16.Hunters and Gatherers

Question 1

What are ‘hunters and gatherers’?

Answer 1

Hunter and gatherers are societies in which people obtain their food from wild products (i.e. not cultivated like in farming or pastoralism)

Question 2

What are the models explaining hunters and gatherers’ behaviour?

Answer 2

1. Evolutionary
2. Non-evolutionary
   a) H&Gs are part of human history (are contemporaneous)
   b) H&Gs have complex and diverse social organisation

Question 3

What is the evolutionary model of hunters and gatherers?

Answer 3

1. 19th century evolutionary anthropologists argued that modern hunters and gatherers were remnants of our pre-historic past and were ‘stuck in time’.

Question 4

In what ways do present conceptions of hunters and gatherers perpetuate evolutionary thinking upon the matter?

Answer 4

1. Contemporary ethnographic writing often reproduces evolutionary thinking of hunters and gatherers as isolated and pristine groups. (e.g. R.Lee (1979)).
2. Ethno-tourism romanticises the same conception of H&Gs.

Question 5

How have anthropologists shown that hunters and gatherer societies are part of the same human history as everybody else?

Answer 5

1. Long history of contact with outside groups through trade and labour markets (Headland, R et al. (1989)).
2. Seeming isolation is a strategy of resistance developed in response to more powerful groups (Wilmsen, D et al. 1990)

Question 6

How have anthropologists shown that hunter and gatherer societies have complex and diverse forms of social organisation?

Answer 6

1. Hunter and gatherer groups are marked by both spatial and temporal diversity (Kent 1992).
2. Hunter and gatherer societies have complex and flexible return systems (Woodburn 1982, Woodburn 1986).

Question 7

How have anthropologists defended the view that hunter and gatherers are autonomous?

Answer 7

‘Revisionist’ view assumes that H&G can not accommodate changes since ‘Revisionist’ view assumes that “contact”=”domination”. (Lee et al 1990)