Alvard, M.S.
1998. Evolutionary ecology and resource conservation. Evolutionary Anthropology ( 7):62-74.
This article discusses the concept of resource conservation by Hunter and Gatherer’s. The author argues that one look outside the bias that they are conversationalists because they do not want to over exploit the environment; that they are in harmony with the environment intentionally. He goes on to argue that Hunter and Gatherers will and do exploit the environment to gain short-term benefits at the potential cost of long term rewards. This article is argued very well from an economic point of view. The detraction from this article, which may have been out side of the authors scope, is what, if any, secondary beneficial effects may come from their actions. This paper will be incorporated into my background of the issue of studying environmental manipulation.
Arnold, J. E.
1992 Complex Hunter-Gatherer-Fishers of Prehistoric California: Chiefs, Specialists, and Maritime Adaptations of the Channel Islands. American Antiquity 57(1): 60-84.
This foraging study was conducted with two goals in mind: “(1) to present a theory of the rise of nonegalitarian organization and permanent leadership, and (2) to analyze a model of emergent complexity for the Santa Barbara Channel area of the California Coast” (Arnold 1992: 60). The population of study, known as the Chumash, was a society of hunter-gatherer-fishers who lived in the area prehistorically, both on the mainland and surrounding islands, and existed until the late eighteenth century. The author identifies several variables she believes to be important in the development of complexity in this society, which include environmental instability and subsistence stress, craft specialization and production, transportation, and exchange. In her research the author integrates a mass of archaeological data and ethnohistorical accounts obtained from previous surveys of the area. Arnold combines this raw data and provides her own interpretations and analysis to produce a chronology and synthesize a coherent argument for the model she proposes. The author concludes that the development of complexity among the Chumash occurred from 1150 – 1300 C.E., or the Transitional Period. Arnold argues that during this time, unusual fluctuations in marine temperatures resulted in variable foraging returns, causing subsistence and resource stress. Such stressful conditions spurred an increase in the exchange of goods among the communities scattered across the channel area. This then provided individuals the opportunity to seize elite roles in the management and organization of labor regarding the production of valued goods, in this case beads, and their transportation, accomplished using a sophisticated tomol or plank canoe. Each of these variables and events figured in the rise of economic, social, and political complexity among this foraging society.
Binford, Lewis R.
1990 Mobility, Housing, and Environment: A Comparative Study. Journal of Anthropological Research 65(2):119-152.
Binford’s goal in this study is to examine the development of cultural complexity in hunter-gather groups and how they are interpreted in the archaeological record. His premise is based upon theory that cultural complexity is a response to the problems that arise from decreased mobility (Binford 1990: 120). He wants to compare how different hunter-gather groups handle this problem by looking at three issues: how hunter-gather groups solve their housing needs in different environments, how these solutions related to mobility and subsistence strategies, and finally how do we deal with complexity based on the two previous issues. His findings are that when you find lower effective temperatures the cost of exploitation of plant resources increases so more terrestrial mammal resources are exploited, but because the cost of mobility also increases with higher dependency on these animals an “aquatic resource transition” will take places and groups will become more tethered to the few access points to aquatic resources . This tethering then leads to higher density and increased social complexity that is found in the classic complex hunter-gathers of the northwest American coast (Binford 1990:148). Binford’s analysis is broken down into two parts: implications for human evolution and implications for the development of complexity. He does an excellent job of summarizing his findings in relation to human evolution and lays out we can expect as humans moved towards the poles on would find increased dependence on terrestrial mammals, storage as an over-wintering tactic, and more substantial winter housing (Binford 1990: 146). He also finds, that because an increase in the use of terrestrial mammals, we find increase in mobility of continental groups and in groups near aquatic resources a shift to those resources and decreased mobility (Binford 1990: 147). His analysis of complexity leaves something to be desired. He explains very well why complexity may have arisen in colder areas, near aquatic resources, but it leaves out the causes of complexity in other areas. This would have been fine but in the start of the study Binford claimed that he was looking at complexity across the board in hunter-gather societies. He seems to have no good explanation for the rest of this variation.
