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Anthropologists have long been interested in understanding how societies cope with risk and uncertainty in their subsistence economies. The topic has been of particular interest to the study of hun...

Burial and commemorative rites form significant components of many routines and activities accompanying the disposal and remembrance of the dead in numerous past and present societies. Various artifacts seem to have had an important role in burial and commemorative rituals and may have been used to reflect social unity and strengthen group identity. Burial-related paraphernalia clearly gained special importance in the southern Levant with the onset of the Natufian culture (ca. 15,000–11,500 calBP), a culture exhibiting cardinal changes in subsistence economy, social behavior, and symbolism. One hallmark of this culture is the appearance of large boulder mortars, massive implements frequently associated with burials and burial grounds, long accepted as a manifestation of technological skill and petrological knowledge. We report the results of a new study of Natufian boulder mortars and their contexts and present novel relevant data. Our conclusions suggest that Natufian boulder mortars share specific trait...

Domesticated animals spread from their ancestral heartland in northern Africa and southwestern Asia into eastern and southern Africa after 4000 BP. Three theories account for the relatively slow spread of domesticated animals into the southern latitudes between 4000 and 3000 BP. The first theory posits that arid climates hindered the dispersal of domesticated animals beyond the Lake Turkana basin until pluvial conditions set in after 3000 BP. The second theory argues that epizootic diseases were the inhibiting factors. Finally, indigenous cultural reticence to alter their primary modes of subsistence in favor of animal husbandry accords with the archaeological data from sites that date to this period. A single normative paradigm explaining the shift from a primarily foraging subsistence economy to one that relied heavily on domesticates is unlikely. This review of the current archaeological and paleoenvironmental state of knowledge finds the "static frontier" likely resulted from a combination of all of t...

The site of Gordion, Turkey, provides a case study of the integrated use of archaeobiological data. Associations between botanical and faunal remains suggest a continuum of land‐use practices. At one end, high ratios of the seeds of wild plants versus cultivated cereal grains (calculated as count/weight) and high proportions of the bones of sheep, goat, and deer are signatures of a subsistence economy focused on pastoral production. At the other, low wild/cereal ratios along with high proportions of the bones of cattle, pig, and hare indicate an economy more focused on agriculture. Based on the millennium‐long sequence analyzed, the most sustainable land use around the ancient settlement emphasized pastoral production; only during the wealthy Middle Phrygian period did high population support greater reliance on agriculture.

The Amuq plain in southeast Turkey is of major importance to the development of Near Eastern cultural sequences. Recent investigations of geoarchaeology, settlement patterns, and individual sites now provide framework for the assessment of the original work by the University of Chicago and Sir Leonard Woolley. Geoarchaeological investigations provide a dynamic contest for the interpretation of settlement patterns and show that sedimentation over the plain has been variable and patchy. The density and patterning of settlement has changed through time, partly in response to changes in the local enviroument, partly as a result of developments in the political cconomy. Excavations at Tells Kurdu and al-Judaidah as well as section-cleaning operations at other sites in the area have started to provide a radiocarhon framework for the original chronology and are filling in gaps in that sequence. At the site of Kurda, approximately 15 hectares in area, domestic and perhaps public architecture are now being defined more coherently than in the first investigations, and the excavations are supplving insights in to a subsistence economy that tapped into a verdant mosaic of local environments.

The introduction of mechanized technology into a rural Maya agricultural community in the mid 1970s markedly increased the technology with which maize could be ground and water collected, which in turn introduced a possible savings in the time spent working. This study investigated the response of female fertility to the introduction of this labor-saving technology. Using two proximate determinants of female fertility, the association between the advent of modern technology and changes in the age at which women give birth to their first child and the length of mothers' birth intervals was examined. Analyses showed that women begin their reproductive careers at a younger age after the laborsaving technology was introduced. Estimate of the median age at first birth from the distribution function dropped from 21.2 years before the introduction to 19.5 years after the introduction of the technology. In addition, modeling results show that the probability of a woman giving birth to her first child doubles for any age after the introduction of laborsaving technology. However, changes in birth intervals are less conclusive since the differences of smoothed probability distributions are not significant. Moreover, findings indicate that women who initiate reproduction at a younger age can potentially have longer reproductive careers and larger families.

