Agriculture Flashcards
What is cultivation?
The act of intentionally propagating, raising or harvesting a plant or plant parts.
What is herding?
The act of intentionally gathering, keeping, tending, or placing animals together.
Why does the invention of agriculture matter?
It is associated with sedentism, food storage and surplus, increased population and population density, new forms of social, political, economic organization, new problems like conflict in warfare and social stratification, labor investment leading to division of labor and specialization, and new technologies such as plows and sickles.
What evidence supports the development of agriculture?
Evidence includes size changes in plants and animals, DNA, tools, archaeological features like fences and hearths, appearance outside natural environments, and morphological changes in plant and animal remains.
What are the origins of agriculture?
Agriculture occurred independently in various regions during the Holocene, also known as the Neolithic Revolution, with the first occurrence in the Fertile Crescent of the Middle East around 11,000 years ago.
What is Childe’s Oasis Theory?
It suggests that abundant resources and a shift to a dry climate led to food shortages, prompting people and animals to gather at oases, fostering close relationships and leading to domestication.
What is Braidwood’s Nuclear Zone Hypothesis?
It posits that hunter-gatherers lived in a favorable setting where improved technology and new food sources led to sedentism, allowing for close observation and experimentation with plants and animals.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of Braidwood’s Nuclear Zone Hypothesis?
Strengths include being the first to form an interdisciplinary team for research. Weaknesses include evidence of earlier sites like Jericho that had domesticated crops outside nuclear zones.
What is Cohen’s Population Pressure Model?
It suggests that population pressure leads to decreased mobility and territory, resulting in sedentism and agriculture as a necessity, with instability in farming causing higher fertility rates and further population pressure.
What evidence supports Cohen’s Population Pressure Model?
Evidence includes a shift to higher calorie but less desirable foods and stability of populations prior to agriculture.
What are the strengths of Braidwood’s Nuclear Zone Hypothesis
- first archaeologist to form interdisciplinary team to answer a specific question - Jarmo has tools associated with collecting/processing plants e.g. flint blades with silica sheen - cultivating plants at minimum - also area where wild barley stands existed so evidence of plants that can be domesticated existing in a nuclear zone - village would have max 200 people
What are the weaknesses of Braidwood’s Nuclear Zone Hypothesis
there was a site that predated Jarmo - Jericho is situated at an oasis and has evidence for domesticated wheat/barely 7800 BCE - other sites sit outside nuclear zones - no motivation for people to change to a more laborious subsistence strategy
