Oral Traditions as Survival Strategies

The lifeways of hunter-gatherer groups may be considered to be precarious.  These highly mobile groups of foragers and hunters lived close to the earth and resource scarcity was often a recurring theme in their lives.  In response to scarcity, these groups needed the ability to deal with short and long-term recource fluctuations.

Foraging and hunting has been the economic pattern of hominids (modern humans and their bipedal ancestros) for almost three million years until the Neolithic Revolution which began the domestication of plants and animals, shifting groups economies to a more sedentary and agricultural lifestyle.  Over this span of several million years these hunting and foraging groups must have developed and maintained strategies that allowed their sociocultural systems to survive cycles of resource scarcity (Minc  1986:40) both short and long term.

During times of scarcity, behaviors and alternatives that had maintained group survival and reproduction in the past would result in the formation of adaptive knowledge that would provide a survival strategy.  This knowledge or information would be maintained within societies because it would be a, "prerequisite to decision making at a given moment in time" (Minc 1986:41).  This information, crucial to the survival and reproduction of the group would be retained in some form that could be culturally conveyed through time (Minc 1986:41).

One way this transmission occurs is through the oral tradition of the society.  Michell Sugiyama (2001) speaks to the universality of themes within folklore worldwide.  This universality would indicate that folklore is an adaptive means of treating adaptive problems.  It is Sugiyama's contention that this universality, "lends support to the hypothesis that storytelling originally emerged as a means of storing and transmitting certain types of fitness-related inforomation" (Sugiyama 2001:242).  Amyth, according to Sugiyama, may seem an impossible tale with talking animals and imaginary beings yet they contain accuracy in their descriptions of geography and plants as well as knowledge of where animals are located and how to kill and process them (Sugiyama 2001:239).

The universality of folklore is mainly at the "macro" level, dealing with issues common to all cultures such as survival and reproduction.  Variation would occur at the "micro" level where individual cultures deal with adaptive problems unique to their particular habitation areas or lifeways (Sugiyama 2001:243).

The environment is a major factor in the structuring and organizing of societies.  Intimate knowledge of the environment that continued social reproduction would be important to maintain and transmit.  Oral traditions are references to what was done in the past.  They are the repositories of past events and their outcomes and are able to provide information in formulating survival strategies to meet current conditions.

I submit oral tradition provides the information necessary in decision-making that results in adaptive survival strategies in how to deal with environmental variability and is one way of surviving resource scarcities.

Minc, Leah D.
    1986 Scarcity and survival: The role of oral tradition in mediating subsistencew crises. Journal of
       Anthropological Archaeology 5:39-113.

Sugiyama, Michelle Scalise
    2001 Narrative theory and function: Why evolution matters. Philosophy and Literature 25(2):233-250.

Core Use-Lives and the Problems That Could Arise When Using Core/Biface Ratios

In the article, “Core/Biface Ratios, Mobility, Refitting, and Artifact Use-Lives,” Douglas Bamforth and Mark Becker take off where Parry and Kelly left off with the use of core/biface ratios. They analyze another group of southwestern Paleo-Indian sites to show that variability within these groups such a great extent that using core/biface ratios alone will not account for. They restate what Parry and Kelly found, which shows that mobile hunter-gatherers typically have more bifaces while sedentary groups have more cores. Therefore, low core/biface ratios illustrate a highly mobile group, while high core/biface ratios show a more sedentary lifestyle.

They present many arguments against Parry and Kelly’s analysis by showing that assumptions can lead to errors. First, they claim that the assumption that artifacts accurately represent the tool kits used by prehistoric people is very unreliable. Sites with short occupations will leave behind fewer artifacts than groups that stay in one spot. Therefore, highly mobile groups will never leave an accurate portrayal of their tool kit at one site. Also, the use-lives of portable bifaces tend to be longer, leading towards its discard at the site it was used very unlikely. Bamforth and Becker also state that cores tend to pass through sites more often, leading to more instances of expedient reduction sequences.

They also show that there are regional differences between Paleo-Indian sites, even in the southwest Plains area. In their results, they show that higher core/biface ratios occur in the north and east, while lower values occur in the southern and western portions of the western United States. Bamforth and Becker show that this has nothing to do with raw material availability, but rather errors in the method of using cores only. They claim that other production debris should also be considered in the analysis of lithics to determine mobility. This way you can determine the frequencies of retouched pieces in an assemblage.

