ANTH 263g Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Shifting Cultivation, Transhumance, Exogamy
Document Summary
Making a living: adaptive strategies & economic systems. 5 adaptive strategies: foraging (hunting & gathering) Collection of nutritionally sig plant resources and the capture of important animal protein sources for food. Relying purely on nature to make their living; don"t grow crops or breed and tend animals. For much of 20th c, hunting was assumed to be more important than gathering. Many groups discovered cultivation, deliberately producing food. Foragers live off the land, usually in small groups, aka bands - all related by kinship or marriage. Practice band exogamy - marrying out of band into another. Band membership may change over course of year. Egalitarian - all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities. Minor contrasts in prestige, no sig contrasts in wealth and power. Ca and great basin indians (paiute, shoshone, ute) All contemporary foragers live in nation-states and are influenced by national policies. So they"re not purely foragers but have influence.