Bird, Douglas W.; Bird, Rebecca Bliege; and Parker, Christopher H.
2003. Women Who Hunt With Fire: Aboriginal Resource Use and Fire Regimes in Australia’s Western Desert. Arid Lands Newsletter. (54)
This article discusses the usage of controlled fires by Australian Aborigines to flush out game and maintain plant diversity within their hunting grounds. It focuses specifically on whether or not it increases women’s hunting yields. It describes the physical environment nicely and presents the argument in a clear manner. It does make the disclaimer early in the paper of how it focused mainly on the cool dry season of the area, which begs the question of if managed fire is used during the other times and what, if any, the impact of the burns may have. This article states a piece of evidence in the study of managed burns which I will use in my paper.
Cashdan, Elizabeth; Barnard, Alan; Bicchieri, M. C.; et al.
1983. Territoriality Among Human Foragers: Ecological Models and an Application to Four Bushman Groups [and Comments and Reply]. Current Anthropology, (24), No. 1: 47-66
As stated in the title, this article comparatively examines the territoriality of four groups of Bushman. The authors posit that there are two models that hunter & gatherers use to control their resources; 1) competition and overt defense of their lands and 2) “reciprocal altruism” where they control access to their social groups and thusly control access to the resources. They then go on to state that all four groups, although located in variable economic/ ecological environments, participate in the reciprocal model. This article discusses important economic issues (food and water variability) as well as the social mechanisms used to control them. This would help formulate a more complete background when considering environmental pressures that may encourage people to manipulate their environment. The paper has strong points that are presented; it is also seemingly put forth in a non-biased form. The information seems sound and there are comments by peers at the end of the article which lend credibility to the position.
Condon, Richard G.
1987. Inuit Youth: Growth and Change in the Canadian Arctic. New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press.
By virtue of the fact that this book focuses on the adolescents of an Inuit community, almost all of the subject matter is non-material culture. The topics covered include community, life stafes, seasons of adolescence, family life, friends and peers, gender preference, sexuality, mate selection, school, work, aspirations, rebellion, and deviance. Something unique that I'd like to explore are the 'draw-aperson' images in the appendices and what they say about the adolescents in the community. All of this is fertile ground for research on some of the hardest aspects of any culture to capture, understand, and inform the public on - namely that which cannot be seen, held, readily replicated, or put on display in a museum. Discussions of homosexuality (to the little extent it appears to be present in Inuit society) may also be of interest.
Condon, Richard G.
1996. The Northern Copper Inuit: A History. Norman and London: University of Oklahoma Press.
This work traces the Holman region's history from prehistory to early contact (prior to 1850), to transition (1850-1910), to modern times (1910-1966), and lastly to the present (1966 forward). This ties in with a change in the name of the region as well from 'the Holman region' to "The King's Bay Site" and finally to "The Queen's Bay Site". A great deal of material is devoted to the economic interactions of the Holman Inuit residents and the colonizing Westerners, namely through trapping and subsequent trading, although some mention of artwork is made. Somewhere in the history before missionaries showed up, there is a section on animal spirits and the rest of the native Inuit belief system of the Holman region. This and changing family relations is of great interest, but there is an extreme emphasis on material culture (economic relations) with little in the way of non-material culture.
Damas, David.
1975. Demographic Aspects of Central Eskimo Marriage Practices. American Ethnologist 2(3):409-418.
This article’s purpose is to clarify and explore marriage practices among the Netsilik, the Copper, and the Iglulik Eskimos of the Canadian Arctic. Damas discusses not only the practices, but the problems of marriage isolate, polygamy, exogamy, and endogamy and how their kinship terminology and marriage practices relate. All three groups are individually described. The Netsilik and the Copper Eskimo seem to have more in common than with the Iglulik. Damas uses demographic and ecological factors to explain the contrasting characteristics among groups. For instance, it was virtually impossible for both the Netsilik and the Copper Eskimos to be exogamous due to low population densities and the marginal subsistence in that region. The Iglulik have more freedom because of their increased variety of food and their access to large sea mammals. The article did point out some of these marriage practices not making perfect sense, such as, the Netsilik’s encouragement of first-cousin marriages because of their distrust of outsiders and their practice of polygamy even though polyandry would make more sense based on the shortage in females. Damas ends this article with several important questions which emanated from his research.