Bamforth and Becker claim that retouch frequencies are a better proxy for technological change, rather than Parry and Kelly’s core/biface method. When analyzing cores only, it only accounts for changes in sedentism. People can remain in one spot and never change their reduction strategy; however, core/biface ratios will not account for this because of the amounts of lithics that come with staying put in one spot. Therefore, even if this was the case, the core/biface ratios of the cores on site will indicate an expedient reduction regardless of the technological strategy utilized. By analyzing retouched pieces would show an increase in retouched frequencies if a formal strategy is used in a logistical setting. Therefore, retouch frequencies are a better indication of technological change.

Bamforth and Becker show that at the Allen Site in North America, the core/biface ratios show that the site was occupied for a short duration. However, several large bifacial cores as well as knives are available at the site. They also refitted a sequence of lithics which show that higher ratios were calculated then just the recovered artifacts. This shows that including debitage and other production debris is important in the analysis of mobility. Cores will only lead to faulty conclusions since they only represent a small portion of a given assemblage. Bamforth and Becker did an excellent job of pointing out the flaws and errors with the use of cores as a proxy of both technological change and prehistoric land-use strategies. By showing that the variation in Paleo-Indian assemblages can lead to different results when analyzing their lithics, they illustrated the point to never use one sole method to determine prehistoric lifestyles.

Douglas B. Bamforth and Mark S. Becker. Core/biface ratios: Mobility, refitting, and artifact use-lives: A Paleoind. Plains Anthropologist, Aug 2000; 45, 173, 273-290.

The Organization of Core Technology - Cores and Sedentism

William Parry and Robert Kelly offer great insights into core classification with their chapter, “Expedient Core Technology and Sedentism” in the book, The Organization of Core Technology. They begin by explaining how bifacial production leaves patterned traces in the archaeological record. As time passed into the late prehistoric and contact phases, assemblages began to reflect a more expedient core reduction technique. In these contexts, formal cores and retouched elements tend to become rare. They feel this is both a shift in response to a decreased mobility strategy, as well as a major change in technological organization.

They then explain the differences between expedient and formal reduction techniques. Expedient reduction tends to have no secondary retouch, and they are manufactured with a specific task in mind. This differs from formal technology which has a prepared form in mind. Therefore, form selection in groups associated with expedient core technology is not stressed. In this reduction sequence, flakes are struck off randomly from the core which is referred to as bipolar technique. This particularly technique, as Parry and Kelly indicate, requires no previous training or practice whatsoever. It requires little expenditure of time, and very little effort on the knapper’s part. The tools themselves that are flaked from the core are typically only used once and then discarded.

This contrasts with formal techniques, where bifaces are much harder to learn how to manufacture and take a great deal of time to do so. They also are typically used several times for a variety of tasks by retouching the edges to extend its use-life, making their cutting edges much more useful. These cores are typically standardized as well, resulting in a specific tool form. Bifaces also are very portable, allowing highly mobile groups to carry them with ease compared to large cores. This is considered a more efficient use of raw material as well, as expedient reduction is fairly wasteful since the use-lives of tools are typically very short and must be replaced with a new flake.

After describing these types of cores, they show through different groups how mobility can be determined by analyzing this type of lithic technology. The three groups they analyzed were: various North American Paleo-Indian groups (Eastern Woodlands, Plains, and Southwest groups), Mesoamerican cultures (particularly Archaic and Early Formative), and Neolithic European groups. They found that with the Paleo-Indian groups, a change towards expedient core reduction occurred around AD 500 (AD 300 for the Plains, and AD 600 for the Southwest). In some regions, the change was dramatic. In others, it was a long drawn-out process. Regardless of the speed, the shift seemed to correspond with changes in settlement patterns (i.e. – the first large permanent villages). This seemed to be the case with the other groups studied as well. Though very late (1500-1000BC), there is an emphasis on expedient core technology when very large settlements began to sprout in the region. However, the sample is small due to rarity of lithic samples from the area. Also, it has been found that in some areas, such as the Tehuacan Valley, there was an increase in formal tools. Parry and Kelly claim that this is probably a lack of sufficient data or a bias in sampling. And last but not least, the Neolithic period indicates a shift to expedient reduction compared to the Mesolithic preceding it. They claim that this is also indicative of a change in sedentism.