The potential of plant resources for the subsistence economies of early Holocene foraging groups in Northern Europe has long been the subject of scholarly interest. In the mid‐1970s both Paul Mellars (1976a) and David Clarke (1976) suggested that the edible biomass of temperate Europe was concentrated in resources such as nuts, roots, and tubers, which could have provided a substantial resource base. However, the lack of methodological tools to document the prehistoric use of these resources prevented a direct assessment of their significance (Mellars 1976a). This report presents the initial results of recent research on Mesolithic plant remains from the northern Netherlands which uses new techniques for the identification of fragmentary charred remains of vegetable tissues (Hather 1988, 1991, 1993) to document the range of utilized plant taxa from this important prehistoric period (Mason, Hather, and Hill‐man 1994). It demonstrates the significance of archaeo‐botanical analyses for any anthropological un...

W ith concern growing for protecting natural ecosystems, biological diversity, genetic resources, and subsistence economies, it is useful to construct frameworks to evaluate institutional capabilities for expanding conservation planning programs. The experience of the Haida, a northwestcoast Native American people inhabiting the Queen Charlotte Islands (also called Haida Gwaii) on the north coast of British Columbia, provides an opportunity to examine the evolution of conservation frameworks leading to joint and comanagement of natural areas and resources.' The Haida Gwaii example is distinct, particularly compared with the United States, because of the use of sovereignist strategies to stop unsustainable exploitation of ancient temperate rainforests. Unresolved questions of sovereignty and land and resource ownership provided the backdrop for unique alliances between non-Native environmentalists and Native activists, some of whom are nationalistic. Although recent efforts to resolve issues of hereditary titles over the southern part of the archipelago, Gwaii Haanas, which was formerly referred to as South Moresby, have been partially successful, various obstacles continue to undermine conservation efforts.2 Institutional obstacles to habitat protection and ecosystem management began in 1851 when the Crown colony of British Columbia began to annex the islands.3 Despite repeated Haida assertions of sovereignty and traditional tenure since that time, the colonial and subsequent British Columbia provincial and Canadian federal governments denied these rights and managed the land and its wealth based on non-Native priorities. Until recently, respective governments did not support a framework for establishing viable protected areasespecially for the conservation of local biological diversity. Nonrenewable extractive operations, particularly clearcut logging of old-growth forest and mining, have been contentious throughout the region because of subsequent losses of traditional resources. Furthermore, Parks Canada, a federal agency that became involved in Gwaii Haanas land management after British Columbia ceded its responsibility for management to the Canadian government in 1988, had not emphasized management of natural habitat and protection of biological resources. Instead this agency had historically been more concerned with providing public services for tourism. In the 1974-87 "South Moresby conflict," the Canadian government reacted slowly to the dispute between interests supporting rapid, largescale clearcut logging versus those advocating conservation of temperate rainforest, until as a compromise the provincial government agreed to cede jurisdiction. This 1988 agreement involved an expensive compensation package for wilderness preservation. But the Haida Nation and the Canadian federal government only forged a basis for joint management of Gwaii Haanas in 1993, and vestiges of colonial land management patterns still hinder the stewardship of forests, wildlands, biological resources, and traditional cultural sites on Gwaii Haanas, as in much of the Pacific Rim.

By the early 20th century, anthropologists and archaeologists recognized that the distributional limits of Native American agriculture in the American Midwest were climatically determined. Wissler (I 9I 7: I 7), for example, stated that "Indian tribes had extended agriculture in the east to its physical limits." Somewhat later, Kroeber (1939) suggested that only in those areas with a growing season of i 20 days in four out of five years was maize agriculture a reliable subsistence strategy. The ioo-day frost-free isopleth represented the extreme northern limit of maize agriculture, a limit where only the fastestmaturing varieties were reliably productive and where "only a people long and deeply addicted to agriculture would have tried to farm" (I939:212). More recently, Yarnell (i964) also identified climate as the variable determining the limits of maize agriculture in the Midwest and found no ethnohistoric or archaeological evidence for maize production in areas with modern frost-free periods of less than I20 days. There is, however, some controversy over the causes of differences in the intensity of agricultural production2 within these limits. Two major archaeological cultures are recognized in the Midwest during the late prehistoric Mississippian period (ca. A.D. iooo-i650): Middle Mississippian and Oneota (Upper Mississippian). Although they overlapped to some degree geographically (Emmerson i988), Middle Mississippian was primarily associated with the central Midwest and Oneota with the upper Midwest. Originally defined in terms of material-cultural traits (Holmes I903, McKern I939), these cultures have come to be increasingly associated with disparate subsistence economies. The Middle Mississippian subsistence economy was apparently focused on intensive maize production. Maize was probably double-cropped where possible through either staggered or consecutive plantings (Riley i987), and hunting and gathering played less significant roles (but see Milner i990). The Oneota evidently practiced a less intensive form of maize agriculture as part of a mixed economy; the contribution of maize to the subsistence mix was less than or only equal to that of the contributions of hunting, gathering, and fishing (Brown i982). If maize was universally available in the Midwest by at least A.D. 900 (Asch and Asch I985, Conard et al. i984), why did the Oneota not practice maize agriculture with the same flourish as their nearby Middle Mississippian neighbors? To date, answers to this question have drawn from two general theories of agricultural intensification: neoMalthusian and Boserupian (cf. Brown i982). NeoMalthusian interpretations emphasize deleterious macroclimatic conditions, and Boserupian interpretations emphasize low population density. Archaeological data remain insufficient to test these competing interpretations. By asking the more general question what determines the intensity of agricultural production, it is possible to test the general theories of agricultural intensification from which these interpretations are derived and therefore shed light on the more specific question. The results of path analysis employing data from 56 Native American societies indicate that the Boserupian approach holds more promise.

