 the social at play. It supports an escape from
 the workings of time and from the bonds of
 social relations and institutions that persist
 through time mediated by exchanges of
 objects. The article considers the trajectories
 of hunter-gatherer research and some of its
 results. It also points to its recent calling
 into question some of the fundamental
 assumptions on which the research has
 been based. Hunter-gatherer society, after
 all, may not be as distinct from other types
 of society as previously believed. This
 allows recognition that cultural phenomena
 previously considered distinct features
 of hunter-gatherer society figure equally
 in other types of society. Indeed, features
 known as “immediate return” or “demand
 sharing” and even “living in the present”
 may be adaptive forms of exchange and
 perception constituted at the interface of
 different – complex and less complex – types
 of social systems. These features then, are
 not special forms of exchange and ideology
 characteristic of hunter-gatherers seen as a
 model of pristine human life in groups. They
 are social strategies that sustain the survival
 of marginalized groups in contemporary
 societies. Indeed, “living in the present” and
 exchange in the form of “immediate return”
 or “sharing” helps encapsulated systems
 at the margins successfully escape total
 incorporation into surrounding, dominant,
 systems. A case in point is that of the Pajonal
 Ashéninka in the Peruvian Amazon where
 gathering is a necessary supplement to
 horticulture while simultaneously being considered
 a leisure activity by the Ashéninka
 themselves. From the point of view of the
 capitalist economy, this capacity of the
 Ashéninka to sustain themselves “from
 nothing” is an advantage in that it allows their
 being hired by local settlers for contract labor
 at very low costs to the employer. Gathering
 in this context helps the Ashéninka remain
 a relatively autonomous – and marginalized
 – indigenous group. At the same time, their
 availability as cheap reserve labor sustains
 a marginal form of capitalist production, in
 this case cattle-ranching in the rain forest,
 that threatens and gradually appropriates the
 resources on which the Ashéninka depend.
 Marginalized groups, be they Amazonian
 Indians, London prostitutes, Hungarian
 Gypsies, or Aegean Greek peasants may
 be shown to exhibit similar features of
 orientation to the present, a quasi-ritual space
 outside of durational time. They all appear to
 take a “natural” abundance for granted and
 to forage for their subsistence. They develop
 modes of life oriented towards the present
 and see no need to store for the future. In
 this way the structural insecurity that is part
 and parcel of their marginalized condition
 is transformed into an active focus on a
 celebration of immediate consumption in the
 present. The marginalized may experience
 themselves as free and autonomous people
 to whom freedom from material possessions
 and disengagement from institutions that
 organize long-term social reproduction is
 an existential choice. The marginalized
 position, and the particular form of identity
 it allows, however, is peculiarly vulnerable
 to appropriation by others. Despite the
 appearance of an autonomous way of life, it
 is hardly an independent social phenomenon.
 Rather, it is a product as much as the object of
 a dual process of incorporation and marginalization.
 In the end, the really interesting
 question concerns the role of an orientation
 towards the present tied to specific behavior
 in any type of society in particular limited
 contexts, be they gathering for subsistence,
 shopping for fun, scavenging, collecting
 beautiful art, or gathering rare sightings
 of birds as a leisure time devotion. These
 forms of behavior are rarely experienced
 as economic activity. Rather they are seen
 as forms of pleasure and fun, modes of
 taking possession of the world. They signal
 freedom of choice – yet, an imagined freedom.
 “Gathering” in whatever form it
 takes always involves substance, material
 items, that subsequently will be arranged,
 distributed or consumed. As an act of
 dealing with something that endures beyond
 its experience by the practitioner, gathering
 is a good place to unite loose objects, ends,
 perceptions and research interests.

Ideology, 'History of Religions' and Hunter-Gatherer Studies

Les etudes sur les chasseurs-cueilleurs, en particulier les travaux des traditionalistes dedies aux Bushmen, ont cherche a gagner le haut du pave rhetorique en privilegiant les facteurs techno-economiques dans la vie humaine aux depens de l'ideologie. Cependant cela meme exemplifie une ideologie. En effet, les theories sur les chasseurs-cueilleurs sont pour la plupart en conformite avec les structures mythiques decouvertes par les etudiants des religions comparees, notamment Eliade. Ces structures contrastent remarquablement avec l'approche principalement de-mythologisee de Boas et de la premiere generation de ses etudiants, particulierement au cours de leur confrontation avec l'evolutionisme social de Morgan. L'article soutient l'existence de similarites entre la theorie sociale victorienne, les etudes sur les chasseurs-cueilleurs et les religions dans le monde, impliquant que les deux premieres ont des composantes metaempiriques generalement attribuees aux troisiemes.

