Posted: April 25th, 2025

ANT 5

Need a question concerning this week‘s material.  I GOT THE QUOTE And respond to question below 

What other factors could have pushed communities in the “hilly flanks” of Mesopotamia to start cultivating anything at this particular moment in human history?

( this is a anthropology course )

EARLY AGRICULTURE AND THE NEOLITHIC
REVOLUTION: MODIFYING THE ENVIRONMENT

TO SATISFY HUMAN DEMANDS
Chapter 10

Cultivation involves the intentional preparation of fields, planting, harvesting, and storing of seeds,
that results in significant changes in technology and subsistence, but does not result in morphological
and genetic changes in the plants.

Domestication, intentional or unintentional, results in the change to the genotype and physical
characteristics of plants. Domesticates, or the new species that are created from existing or wild
populations, are then dependant on humans for their survival.

Agriculture involves a commitment to a relationship with plants that results in changes in social structure
and organization, extensive clearing of fields and forests, and the invention and adoption of new
techniques and technologies. Agriculture is defined as a diet that is primarily reliant upon
(approximately 75 %) domesticated species of plants and animals.

Gardens in Papua New Guinea mostly growing sweet
potatoes, which originated in South America

 How could these large populations cultivate a crop that did not
originate there?

 When and how did the changes enabled by sweet potato cultivation
happen?

Horticulture in New Guinea (Photos: ©

Jack Golson; inset: © Adrian Arbib/CORBIS)

HOW HEAVILY DID PREHISTORIC PEOPLE DEPEND ON
HUNTING?

Anatomically modern
humans ate only what they

could hunt, gather, or
scavenge

Anthropologists have
studied living hunter-

gatherers to find clues
about foraging practices

in the past For 99% of human history Hunter/Gatherers were tied to

seasonally abundant plant food resources, movement of game,

and the ebb and flow of aquatic resources

THE HUNTER-GATHERER LIFEWAY

Environment and climate in regions inhabited by
hunter-gatherers were unsuitable for agriculture
and animal husbandry

Europeans depicted these regions as harsh and
inhabitants’ technologies as simple

 They assumed the foraging way of life was crude and
brutish → the basis for deeply held cultural stereotypes

THE “MAN THE HUNTER” CONFERENCE

Anthropologists gathered to assess:

 How difficult was it for early hunter-gatherers to get their food?

 How similar were contemporary hunter-gatherers to their prehistoric ancestors?

Dominant anthropological model of hunter-gatherers societies before
the conference: they live in patrilocal bands. The assumptions about
hunter gatherers:

 Hunting was principally undertaken by men

 Hunting was more important than gathering

 Men’s subsistence activities were more significant than women’s

Conference result: a resounding rejection of the old male-dominated
model

GENERALIZED FORAGING MODEL

The generalized foraging model: hunter-gatherer societies have five basic characteristics:

 Egalitarianism

 Low population density

 Lack of territoriality

 A minimum of food storage

 Flux in band composition

“ORIGINAL AFFLUENT SOCIETY”

Hunter-gatherer lives were not harsh:

 They spent hours each day in leisure, socializing, or sleeping

 They neither needed nor desired material goods

Did not view their natural environments as scarce and
harsh, but as affluent and always providing for their
needs

Hence they were called “the original affluent
society”

The Amazon Uncontacted

Frontier, a large area on

the Peru-Brazil border that

is home to the highest

concentration of

uncontacted tribes in the

world.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WOMEN

More recent research finds considerable variation among hunter-gatherer group

 Women spend as much time working as men do

Recent analyses suggest that in most horticultural and agricultural societies, women’s effort
is typically greater than that of men.

THE PROBLEM OF SURPLUSES

Why did they not spend an extra hour each day to amass a surplus?

Two proposed answers to this question:

 Lorna Marshall: sharing obligations

 Example: !Kung women only gathered as much as they needed for their own families; a surplus meant they
would be expected to share it with the entire band. If her labor would not help her family, collecting too
much was intentionally avoided. Among many hunter-gatherer communities, people place great emphasis on
sharing as a moral obligation.

 Bruce Winterhalder: threat of depletion of local resources

THE EXCEPTIONS

Not all hunter-gatherer societies
avoided accumulating surpluses

 Pacific Northwest Indian communities
amassed large surpluses

 Used to assert superiority at potlatches

The goal of these gift exchanges was
not to provide food or material goods
to other groups, but to assert political,
economic, and social superiority by
giving away more than the recipients
could pay back at some later potlatch.