Most anthropologists and economists examining peasant agriculture have either not attempted to place a monetary value on crops consumed at home or have valued such production at market (selling) price. This article argues that this can lead to incomplete or erroneous analyses of agricultural behavior, since a sensible farmer should often value subsistence production near retail (buying) price. Theoretical problems associated with assigning monetary values to subsistence production are discussed, some evidence on how farmers actually value crops consumed at home is presented, and suggestions for future research are made.

Women in East Africa more often confront change and modernization in vicarious and / or indirect ways; men more often participate directly in bounded institutions such as bureaucracies, factories, or schools. This differential experience of postcolonial change means that the family and local community as well as the domestic subsistence economy are important in women's adaptations. To understand modernization and the stress which may accompany it, three groups of Kenya women are compared. A group of A group of A baluyia women living in both rural and urban settings in Kenya is characterized by both relatively low modernity scores and low psychophysiological stress scores. A group of urban Kikuyu women participating in a city market have higher modernity scores yet relatively low stress reports. A third group of rural Kikuyu women engaged in cash cropping with frequently absent husbands have both high modernity and high stress scores. Each group of women differs in their exposure to and participation in mo...

Social scientists have argued that the change from subsistence to market-oriented production leads to the development of socioeconomic inequality in generally egalitarian agrarian societies. A reanalysis of data on households and production among the Nigerian Kofyar suggests that the relation of population to resources is a more important determinant of inequality than the subsistence/market distinction. The Kofyar homeland, with its traditional system of intensive subsistence farming, has distinct regions characterized by differing levels of land pressure associated with population density, per capita production, household size, household developmental cycles, migration rates, and economic inequality. Households voluntarily moving to plentiful land on the frontier and adopting cash-cropping substantially increase their labor forces and money incomes without raising the level of inequality.

The main contributions of Ester Boserup who wrote "Womans Role in Economic Development" are summarized and a critical analysis of her approach is presented particularly in view of recent scholarship on the subject. Boserups work published in 1970 represented a comprehensive and pioneer effort to provide an overview of womens role in the development process. Analysis of her contributions reveals the following: 1) an emphasis on gender as a basic factor in the division of labor prevalent across countries and regions; 2) explanations for and analysis of a variety of factors behind the diverse patterns in rural work associated with the particular characteristics of each area--Africa Asia Latin America; 3) delineation of the negative effects that colonialism and the penetration of capitalism into subsistence economies often had on women; 4) emphasis on the fact that subsistence activities usually excluded in the statistics of production and income are essentially womens work; and 5) projection of the different sexual divisions of labor encountered in farming systems onto patterns of womens participation in nonagricultural activities. Despite Boserups obvious contributions critical analysis reveals the following major weaknesses: 1) the book is essentially empirical and descriptive and is lacking a clearly defined theoretical framework that empirical data can help elaborate; 2) Boserup takes as given a unique model of development--the model that characterizes capitalists economies; and 3) Boserup fails to present a clearcut feminist analysis of womens subordination despite her basic concern with the position of women in the development process. Each of these weaknesses is reviewed in detail. Boserup emphasized womens education as the major mechanism by which modernization would begin to work to womens advantage. Her conclusion ignores 2 crucial features that an analysis based on the concepts of accumulation and womens role in reproduction would highlight: it ignores the high incidence of unemployment among educated people in the 3rd world; and even if there were marked systemic changes education by itself would not alter womens position in that education cannot address issues of child care and domestic work.

