Intro to Cultural Anthropology set 3

Subsistence

Subsistence strategies

• food Foragers (pre-domestication)

• Food Producers (domestication)

Food Foragers

• Hunt, fish, and gather wild plants

• “Hunter-gathers”

Food Producers

• Create and manage their own food supplies

Foragers:Land Use

• Low carrying capacity

• Generally nomadic

Low carrying capacity

• number of people that a given piece of land can support at a given level of technology

• Lowest number Food forager people used (least efficient)

Generally nomadic

• Nomadic: moving around constantly

• Daisy pattern

• Seasonality

What is a Daisy Pattern?

• Center is base camp

• Hunting and foraging loops (like a pedal)

• Once completed, move and start all over again in a new area

Foragers: Technology

• Strategy specific tools

• Portable things

• Make cashes to protect food from bigger animals

What are the strategy specific tools that Foragers use?

• Hunting/fishing

• Gathering

What are portable things that Foragers use in the technology category?

• No fixed structures

• Some “site furniture”

• Blow darts with poison

What is Ethnobotany?

Learn about cultures and work for pharmaceutical companies and study indigenous for various purposes, including food, medicine, shelter, and other application

Sedentary

settle and not move around

Hearth feature

any place where people make a fire for food or warmth and is left behind

Foragers: Social Organization

• Band-level society

• Basically egalitarian

• Food sharing

Band-level society

• 50 to 300 people

• all related

Basically egalitarian

• sexual division of labor

Food sharing

• kin-based/other roles played

Exogamy

marrying outside of group

Kung is a group of people who lived in the

South of Africa

Pygmies in the

rainforest of Africa

Average height of Kung

5’

Average height of Pygmies

4’6”

No-Man’s Land

no hunting so animals can have a place to reproduced without worrying about being hunted

What is Base camp?

It’s the center of territory '“center of the daisy pattern”

Net Hunting

Food Producers

• Variety of forms

• Hinges on domestication

Variety of forms

• Pastoralism

• Horticulture

• Intensive agriculture

Hinges on domestication

Hinges on domestication

Pastoralists

• Breed and manage domesticated herds

  • Cattle

  • Horses

  • Camels

  • etc

Pastoralists: Land Use

• Medium carrying capacity

• Sedentary or nomadic

Medium carrying capacity

Supports more people than foraging, less than agriculture

Sedentary or nomadic

• Pastoral nomadism

• Transhumance

  • Seasonality

Pastoralists: Technology

• strategy specific tools

• variable structures

strategy specific tools

• specialized animals

• harness/tack

variable structures

• may be more or less mobile

• can transport more with animals

Pastoralists: Social Organization

• More complex societies

  • To hundreds of people

  • Beginning of stratification

    • Patriarchy

    • Prestige distinction

• Concept of property

  • Animal wealth possible

  • Inheritance

Prestige

perceptions of achievements or quality

Horticulturalists

• Cultivation with simple hand-tools

• Swidden cultivation

  • “Slash and burn”

• Transitional strategy

  • Mixed economies

Manioc

starchy root vegetable

Tuber

specialized storage stem of certain seed plants

Intercropping

planting different things together

Leaf litter

leaves that have fallen from trees to the ground and can be used as mulch for gardening (compose)

Intensive Agriculture

• Cultivation using complex technologies

• Highest carrying capacity

What are some cultivation using complex technologies?

• Irrigation/crop rotation

• Animal-driven plows

• Fertilizer

Problems of Agriculture

• Dependence on one crop

• Population

  • Diseases of affluence

• Social stratification

• Organized warfare

What is highest carrying capacity?

Sedentary life

Specialized labor

organization of work within a society where individuals or groups focus on specific tasks or roles