Nineteenth-Century Kwakiutl Potlatch

(Photo: © PVDE/Bridgeman Images)

PAST VERSUS PRESENT

Do contemporary hunter-gatherers represent the lifestyles of Paleolithic ancestors?

 The two groups are not identical

 Contemporaries are linked to sedentary agricultural and industrial societies through trade and other social ties,
which did not exist prior to the development of agriculture

Some contemporary groups do have features that are important for understanding the past

 First: hunting may make up 10%-100% of diet

 Second: anthropological models now see them principally as egalitarian foragers, relying primarily on plant
foods, with women’s roles equal in importance to men’s

What led people to shift from a foraging lifestyle in the first place?

WHY DID PEOPLE START DOMESTICATING PLANTS AND ANIMALS?

In the past 10,000 years, ancient societies developed more or less independently in the Middle
East, China, India, Meso-America, and South America

Hunter-gatherers didn’t suddenly “discover” how to plant seeds, nor did they abruptly learn that
by feeding certain wild animals they could control their behavior. Instead, knowledge of plants
and animals long preceded systematic cultivation and domestication

Agriculture was developed independently

in several regions of the world at different

periods during the Holocene. From these

“core areas,” the productive new economy

spread eventually to adjacent regions,

allowing the development of more

populous societies and leading ultimately

to the demise of hunting and gathering in

most areas of the world.

WHY AGRICULTURE?

The origins of agriculture is a complex topic that evolves both empirical (archaeological) and
theoretical components

1. The “Oasis Hypothesie” by V. Gordon Childe

• The drying of the climate at the end of the Pleistocene in the Near East created conditions that led to

early domestication. Both humans and animals and plants would have gathered around the few

oases or water resources, and humans would have gradually come to control many of these species

2. The “Hilly Flanks Hypothesis” by Robert J. Braidwood

• Plant and animal species would be domesticated in areas where they first existed in the wild as part

of gradually increasing association with

humans

3. Demographic Theories

• Increasing human populations require more food than could be obtained in the wild, which resulted in

intensification of production and eventual domestication of plants and animals

4. Co-Evolutionary Hypothesis

• Humans were adapting to plants and animals as much as plants and animals were adapting to

humans

None of these theories provides an adequate explanation for the origins of agriculture in every region!

REASONS FOR THE CHANGE

V. Gordon Childe: this shift had
significant consequences for developing
more sophisticated technologies, larger
populations, and more complex forms
of social organization

V. Gordon Childe (Photo: AP Photo)

THE “FERTILE CRESCENT”

“Hilly flanks” hypothesis:

 Most plants first cultivated were
indigenous to upland fringes

 Once they had been domesticated
in the uplands, they spread to
groups in the lowlands.

First evidence of early humans actively and

intentionally planting seeds for their own food

comes from excavations in the Middle East

POPULATION GROWTH AND FOOD PRODUCTION

Thomas Malthus: population growth depended on the
food supply

Esther Boserup: population growth forced people to work
harder to produce more food

 Population growth had triggered technological improvements and
increased labor inputs throughout recorded history

UNDERSTANDING + POPULATION GROWTH = MANAGEMENT OF FOOD
RESOURCES

If hunter-gatherers already understood how plants grew, even a small increase in population
could have encouraged them to manage their own food resources

If incipient food production supported the existing population plus a small amount of further
growth, population pressure would encourage further food production

To expand this theory some argued that after the last ice age, environmental conditions
improved, allowing a small but gradual population increase. Others argue post-glacial
populations increased in coastal areas that had favorable wild resources for fisher-foraging
groups

BEYOND POPULATION PRESSURES: THREE THEORIES

1.Independent emergence suggests driver was environmental (end of ice age)

• If food production began in diverse parts of the world almost simultaneously, then it likely had to do in
part with the more habitable environment following the last ice age

2.Changes in cognitive ability allowed for perception of longer term advantages of
regular food production

 Social processes were key to the beginning of food production due to changes in cognitive ability that
allowed them to perceive some longer term advantages that came with regular food production

3.People and the plants they cultivated began to co-evolve, shaping each other

 Irrespective of why people in one region or another began cultivating plants, the people and the plants
they cultivated began to co-evolve, shaping each other

HOW DID EARLY HUMANS RAISE THEIR OWN FOOD?

