LITMIR.BIZ

Figure 1.1 Food‐gathering activities of the Australian Aborigines.

      Source: Adapted from Sahlins (1968).

      Other reports at the symposium tended to support these general findings. A picture emerged of leisure, if not affluent societies, where the food supply was assured even under difficult environmental conditions and could be obtained from natural sources with little effort. The picture described did seem to fit the golden age of Hesiod or the Biblical Garden of Eden.

The publication of Man the Hunter was a surprise to many who believed some version of the hunter stereotype. The stimulation was enormous. Between 1968 and 1992, there were at least 12 international conferences on hunter‐gatherers as a direct result, but not all were published. A few of the early conferences included ones published by Ingold et al. (1988a, 1988b) and by Schire (1984). In addition, one may cite Bicchieri (1972), Hunters and Gatherers Today; Dahlberg (1981), Woman, the Gatherer; Winterhalder and Smith (1981), Hunter‐gatherer Foraging Strategies; Williams and Hunn (1982), Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter‐gatherers; Koyama and Thomas (1982), Affluent Foragers: Pacific Coasts East and West; Price and Brown (1985), Prehistoric Hunter‐gatherers: The Emergence of Social and Cultural Complexity; Harris and Hillman (1989), Foraging and Farming: The Evolution of Plant Exploitation; and such regional treatments as Hallam (1975), Fire and Hearth: A Study of Aboriginal Usage and European Usurpation in Southwestern Australia; Silberbauer (1981, p. 242), Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert; Riches (1982), Northern Nomadic Hunter‐gatherers; Lee (1984), The Dobe!Kung; Akazawa and Aikens (1986), Prehistoric Hunter‐gatherers in Japan; and there are many hundreds of additional research papers. There is now a vast amount of new material on the subject, but some of the oldest papers are still the most useful because observations were made before the hunter‐gatherers were so restricted and encapsulated as they are now.

The biases of some of the investigators were often clear. Some set out to dispute the “affluent society” concept and others to support it. Some of the anthropologists were hung up on Marxist views of “history,” since the egalitarian nature of most hunter‐gatherer societies suggested Marx's view of communism: “No one starves unless all starve”; “no man need go hungry while another eats”; “rich and poor perish together,” and so forth (Lee, 1988). The quotes are from observers of Iroquois, Ainu, and Nuer, respectively, and seem to equate egalitarianism with hunger, which is probably not fair. Incidentally, Karl Marx took his model of basic communism from an agricultural Iroquois society, not from hunter‐gatherers, who are not so likely to starve.

      What do the new studies show? To no one's surprise, they show that the golden age was more golden for some than for others. Even a few examples of famine were found (Johnson & Earle, 1987, p. 374). Brian Hayden (1981) listed a number of tribes showing a continuum of work from “a few minutes per day” (Tanaina in Alaska) or 2 hr per day (Hadza in Tanzania) to “all day every day” or “too busy to visit relatives” (Birhor in India). Well, I have been too busy to visit relatives even when I wasn't doing much of anything. It also comes as no surprise that if processing and cooking time is added to collecting time, it takes longer to get a meal than some figures would suggest. Processing some foods is laborious and time‐consuming. Grinding or pounding seeds into flour has always been drudgery, and boiling toxic foods in several changes of water takes a lot of time. Still, is watching a pot boil hard labor, especially if the kids make a game of picking up sticks to keep the fire going? And, of course, farmers must also process their food, too, so the addition of processing and cooking time does not necessarily change the comparison.

      There are certain aspects of time and work that do not seem to receive due attention. Suppose you like your work? I always have, and have spent far more time at it than necessary for survival. Consider those men of industrial societies who spend endless hours cramped and freezing in a duck blind for little or no reward, or those who huddle in a shelter fishing through the ice in the middle of a Minnesota winter. The social aspects are what matter; after a few nips of whiskey, no one cares if the rod bends or not. I record two ethnographic notes from my own experience, both from farming societies, but the principles apply to anyone. Early one morning on a deserted road in Afghanistan, I came across a line of men dressed in colorful embroidered jackets, balloon pants, and pixie‐toed shoes. They had two drums and were singing and dancing up and down with their sickles in the air. A group of women followed, shrouded in their chadors, but obviously enjoying the occasion. I stopped and asked in broken Farsee: “Is this a wedding celebration or something?” They looked surprised and said: “No, nothing. We are just going out to cut wheat.” Harvest time is a good time of year even if it is hot and the “work” is hard. It is a time for socializing and, if the harvest is good, for celebrating.

A second observation was in eastern Turkey. My interpreter and I had seen a family harvesting a field and we stopped. He talked to the people while I collected some samples. My interpreter later told me that he had commented to the farmer that he could harvest the field in half the time if he would use a scythe and cradle. The farmer looked at him in astonishment and said: “Then what would I do?” There is a certain amount of Parkinson's law in all these activities. One fills up the time available. What is the meaning of time if there is more of it than you know how to use? As for getting by with the least effort possible for survival, I do not think that is human nature. Sure, anyone can drink vin ordinaire, but why not work a little harder and drink Chateauneuf‐du‐Pape?

      How do hunter‐gatherers spend their leisure? Apparently they sleep a lot, but there are other diversions. Gambling is popular among many tribes; Woodburn (1970, p. 59) states that the Hadza people spend more time in gambling than in obtaining food. The most popular gambling stake is poisoned arrows. There are also music, dances, ritual and ceremony, rites of passage, playing cat's cradle, storytelling, creative arts, making useful and decorative articles, and similar activities. Life appears easy, but generally dull. Perhaps as a consequence there is a great deal of coming and going; the camp population is fluid and camps may be moved on the slightest pretext or for no reason at all. Understandably, there is a tendency to concentrate on the foods most easily obtained at a given time, and these are likely to change from season to season and, to some extent, from year to year. Groups of people in many gathering societies tend to be very fluid for that reason. When food is at maximum abundance, there is a tendency to gather in large bands. This is the season for rejoicing, celebrating, observing ancient tribal rituals, arranging marriages, and having naming ceremonies, coming of age ceremonies, and so on. The tribe is more fully represented at this time. During the most difficult season of the year, the people may break up into microbands to better exploit the gathering range and to avoid exhausting the food supply near the larger camps.

      Many Australian Aborigines remain apart much of the yearly cycle even after becoming dependent on European agricultural–industrial systems. For most of the year they find jobs as ranch hands, laborers, mechanics, and so forth, but they may quit whatever they are doing, take off their store‐bought clothes, and take a three‐month “walkabout” during their traditionally festive season. Gathering is still easier than working at that time of year.

The study of hunting tribes that have survived long enough to have been observed by modern ethnographers is full of difficulties and pitfalls. Many tribes had become profoundly modified through contact with and by the pressures applied by agriculturalists. Some were reduced to the status of slaves or servants; others were restricted on reservations or their normal ranges were constricted by pressures of stronger groups. The social and economic structures of many tribes were in an advanced stage of disintegration at the time of ethnographic description.

      The geographic distribution of surviving hunters results in a serious bias. By and large, hunters have survived where agriculture is unrewarding. We find them in the Kalahari Desert and adjacent dry savanna in southern Africa, in small pockets of tropical

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