Hunter-gatherer

A hunter-gatherer society is in anthropological terms one whose predominant method of subsistence involves the direct procurement of edible plants and animals from the wild (or "foraging"), without significant recourse to the domestication of either. The demarcation between hunter-gatherers and other societies which rely on more managed techniques such as agriculturalism and pastoralism is not a clean one, as many societies typically utilise a range of strategies to obtain the foodstuffs required to sustain their community.

Common characteristics

Hunter-gatherer societies also tend to have non-hierarchical social structures, but this is not always the case. Some are more nomadic or mobile (usually in environments with fewer resources), and they generally are not able to store surplus food. Thus, full-time leaders, bureaucrats, or artisans are rarely supported by these societies. Others, such as the Haida of present-day British Columbia, lived in such a rich environment that they could remain sedentary, and other groups that live in the North American northwest coast can similarly remain sedentary for a majority of the year. These groups demonstrate more hierarchical social organization.

Related Topics:
Hierarchical - Nomad - Haida - British Columbia - North America

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Typically, men hunt and women gather, but this is not a given.

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At the 1966 "Man the Hunter" conference, anthropologists Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore suggested that egalitarianism was one of several central characteristics of nomadic hunting and gathering societies because mobility requires minimization of material possessions throughout a population; therefore, there was no surplus of resources to be accumulated by any single member. Other characteristics Lee and DeVore proposed were flux in territorial boundaries as well as in demographic composition. At the same conference, Marshall Sahlins presented a paper entitled, "Notes on the Original Affluent Society," in which he challenged the popular view of hunter-gatherers living lives "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short," as Thomas Hobbes had put it in 1651. According to Sahlins, ethnographic data indicated that hunter-gatherers worked far fewer hours and enjoyed more leisure than typical members of industrial society, and they still ate well. Their "affluence" came from the idea that they are satisfied with very little in the material sense. This, he said, constituted a Zen economy.

Related Topics:
1966 - Egalitarianism - Flux - Demographic - Marshall Sahlins - Thomas Hobbes - 1651 - Leisure - Zen

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One way to divide hunter-gatherer groups is by their return systems. James Woodburn uses the categories "immediate return" hunter-gatherers (egalitarian) and "delayed return" (nonegalitarian). Immediate return foragers consume their food within a day or two after they procure it. Delayed return foragers store the surplus food (Kelly{{ref|Kelly}}, 31).

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