Hunter-gatherers have an extraordinary knowledge of
their natural environment

Planting wild grains from locally occurring grasses led to
larger plant and seed sizes

 Tending and planting wild grass seeds meant selecting the best
seeds, improving subsequent planting stock

Examples of domesticated corn from the Tehuacán valley of Mexico

showing how domestication gradually produced larger and larger

cobs. (Photo: © Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology, Phillips

Academy, Andover, Massachusetts. All Rights Reserved)

MORE THAN JUST WHEAT AND CORN

Humans also domesticated non-food plants

 Fiber-bearing plants for basket-making

Similar processes with domesticated animals

Humans may have begun manipulating food sources in
subtler ways

 Arboriculture occurred much earlier than domestication of other
crops in Southeast Asia

MAJOR AREAS OF DOMESTICATION

IMPACT OF RAISING PLANTS AND ANIMALS ON OTHER ASPECTS OF LIFE

Likely that first efforts to raise food changed people relatively little

 Groups ranged across large territories, planting and harvesting during annual
movement

Herding may have brought a greater change

 As the number of livestock animals increased, their needs may have led some food
producers to turn to transhumance

TRANSHUMANCE

A fairly simple transformation of the nomadic lifestyle of hunter-gatherers

This led to societies that practice pastoralism.

Transhumance among

the Bachtiari of Iran.

(Photo: AP Photo/Ben

Curtis)

PASTORALISM

Pastoralism tends to lead to larger populations and more complex patterns of social interaction.

Pastoralists are relatively few in number worldwide

 Most people in the world are settled, living from agriculture, either directly or indirectly

SEDENTISM

Combination of population growth and
sedentism led to the most significant changes
that accompany food production

Once settled, populations grew, with greater
intensification of food production

More labor for food production resulted in
periodic shortages of food, which in turn led
to true agriculture

THE END RESULT

Neolithic Revolution was many events in many parts of the world at different times

Cultivation and animal husbandry typically led to sedentism and food surpluses

Growing population pressures together with surpluses led to radical new interactions

This led to the rise of cities and states and introduction of social hierarchies

M A T E R I A L I T Y :
C O N S T R U C T I N G

S O C I A L
R E L A T I O N S H I P S A N D

M E A N I N G S W I T H
T H I N G S

C H A P T E R 9

MATERIAL CULTURE

What is the role of objects and material culture in

constructing social relationships and cultural meanings?

– Why is the ownership of artifacts from another culture a

contentious issue?

– How should we look at objects anthropologically?

– Why and how do the meanings of things change over

time?

– What role does material culture play in constructing the

meaning of a community’s past?

Of special interest to both cultural and archaeological anthropologies is the examination of material

culture: the objects made and used in any society; traditionally the term referred to technologically

simple objects made in preindustrial societies, but material culture may refer to all of the objects or

commodities of modern life as well.

WHY IS THE OWNERSHIP OF ARTIFACTS FROM OTHER
CULTURES A CONTENTIOUS ISSUE?

• In the United States, Anthropology began in museums

amidst the scramble for collections of cultural,

archaeological, linguistic, and biological data.

• The Smithsonian Institution assembled impressive

anthropological exhibits.

• The 1893 World’s Fair organized anthropological

exhibits to present cultures and prehistory of the

New World. At the closing of the fair, a new museum

appeared: The Field Museum, which purchased the

artifacts and exhibits.

(Image: Photo by Diane Alexander White and

Linda Dorman, courtesy of The Field Museum,

GN85650c)

THE SCRAMBLE FOR ARTIFACTS

• An international scramble by museums for artifacts from societies
around the world ensued

• The goal was to document lives, economic activities, and rituals of
peoples around the globe

• Possession of more of these exotic objects would set one
museum apart from others

• For a long time, nobody was concerned about who owned these
objects

– In recent decades, questions of ownership and control over these
objects have become a contentious issue

– Shouldn’t the people whose direct ancestors made or used these
objects have some rights over these collections?

– Who has the right to sell them to museums?

– Who has the moral right to display and interpret them?

“This belongs to Iraq,” reads the poster held

by Iraqi student Zeidoun Alkinani at the

Babylonian Ishtar Gate in the Pergamon

Museum of Berlin.