Parry and Kelly offer a great explanation for their results and claims. They show that the changes in core technologies is not related to other technological innovations, local conditions, raw material availability, progress, or even a shift toward agriculture. They found that in all contexts, these scenarios were not applicable. The shift was only in regard to changes in settlement patterns. As people began to become more and more sedentary, they began to change their technology in a way that would best suite their particular lifestyles. Parry and Kelly provide great examples of different groups in different regions that support their arguments.

Parry, W. and R. Kelly. Expedient Core Technology and Sedentism. In: The Organization of Core Technology, edited by J. Johnson and C. Morrow, 285-308. Westview Press, Boulder, Colorado, 1987.

Core Technology in the Levant

Ian Wallace and John Shea’s article, “Mobility Patterns and core technologies in the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant,” discusses the correlation between core types and land use management. They state that expedient core patterns in lithic assemblages are indicative of decreased mobility and a shift towards logistical mobility strategies, or what they refer to as radiating mobility (collectors). This is because most expedient cores indicate little core preparation, as well as little retouch and reuse of tools from these cores. Because formal cores tend to be portable bifaces, curated assemblages indicate a more mobile strategy on the land, or circulating mobility strategies (foragers). These tools tend to be used time and time again for a variety of tasks.

Levantine Middle Paleolithic assemblages typically are dominated by this type of core technique, though cores are typically the least common part of a lithic assemblage. Wallace and Shea believe that the final core forms found at sites are an accurate depiction of core reduction techniques utilized by prehistoric people. However, they do acknowledge that cores are by no means static. A core can start out its use-life as an expedient core reduction strategy and later be used as a biface (formal). This could lead to potential errors when only analyzing cores at a given site. Mobility strategies are also not static, as Wallace and Shea point out. If logistical strategies are less costly than residential for a group of people, then the switch to a different mobility strategy would make sense.

The authors also analyze these cores according to both temporal and spatial scales. They analyze the sites according to their location on the map (i.e. – interior, coastal, and ecotone), and try to see if any differences exist according to the site’s location in the Levant. They also include an analysis of different phases within the Middle Paleolithic. They call these early, middle and late Middle Paleolithic, and they seem to correspond with changes in temperatures and climate. What they conclude is that there is a general increase in the emphasis on expedient core strategies. The coastal sites show more expedient cores, while the interior had fewer expedient cores. The ecotone region, or the intermediate region between the interior and coast, had fewer formal cores, but more cores-on-flakes.

But this could reflect Wallace and Shea’s potential errors with their core classifications. They have two categories which do not fit their formal/expedient classes: others and cores-on-flakes. They claim that cores-on-flakes could be either a formal or expedient reduction strategy because it does not reflect either exclusively. However, the amount of cores-on-flakes at each site is rather large compared to the other two core values. If they were incorporated into either expedient or formal, then we might see some major differences in results. They also leave out a good deal of layers and sites in the region, which must be included for a complete view of prehistoric life in the Levant.

Regardless of some of these issues, Wallace and Shea provide a thorough lithic analysis of the Levant and several of its sites. They show that easy calculations can lead to some insightful trends between given assemblages. They also provide a unique analysis of the differences in Levant regions, and the changes it has experienced over time, and at the same time, indicating these changes and different zones played an important role in land-use strategies in prehistory. They also seem to address most of the potential errors in their work, which is always a positive when using only one method to determine lifestyles far into the past. This will always be problematic unless correlated to other forms of evidence to support it.

Wallace, I.J., and Shea, John J., 2006. Mobility patterns and core technologies in the Middle Paleolithic of the Levant. Journal of Archaeological Science 33, 1293–1309.

Eat, Drink, and be Merry! Maize Domesticated to Make Alcohol?

Zea mays was manipulated by the prehistoric peoples of Mesoamerica to produce maize.  This occurred someitme between 10,000 and 7,500 B.P. (Piperno et al 2009:5023).  Often believed to have been domesticated as a food source, John Smalley and Michael Blake, in their article entitled Sweet Beginnings, provide a unique view for the domestication of maize.They cite Hugh H. Ilitis's view of maize domestication as resulting from the need or desire for the sugar found in the maize stalk rather than for it edible seeds (Smalley and Blake 2003:675).  Taking this one step further, Smalley and Blake surmise the stalk sugar, among other uses, was a key component in producing alcoholic beverages and that the importance of these beverages were key in the domestication of maize (Smalley and Blake 2003:675).