Evolutionizing the Cognitive Sciences: A Reply to Shapiro and Epstein

We have argued that the social sciences—anthropology, economics, sociology—will be revolutionized when their practitioners realize that theories about the evolved architecture of the human mind play a necessary and central role in any causal account of human affairs (Tooby and Cosmides, 1989, 1992; Cosmides and Tooby, 1994a). We have further argued that cognitive scientists will make far more rapid progress in mapping this evolved architecture if they begin to seriously incorporate knowledge from evolutionary biology and its related disciplines—behavioural ecology, paleoanthropology, hunter-gatherer studies, and primatology—into their repertoire of theoretical tools, and use theories of adaptive function to guide their empirical investigations (Cosmides and Tooby, 1987, 1989, 1992, 1994b; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992). Shapiro and Epstein (S&E) have responded to our arguments with a series of mild criticisms and modest endorsements. Here, briefly put, are S&E’s main points:

Winnowing the "Great Kalahari Debate"; Its Impact on Hunter‐Gatherer Studies

Winnowing the "Great Kalahari Debate"; Its Impact on Hunter‐Gatherer Studies

The Great ‘Intensification Debate’: Its History And Place In Australian Archaeology

The 'Intensification Debate' of the 1980s was a critical period in the investigation of Australian prehistory. It focused attention and research upon questions of change and dynamics within hunter-gatherer societies of the past, especially regarding demographic, socioeconomic and sociocultural factors. In this way it was a reaction to previous static and functionalist approaches which emphasised the passive nature of hunter-gatherer societies and their submission to changing environmental and ecological conditions. 'Intensification' also questioned the traditional anthropological paradigm which contrasted hunter-gatherers with other societies, including horticulturalists and agriculturalists. This new debate demonstrated the similarities between these societies, with respect to social organisation, economy, demography and change, in both the long- and short-term. The debate in Australia drew upon world debates in anthropology and archaeology, and through its own impetus, data, and discourse, added somewhat considerably to these. The Australian debate focused on the mid-late Holocene where plentiful archaeological data were available, and many predictions obtained from early stages in the debate have been supported by more recent evidence. More recently, new data from earlier periods, including the Pleistocene, have added to and expanded the original debate, so that broadly similar archaeological 'trends' and features are now being recognised and discussed throughout Australian prehistory. The debate has moved, therefore, to discussing broader issues, models and perspectives concerning long- and short-term hunter-gatherer cultural dynamics. In this paper we review the 'Intensification Debate' historically, placing it within its world and Australian theoretical setting. We discuss its origins and development, and evaluate how successful it has been as a general explanatory device and as a research tool for archaeological data collection and interpretation. We also consider some of its controversies and critics, and finally its influence upon present and future directions in Australian prehistoric archaeology and hunter-gatherer studies in general.

: Foragers in Context: Long-Term, Regional and Historical Perspectives in Hunter-Gatherer Studies . Preston T. Miracle, Lynn E. Fisher, Jody Brown.

: Foragers in Context: Long-Term, Regional and Historical Perspectives in Hunter-Gatherer Studies . Preston T. Miracle, Lynn E. Fisher, Jody Brown.

History and hierarchy in hunter-gatherer studies

Hunters and Gatherers 1: History, Evolution and Social Change. TIM INGOLD, DAVID RICHES, and JAMES WOODBURN, eds. Hunters and Gatherers 2: Property, Power and Ideology. TIM INGOLD, DAVID RICHES, and JAMES WOODBURN, eds.

Oxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the Kalahari

Previous articleNext article No AccessDiscussion and CriticismOxen or Onions? The Search for Trade (and Truth) in the KalahariRichard Lee and Mathias GuentherRichard Lee Search for more articles by this author and Mathias Guenther Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 32, Number 5Dec., 1991 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/204006 Views: 10Total views on this site Citations: 28Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Tim Forssman An Archaeological Contribution to the Kalahari Debate from the Middle Limpopo Valley, Southern Africa, Journal of Archaeological Research 30, no.33 (Jun 2021): 447–495.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-021-09166-0Akira Takada Pragmatic reframing from distress to playfulness: !Xun caregiver responses to infant crying, Journal of Pragmatics 181 (Aug 2021): 180–195.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2021.05.021Mark Dyble, Andrea Bamberg Migliano, Abigail E. Page, Daniel Smith Relatedness within and between Agta residential groups, Evolutionary Human Sciences 3 (Sep 2021).https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2021.46Alan Barnard Bushmen, 1 (Jul 2019).https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108289603 Byung-Soo Seol San Society in Botswana Facing with the Crisis of Dissolution: The Influence of Ethnic Dynamics and Development Policy, Journal of the Korean Association of African Studies 55, no.11 (Dec 2018): 131–170.https://doi.org/10.35751/af.2018.55..005Robert K. Hitchcock Discontinuities in ethnographic time: A view from Africa, Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 46 (Jun 2017): 12–27.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2016.09.002Paul Sillitoe The Knowing in Indigenous Knowledge: Alternative Ways to View Development, Largely from a New Guinea Highlands’ Perspective, (Jan 2016): 129–163.https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21900-4_7Robert Hitchcock The Contributions of Richard B. Lee to Anthropology, Ethnoarchaeology, and Indigenous Peoples' Studies, Ethnoarchaeology 4, no.22 (Jul 2013): 226–260.https://doi.org/10.1179/eth.2012.4.2.226Richard O. Clemmer Pristine Aborigines or Victims of Progress? The Western Shoshones in the Anthropological Imagination Clemmer, Current Anthropology 50, no.66 (Jul 2015): 849–881.https://doi.org/10.1086/646607John Parkington, Simon Hall The Appearance of Food Production in Southern Africa 1,000 to 2,000 Years Ago, (Nov 2009): 63–111.https://doi.org/10.1017/CHOL9780521517942.003Mathias Guenther Meanderings and musings in the field of San and hunter-gatherer studies, Before Farming 2009, no.44 (Jan 2009): 1–8.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2009.4.3Peter R. Schmidt, Jonathan R. Walz Re-Representing African Pasts through Historical Archaeology, American Antiquity 72, no.11 (Jan 2017): 53–70.https://doi.org/10.2307/40035298Edward Eastwood Shared symbols, Before Farming 2007, no.11 (Jan 2007): 1–22.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2007.1.2Robert Hitchcock, Wayne Babchuk Kalahari San foraging, land use, and territoriality, Before Farming 2007, no.33 (Jan 2007): 1–14.https://doi.org/10.3828/bfarm.2007.3.3Richard Borshay Lee Twenty-first century indigenism, Anthropological Theory 6, no.44 (Jul 2016): 455–479.https://doi.org/10.1177/1463499606071597Alan Barnard Kalahari revisionism, Vienna and the‘indigenous peoples’ debate*, Social Anthropology 14, no.11 (Jan 2007): 1–16.https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2006.tb00020.xSibel B. Kusimba What Is a Hunter-Gatherer? Variation in the Archaeological Record of Eastern and Southern Africa, Journal of Archaeological Research 13, no.44 (Dec 2005): 337–366.https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-005-5111-yCARMEL SCHRIRE THE CONCILIATORS: BUSHMANIA AND THE NIGHTMARE OF SURVIVAL, Visual Anthropology Review 19, no.1-21-2 (Jan 2008): 160–166.https://doi.org/10.1525/var.2003.19.1-2.160Kathleen D. Morrison, Laura L. Junker Forager-Traders in South and Southeast Asia, 3 (Sep 2009).https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511489631Renee Sylvain "Land, Water, and Truth": San Identity and Global Indigenism, American Anthropologist 104, no.44 (Dec 2002): 1074–1085.https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.4.1074Christer Norström 5. Increasing competition, expanding strategies—Wage work and resource utilization among the Paliyans of South India, (Apr 2015): 66–87.https://doi.org/10.3362/9781780445403.005Pnina Motzafi-Haller Beyond Textual Analysis: Practice, Interacting Discourses, and the Experience of Distinction in Botswana, Cultural Anthropology 13, no.44 (Nov 1998): 522–547.https://doi.org/10.1525/can.1998.13.4.522Richard B. Lee Anthropology at the crossroads: From the age of ethnography to the age of World systems, Social Dynamics 24, no.11 (Jan 1998): 34–65.https://doi.org/10.1080/02533959808458640PNINA MOTZAFI-HALLER when Bushmen are known as Basarwa: gender, ethnicity, and differentiation in rural Botswana, American Ethnologist 21, no.33 (Oct 2009): 539–563.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.3.02a00050SCOTT RUSHFORTH political resistance in a contemporary hunter-gatherer society: more about Bearlake Athapaskan knowledge and authority, American Ethnologist 21, no.22 (Oct 2009): 335–352.https://doi.org/10.1525/ae.1994.21.2.02a00060David Simon, Heike Schmidt Book reviews, Journal of Southern African Studies 19, no.11 (Mar 1993): 166–170.https://doi.org/10.1080/03057079308708353Richard B. Lee, Mathias Guenther Problems in Kalahari Historical Ethnography and the Tolerance of Error, History in Africa 20 (May 2014): 185–235.https://doi.org/10.2307/3171972Kathleen D. Morrison Foragers and forager-traders in South Asian worlds: Some thoughts from the last 10,000 years, (): 321–339.https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5562-5_14