THE ABSENCE OF LEGAL PROTECTIONS

The U.S. had only a few basic laws to protect archaeological sites, mostly on government lands:

– The Antiquities Act of 1906: requiring permission for excavations on government lands

– The National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 which requires government agencies to consider the

effects of development projects on historical or archaeological sites

The “Tragedy of Slack Farm” in Uniontown, Kentucky, led to changes:

• In the autumn of 1987 a group of ten pot hunters from surrounding states paid

the tenants of Slack Farm $10,000 for permission to loot the site while the

fields were lying fallow.

• At least 650 graves were opened by the looters over the course of two months,

some with the help of heavy machinery.

• The looters were arrested and charged by a Union County grand jury with a

crime applicable in the state of Kentucky at the time: that of ‘desecrating

venerated objects’.

• In 1987 ‘desecrating venerated objects’ was a misdemeanor in Kentucky and a

conviction under that charge would only have resulted in a small fine (Hicks

2001). Four of the ten men were residents of Illinois or Indiana and could not

be extradited for a misdemeanor. The misdemeanor charges were dismissed in

March of 1990 for lack of prosecution.

NAGPRA

• The Slack Farm episode led to a bill in the Kentucky

legislature making it a felony to disturb burial sites

• The incident was offensive to American Indian

groups, leading them to lobby the federal

government

• The following year (1990), the US government

passed the Native American Graves Protection and

Repatriation Act or NAGPRA

– This law established the ownership of human remains,

grave goods, and important cultural objects as

belonging to the Native Americans whose ancestors

once owned them

Reburial ceremony in 2014 for a young boy

who lived during the Clovis period some

13,000 years ago. His remains were first

discovered in 1968.

A WORLDWIDE PROBLEM

• Many countries have legislation and programs

• Most governments support UNESCO’s World

Heritage Site program

– Provides financial support to maintain sites of

importance to humanity

– Most of the 802 currently recognized cultural

sites have played a key role in human history

• UNESCO cannot force countries to protect

these sites, but it can formally delist a site if the

host countries fail to protect it from any

destruction

WHO OWNS THE OBJECT?

• Who had a moral right to examine, study, and possess artifacts and bones recovered

from archaeological sites?

– Many archaeologists felt they had the moral right to excavate, while pot hunters did not

because they were simply out to make money

• Laws governing excavations of human remains were highly discriminatory, treating

Native Americans differently than Euro-Americans

– Activists protested treatment of Indian remains, asserting that such treatment was part of a

larger pattern of disrespect for Indian cultures.

– Many were part of AIM, the American Indian Movement: the most prominent and one of the

earliest Native American activist groups, founded in 1968.

REPATRIATING ARTIFACTS

• Their efforts led to demands for repatriation: the return of human

remains or cultural artifacts to the communities of descendants of

the people to whom they originally belonged

– Became a material symbol of Indian identity itself

• Archaeologists have a range of views on the study of prehistoric

bones

– Studied scientifically, reburied after examination, reburied without

being studied, or never excavated at all.

• Some Indian groups took more radical positions

– Asserted the right to rebury all Indian bones found in any museum,

regardless of any connection to their own tribe.

DID NAGPRA WORK?

• Since NAGPA, repatriation has proceeded reasonably

well, helping clarify that American Indians own the

bones of their ancestors as well as any grave goods

found with those remains, but…

– Some museums have taken too long to comply

– Regulations weren’t always clear about which objects

are covered by NAGPRA and which groups can submit

repatriation requests

• Rights of indigenous peoples to their cultural

resources is an ongoing issue at the international level

as well

See “Anthropologist as Problem Solver: John Terrell, Repatriation, and

the Maori House at the Field Museum” on page 249 for another

example about how native communities and scholars can work

together to find solutions

CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT (CRM)

• Cultural Resource Management: research and planning aimed

at identifying, interpreting, and protecting sites and artifacts of

historic or prehistoric significance

• Many Indian groups criticize archaeologists as doing little to

help their communities and disturbing the bones of their

ancestors

– An increasing number of Indians with postgrad degrees use

CRM techniques in preservation

• Nearly all tribes that use CRM view heritage management

differently than most federal government agencies

– Non-Indian agencies nearly always see heritage resources as

tangible places and things, and scientific study as a way of finding

a middle ground between the heritage resource and some other

use.