Recent interest in the institutions and production relations of tropical agriculture seem to hold promise for increased collaboration between economists and anthropologists in efforts to explain existing patterns of production and socioeconomic interaction. This focus on customs, and on the more formal institutional arrangements, is encouraging given the continuing concern for food production in much of the semiarid tropics. Two recent papers are particularly germane to this growing literature. H. P. Binswanger and M. R. Rosenzweig have offered a foundation for addressing the production relations in agriculture, with a general focus on conditions in South Asia.' More recently, Binswanger and J. McIntire provide an explanation for "the major institutions and customary features of production relations in three agroclimatic subzones of the land-abundant tropics that have simple technology and high transport costs."2 They also offer predictions of how these institutions and features might change in response to the opening-up of subsistence economies and to population growth. Our approach here is consistent with this recent work in several respects. First, it is explanatory, in that we offer possible explanations for observed behavior in the land-abundant tropics where agriculture is a mixture of cropping and livestock management. Second, it is predictive, in that we draw on economic theory to hypothesize likely changes in behavior in the face of institutional change. Finally, it is offered in the interest of stimulating a concern for the institutional preconditions of economic development. By such preconditions we have in mind the institutional arrangements that can stimulate the economic development process. In particular, we focus on the role of transactions in the economy. We do not believe that there is anything intrinsically undesirable about transactions that are restricted to a circle of family and acquaintances. On the contrary, such transactions play an important

This paper develops a model for the evolution of language that is consistent with semanticist and pragmaticist interpretations of the forms and functions of language and the processes of language acquisition and language change. The proximate aspect of the model emphasizes the social contexts of language acquisition and language change; its adaptive aspect emphasizes the sociobiological concept of communication as social manipulation. Both aspects emphasize the relationship between subsistence technology and social behavior. Specifically, the model suggests that the stages of evolution of the lexical and syntactical systems roughly parallel the stages of their acquisition; that primitive lexical forms of reference and request first arose among the earliest hominids for food location and food sharing in relation to extractive foraging on embedded foods; that simple syntax first arose among Homo erectus for encoding regulatory rules and procedures concerning recruitment, aggregation, and coordination of wor...

Tools used to get food are compared between wild chimpanzees in western Tanzania and aboriginal Tasmanians at the time of European contact. Systematic qualitative and quantitative comparison is enabled by use of Oswalt's taxonomy of subsistence technology. The results show surprising similarity in the number of items in the tool kit, raw materials used, proportion of tools made versus those used unchanged, extent of complexity, type of prey, etc. Key contrasts also emerge: only human tools have more than one type of component and are made using other tools. Overall, however, the gap between the most technically diverse nonhuman tool kit and the simplest human material culture seems narrow.

A new tradition in feminist scholarship is beginning to raise questions about women's work in subsistence economies as part of a larger investigation of male centrism in social and environmental science. The division of labor between the sexes is a central issue in this debate. According to Sherry Ortner there is a universal idea of the sex/gender relation which associates men with culture and women with nature. Such an hypothesis is disputed by other scholars who argue this analogy is a limited Western model of the sexes that has resulted in inaccurate portrayals of women's work in not only Western but also in non-Western societies.'

Children often act as caretakers responsible for other children. Such child caretaking varies widely in its frequency, as well as in the degree of institutionalization, relationship to parental caretaking, degree of indulgence, and incidence at differing ages. Residence and household patterns, size of the family, and the subsistence economy, daily routines, and work load of the family are important in determining availability of child caretakers in the home. The United States appears to have fewer alternative caretakers available, and less child caretaking, than most societies. Child caretaking is related to a number of developmental areas during childhood; eight are suggestedin this review: (1) mother-child relationships and attachment; (2) conceptions and emergence of childhood stages; (3) formation and organization of play groups; (4) development of social responsibility; (5) sex differences; (6) development of individual diferences; (7) development of cognitive-style differences; and (8) motivation an...

Like other groups of the New Guinea Highlands, the Chimbu are moving from a subsistence-exchange economy to one in which selected crops are raised for cash and money is used for a variety of purposes. Changes in the Chimbu economy, and particularly the changing uses of money, are described. The application of development theory is considered in the concluding portion of this paper. The transition to a money economy in Chimbu is not one-directional, but fluctuates, reverses and changes form. It is affected by personal and local circumstances and also by physical, technological and international economic and political factors over which the New Guineans have no control and little comprehension. Although money has penetrated to subsistence use, the economy has not been transformed; subsistence production and exchange continue in modern conditions.