For evidence of the importance of sugar in the diet and for the production of alcohol, Smalley and Blake refer to Mintz's article, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History (1985).  Solomon Katz and Mary Voigt's article, Beer and Bread (1986), looks at doemstication of wheat and barley in the prehistoric Near East and believe the main push behind the domestication of wild cereals also was for the production of alcoholic beverages (Katz and Voigt 1986:27).

We most often tend to look at fully domesticated maize and see its importance as a food resource as the reason for domestication.  Very seldom do we look to its other uses or characteristics as an important vehicle for domestication.  Smalley and Blake's premise of an alternate reason for maize domestication is quite simple.

Hunter-gatherers in Archaic Mesoamerica harvested zea for the sweetness in the stalk and chewed it to obtain the sweet middle (maize quids have been found in a number of Tehuacan cave sites) (Smalley and Blake 2003:682).  Perhaps over time it was found that large amounts of seet juice could be obtained through mashing the stalks and fermenting the juice as may have been done with other plant juices.  Archaic Mesoamericans may have tended stands of zea and increased their yield by planting it in other favorable areas.  Because these people were highly mobile, they could take zea seeds with them, planting zea in areas it did not occur naturally while manipulating and selecting for the characteristics that produced the sweetest juice (Smalley and Blake 2003:678-679).

Zea was chosen to domesticate over other plants that produced a sweet juice because it grew and matured quickly, was able to be harvested more than once a year and its yield could be expanded through expansion of growing areas.  Other plants were slow to grow and mature and difficult to cultivate (Smalley and Blake 2003:679).  Because cultivation is labor and time intensive and would have taken manpower away from obtaining other resources, zea would have been seen as a worthwhile cultivar.

Ethnographies from the New and Old World indicate alcoholic beverages were inportant at secular and nonsecular occasions.  Benjamin Franklin touted the fermented juice of the corn stalk and maize stalk beer is still made at harvest time by the Tarahumara (Smalley and Blake 2003:680).  As well, these beverages were probably incorporated into prehistoric religious and ritual occasions (Katz and Voigt 1986:27).

This novel view sees maize as a domesticate for a reason other than as a food crop.  Maize's importance under this model was as a necessary component for an alcoholic beverage.


Katz, Solomon H. and Mary M. Voigt
1986 Bread and Beer. Expidition 28(2):23-34

Piperno, Dolores R., Anthony J. Ranere, Irene Holst, Jose Iriart, and Ruth Dickau
2009 Starch Grain and Phytolith Evidence for Early Ninth Millenium B.P.: Maize
from the Central Balsas River Valley, Mexico. Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences 106(13):5019-5024.

Smalley, John and Michael Blake
2003 Sweet Beginnings: Stalk Sugar and the Domestication of Maize.
Current Anthropology 44(5):675-703

Clovis Hunting Strategies

The Clovis image of a highly mobile big-game hunter has come under fire recently. Accusations range from Clovis hunting behaviors provide a meduim for perpetuating androcentric bias to theoretical concerns whether big-game hunting would have been economically feasible for Clovis. So were the Clovis big-game hunters or general foragers? The generalists, as I'll call the general forager theorists, claim that although Clovis killed large game they were mainly dependent on small prey and plants for subsistence. Since most Clovis sites contain megafaunal remains, the generalists suggest that when more "campsites" are discovered it will be seen that Clovis had a wide diet-breadth. The generalists also argue that the evidence of Clovis is biased since megafaunal remains are more archaeologically visible than smaller prey. Some theoretical concerns are that big-game hunting is ethnographically rare and the hug diversity of North American fauna and flora would favor a general foraging strategy. The generalists seem to have forgotten about the optimal foraging theory. If high ranked prey are available and it is feasible to kill them then that prey will be the prey of choice. Clovis had low population densities and the megafauna were abundant in the Pleistocene. So it makes sense for them to be big game specialists. A study of 33 Clovis sites was conducted. If the Clovis were general foragers then there would be a positive correlation between prey densities and their presence in the archaeological records of Clovis sites. If Clovis were big game specialists then there would be a negative correlation. For example mammoths do not have high densities compared to say rabbits. So a general foraging site would have much less mammoth remains than rabbit remains. And the opposite would be true of a big game specialist site. So out of the 33 sites mammoth would only be at 3.3 of the sites according to the correlation between prey assemblages and natural abundance. The evidence however shows mammoth/mastodon at 79% of sites (22.7 more than should occur for general foraging) and rodents/insectivores are at 19 less sites than they should be if Clovis were general foragers. The largest and least diverse and least abundant taxa are present at Clovis sites. Also the Clovis tool kits with large bifacial projectile points are perfect for bringing down large prey.