The Current State of Hunter-Gatherer Studies

Previous articleNext article No AccessReportsThe Current State of Hunter-Gatherer StudiesEric Alden SmithEric Alden Smith Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Current Anthropology Volume 32, Number 1Feb., 1991 Sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/203917 Views: 3Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1991 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological ResearchPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Erin P. Riley Contemporary Primatology in Anthropology: Beyond the Epistemological Abyss, American Anthropologist 115, no.33 (Aug 2013): 411–422.https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12025Kjel Knutsson Comment on Ingela Bergman: Indigenous Time, Colonial History: Sami Conceptions of Time and Ancestry and the Role of Relics in Cultural Reproduction. Norwegian Archaeological Review 39 , 151–161, Norwegian Archaeological Review 40, no.11 (Jun 2007): 103–107.https://doi.org/10.1080/00293650701388082 Valery A. Tishkov , Levon H. Abrahamian , Boris Chichlo , T. Dragadze , Stephen P. Dunn , Anatoly M. Khazanov , V. I. Kozlov , M. V. Kryukov , Victor A. Shnirelman , Peter Skalnik , Peter Skalník, Yuri Slezkine , and Katherine Verdery The Crisis in Soviet Ethnography [and Comments], Current Anthropology 33, no.44 (Oct 2015): 371–394.https://doi.org/10.1086/204085

Critical Trends in the Study of Hunter-Gatherers

Hunter-gatherer were authorized in anthropology by Lee & De Vore's imaginative combination of evolutionary and ecological adaptationist concerns in the Man the Hunter volume (108). While recent reviews of hunter-gatherer studies (16, 23) have explored significant substantive issues, they have not considered the importance of the category itself in the formulation of anthropological research and theory. A major theme of this review is that the questioning of the category hunter-gatherer-rooted in varied responses to the evolutionary/ecological paradigm that constituted it-has been central to much contemporary work. Current writing about hunter-gatherers can be understand in terms of four categories of critique (or attack) on the original paradigm of hunter­ ways of life. I characterize the four broad theoretical orientations as (a) optimal foraging theory (or socioecology); (b) historicist (or ethnohistori­ cal) approaches; (c) sociology in the Marxist and structuralist tradition; and (d) humanistic approaches. In the latter, grab-bag category, I include those emphasizing hermeneutic and meaningful interpretation of in­ sider's views, reflexive works, and the advocacy research of political engage­ ment often undertaken on behalf of hunter-gatherers. Given good reviews of optimal foraging theory (23, 52, 112, 159, 181), I focus on categories b, c, and d. Their joint critical stance towards single archetypes for hunter-gatherer society suggests that the comparative method be considered an enduring problem in anthropology, a problem particularly marked in the very constituting of the category hunter-gatherer. For archeologists and social anthropologists, the category hunter­ gatherer as an evolutionary/ecological type had defined a shared area of

Hunter Gatherers - Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies. Edited by Carmel Schrire. Orlando and London: Academic Press, 1984. Pp. 299. £35.00.

Hunter Gatherers - Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies. Edited by Carmel Schrire. Orlando and London: Academic Press, 1984. Pp. 299. £35.00.

Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies.

Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies.

Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies

Past and Present in Hunter Gatherer Studies