– Tribes tend to prefer avoiding the disturbance of the heritage

resource altogether, including scientific investigation,

emphasizing their spiritual connections to the past

Members of federal-
recognized Indian

tribes participated in
the fieldwork on

Hiwassee Island. Left:
Gano Perez of the
Muscogee (Creek)

Nation and
archaeologist Shawn
Patch of New South
Associates collect

magnetometer data.
Below: the field crew

Credit : TVA

HOW SHOULD WE LOOK AT OBJECTS
ANTHROPOLOGICALLY?

• Until the 1980s anthropologists looked at objects as evidence of cultural

distinctiveness

– Approached objects as expressions of a society’s environmental adaptation,

aesthetic sensibilities, or as markers of ethnic identity

– Arts and craftwares were considered an expression of a particular tradition,

time, or place, an expression of the individual creativity of the artist or

craftperson.

• In the mid-1980s anthropologists started to recognize that objects were

capable of conveying meaning in many different ways simultaneously

OBJECTS ARE MULTIDIMENSIONAL

To understand them, we must recognize and understand not just

their three basic physical dimensions—height, width, depth—but four

others as well, among them:

– Time – objects in museums came from somewhere and each had an

individual history.

– Power – relations of inequality are reflected in objects

– Wealth – people use objects to establish and demonstrate who has

wealth and social status.

– Aesthetics – each culture brings with it its own system or patterns of

recognizing what is pleasing or attractive, which configurations of

colors and textures are appealing, and which are not.

(Images: Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology,

University of Cambridge; David Rumsey Map

Collection via Wikipedia (public domain))

SYMBOLIC SYSTEMS OF MEANING

• Collections of objects in museums are a

historical archive in multiple dimensions

– They tell us a great deal about the cultures

that made and used these objects as well

as the relationships between the

collectors’ societies and the communities

who originally used them.

• Objects aid in understanding local

symbolic systems of meaning

AESTHETICS, SYMBOLISM & MEANING

• The art traditions and objects of non-Western peoples
embody complex ideas and understandings about the
supernatural beings who inhabit their cosmologies

• Relationship between aesthetics, symbolism, and the meaning
of objects

• Powerful people use aesthetics to demonstrate and legitimate
power

– Religious authorities use aesthetics to indicate that the holder of
an item possesses divine and earthly power

– Power stems in part from the aesthetic style

– Aesthetic settings and ways in which such objects are used and
displayed can also symbolically communicate the power of their
owners

(Photo: Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth

College; photography by Jeffrey Nintzel)

WHY AND HOW DO THE MEANINGS OF THINGS CHANGE
OVER TIME?

• Anthropologists today reach very different

conclusions about the people who made and

used the objects in collections

• All objects change over time, if not in their

physical characteristics, then in the significance

we give to them

THE SOCIAL LIFE OF THINGS

Inanimate things have social lives

– Based on the assumption that things have forms, uses,

and trajectories that are intertwined in complex ways

with people’s lives

– Objects undergo a progression from creation,

exchange, and uses to eventual discard

– Progression makes it possible to identify social

relationships and cultural ideologies that influence each

period

– Across cultures, these relationships and ideologies can

vary drastically

(Photo: Courtesy of Luis A. Vivanco)

OBJECTS CHANGE OVER TIME

• All objects change over time, but they can do so in different ways.

• Three major ways that objects change over time:

– The form, shape, color, material, and use may change

– Significance and meaning may change as its social and physical contexts change

– A single object changes significance and meaning as it changes hands

THE ROLE OF MATERIAL CULTURE IN CONSTRUCTING
THE MEANING OF A COMMUNITY’S PAST

• Objects found in archaeological sites are not just

data for scientific analysis

• Nobody can own the past, but many will claim it

because it fits their ideas of what the past is

supposed to be like

– Example: the African Burial Ground

• Uncovering the past can challenge our

understandings of the world in unexpected ways

and provoke social controversy in which

different groups lay claim to the past.

(Photo: STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images)

ARCHAEOLOGY AND POLITICS

• Archaeology plays a role in politics, and

politics plays a role in archaeology

– Example: Both American and Yucatec

scholars used Chichén Itzá to construct

various images of the ancient Maya

• All anthropologists are immersed in such

political and social realities.

(Photo: BornaMir/iStockphoto)

THE CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION OF MEANING

• Control of the meaning of objects is contentious. This dynamic has two dimensions:

– Who has access to the resources from which we can document and uncover the story of

how things came to be

– Interpretations of the past or present material world differ according to social interests

• The legal, moral, and political implications are constructed by many different people,

each with a different set of personal and social agendas

– We call this the cultural construction of meaning