The conclusion is that Clovis were big game specialists and the new ideas of them as general foragers is absurd. If they were general foragers then Clovis would have survived the Younger Dryas and megafaunal extinctions.

Surovell TA. CLOVIS HUNTING STRATEGIES, OR HOW TO MAKE OUT ON PLENTIFUL RESOURCES. American Antiquity. 68(2), 2003, 333-352

Things to kill when you're original, affluent and social...

Cross-posted at A Very Remote Period Indeed.

I have to admit this made me laugh.

© http://www.quickdraw.me/1169

So, it's kind of a silly comic, definitely good for a few chuckles. Yet, when you take a second to think about it, there's a lot packed into it. In two little panels, the cartoonist manages to bring up two of the biggest misconceptions about prheistoric hunter-gatherers: 1) that hunter-gatherers spend only a small amount of time a day foraging for food and have an abundance of leisure time to devote to other pursuits; and 2) that modern humans actively killed off Neanderthals.

Now while some people still believe that confrontational, violent interactions occurred at least some of the time when modern humans and Neanderthals crossed paths (e.g., Mellars 2005), faithful AVRPI readers will know by now that this view not only glosses over a ton of inconvenient evidence, but also doesn't really jive with what we know about how groups of hunter-gatherers really compete with one another (cf. O'Connell 2006).

The first component, though - the 4-5 hours of work thing - is more interesting. It taps into a now outgrown view of hunter-gatherers as having comparatively easy lives, where only a few hours a day were spent procuring food. This idea derives from the notion of the "original affluent society" first promulgated by M. Sahlins during the Man the Hunter conference (Sahlins 1968). That conference was held in Chicago in 1966 and was published as an edited volume by the same name in 1968 (Lee and de Vore 1968). Using some of the data on foraging returns that Lee had collected, Sahlins argued that foragers like the Kalahari San groups only spent a few hours a day foraging for food, spending the rest of their time gossiping or involved in assorted leisure activities.

This was pretty revolutionary for the time. Up to that point, hunter-gatherers had been seen by most anthropologists as perpetually living difficult, physically demanding lives and as always living on the brink of starvation. Sahlins' perspective, on top of having a catchy name, was the perfect foil to that traditional view, on top of providing a view of 'people closer to nature' as living what was in many ways possibly a better life than 20th post-industrial Westerners that fit in well with some of the counter-culture ideas in vogue at the time.

However, in spite of its conceptual and socio-political sexiness, the 'original affluent society' was just as unrealistic a view as that of perpetually hungry foragers. For one thing, it was based on observations made on a handful of forager societies, and even if it had been true for them, it would have been unwarranted to transpose it to all hunter-gatherers in all times and places. Second, Sahlins ignored the fact that several hours were also employed processing the food resources gathered in the 2-4 hours he saw as a typical work day for hunter-gatherers. Thorough reviews and criticisms of the OAS model include those written by Bird-David (1992:26-28) and Kelly (1995:15-19).

Anyhoo, all of this to say that, in addition to being funny on the face of it, this little comic is doubly funny to the informed reader, since it also capitalizes (maybe unwittingly) on two anthropological idea that have very much outlived their original usefulness. 

References

Bird-David, N. (1992). Beyond "The Original Affluent Society": A Culturalist Reformulation Current Anthropology, 33 (1) DOI: 10.1086/204029

Lee, R.B., and I. DeVore. 1968. Man the Hunter. Aldine, Chicago.

Kelly, R.L. 1995 The Foraging Spectrum. Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

Mellars, P. (2005). The impossible coincidence. A single-species model for the origins of modern human behavior in Europe Evolutionary Anthropology, 14 (1), 12-27 DOI: 10.1002/evan.20037

O'Connell, J.F. 2006. How did modern humans displace Neaderthals? Insights from hunter-gatherer ethnography and archaeology. In When Neanderthals and modern humans met, (N. Conard, ed.), pp. 43-64. Tubingen: Kerns Verlag.

Sahlins, M. 1968. Notes on the Original Affluent Societies. In Man the Hunter, (R. Lee and I. DeVore, eds.), pp. 85-89. Aldine, Chicago.