Freeman, Milton M. R., Lyudmila Bogoslovskaya, Richard A. Caulfield, Ingmar Egede, Igor I. Krupnik, and Marc G. Stevenson.
1998. Inuit, Whaling, and Sustainability. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.
For the most part, this book focuses on the modern-day challenges the Inuit people face when it comes to their whaling practices, from the importance of it to the International impositions to ways of making it sustainable. There is a small section about the spiritual aspects associated with whaling, namely by quoting many Inuit in their thoughts on the matter. Even in the modern age, Elders are honored in sheltered buildings with feasts and children watch videos of succsesful hunts by their communities. This ties in with the section on the culture importance of whaling - the rules, traditions, rituals, ceremonies, and perspectives on each matter of cultural preservation - yet again relayed in the words of Inuit people themselves, because whale hunting is almost always a community activity.
Gott, Beth
1999 Fire as an Aboriginal Management Tool in South-Eastern Australia. Paper presented at the Australian Bushfire Conference, Albury, July.
Although this article discusses Aboriginal fire regimen in the South-east of Australia, it discusses the ecological benefit of burnings; both to plant diversity and the diversity of food resources. It discusses fertilization, plant diversity and the human willingness to exploit fire for this to happen. A strength of the paper is the fact that when it discusses the flora in question, it details how the fire is beneficial to its propagation. A weakness to this paper (in regards to my paper) is the fact that it discusses South-Eastern Australia. This paper will provide background and evidence to Aboriginal manipulation of the natural environment to benefit higher yields.
Kaplan, H. and K. Hill
1992 Evolutionary Ecology of Food Acquistion. In Evolution, Ecology, and Human Behavior, E.A. Smith and B. Winterhalder, eds. pp. 167-202. Aldine:Chicago. (1)
The authors start by giving a general overview of optimal foraging and the theoretical models that have been derived from it. Emphasis is placed on prey-choice models which are fundamental to understanding meat acquisition. The authors rank the resources used by Aché men in the article, and it can be seen that while some meat sources may not be ranked among the top, they were not left behind. This contradiction is an example of the cultural importance placed on meat, leading to its high value. The authors go on to address other deviations from expected optimal foraging. They suggest that daily changes in the environment, differential processing of the food, and time restrictions may all play a role in such deviations. An extremely valuable piece of this article comes near the end where quantitative data is provided about the Aché macronutrient diet. The authors conclude by discussing the process through which a group would adapt to the food resources of their environment.
Morrison, David, and Georges-Hérbert Germain.
1995. Inuit: Glimpses of an Arctic Past. Hull, Quebec, Canada: Canadian Museum of Civilization.
Focusing on the Copper Inuit among other Inuit tribes, this book features beautiful color illustrations alongside explanations of building and hunting technology; clothing, music, games, and toys; fasting, illness, and other hardships of life in the arctic tundra; meat and sharing norms; marriage and sexual practices; family life; and spirituality. A brief overview of elements non-specific to Inuit culture is also contained such as seals, whales, walruses, bears, foxes, birds, fish, and other small mammals. The text follows one family in particular across five settlements on the fringes of Canadian society attributed to the Copper Inuit people in the year 1909-1910. There is a great deal of material dedicated to the non-physical aspects of Inuit culture - things such as names, games, marriage, music, spirituality, and sexual relations. This resource is inspiring as an outline.
Patrick, Donna.
2003. Language, Politics, and Social Interaction in an Inuit Community. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
As the title indicates, this work is almost entirely about language-use in Arctic Quebec and the social & political concerns surrounding it. The focus is nont just on Inuit languages, but learning English and French as well, including the difficulty of reading writing these foreign tongues. There there's the matter of the dominant (foreign) language in comparison to the more predominantly spoken Inuit languages among the native peoples and the invisible, but very real, boundaries that these languages create. There is a great deal of emphasis on the impact of foreign and native cultures clashing, but also on the economic, schooling, geographic, and political matters. There is a small section on the history of the region, including the arrival of missionaries.
Riches, David.
1974. The Netsilik Eskimo: A Special Case of Selective Female Infanticide. Ethnology 13(4):351-361.
Riches evaluates previous proposed theories to explain the high rates of female infanticide among the Netsilik. He begins by discussing Freeman’s criticisms against the idea that female infanticide is a way to control population size and is only an adaptive demographic response to a high adult male mortality rate. Riches shares Freeman’s opposing theories as well as several other contemporary schools of thought, however interjects to state that a completely new perspective is needed to explain the other unique characteristics of the Netsilik Eskimos, such as preferential kindred endogamy and the stealing of wives from neighboring groups. He suggests that this “perspective necessarily involves a number of other, more general, issues: the role of infanticide in hunter-gatherer societies, the measurement of environmental pressure, the rules governing ownership of hunted animals among the Eskimo, and the competitiveness of Eskimo hunters (p. 352).” Through the rest of Riches’s paper, he compares and contrasts four Eskimo groups (Copper, Netsilik, Igulik, and Taqramiut) using the issues stated above. His theory basically states that as environmental pressures vary so do the rates of infanticide as well as the variability of dog and the nuclear family. Riches concludes that, “together, infanticide rates and dog: nuclear family ratios of the four considered tribes strongly suggest that the Netsilik Eskimo suffered the severest environmental pressure, the Iglulik the least, with the Copper and Taqramiut occupying respective intermediate positions (p. 356).”
Testart, Alain
1982 The Significance of Food Storage Among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Patterns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities. Current Anthropology 23 (5): 523-537
In his article, Alain Testart presents his solution to the problem “how to account for the fact that, with the same basic food-gathering economy, two very different level of social complexity can be attained” (1982, 523). Testart’s suggests the reason for variable complexity among foraging societies is that there are in actuality two very different types of economy. The first economy is one in which the group is nomadic and is based on the immediate consumption of resources. The people from this group are egalitarian, wealth and prestige are rare. The second economy is based of the storage of abundant yet seasonal resources. They also tend to be more sedentary this leads to stratification within the group. Testart's goals are to define the economy of storing hunter-gather groups and to present a cross-cultural analysis of forty hunter-gatherers, both storing and non. Through this he aims to link storage to non-egalitarianism. Testart identifies the typical storing society as being located in environments where resources are bountiful during one season and scare during another, so the storage of food is key to their survival. They typically live in a village or a permanent camp. With storage, the amount of food available to the group increases, allowing the population density to increase. The sedentary lifestyle allows for the accumulation of material goods and acquisition of wealth. This leads to exploitation of others, creating an elite class. Testart used a preexisting chart of conditions and social adjustments and applies it to the 40 hunt-gatherer societies. He also looked at techniques of storage, ecological conditions, stratification, population, and the dependence on land hunting. Through these and other factors, Testart determines whether or not the societies are storing groups and what the trends are within these groups. The societies Testarts identifies as storing societies are the Ainu, the Gilyak, the Aluet, the Eyak, The Haida, the Bellacoola, the Twana, the Yurok, the Pomo, and the Yokuts.
Tonkinson, Robert
1991 The Mardu Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert. Orlando: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc.
This is the second edition for an ethnography concerning the Mardu Aborigines. It seems to be a thorough project with chapters discussing the history of the Mardu, their spirituality and morals, how they survive and live in the desert, and their social organizations. In regards to personal and anthropological observation this seems thorough. There does seem to be a bit of a bias in favor of the Mardu, but it is limited to a working respect as to how they live. This will feature prominently in my discussion of the Mardu.
