Patterns of exchange and the social production of pigs in highland new guinea: Their relevance to questions about the origins and evolution of agriculture

Practical and prestige technologies: The evolution of material systems

“…Clark and Blake (1994) make parallel arguments for the initial adoption of maize in Chiapas, Mexico, as a high-status food used only infrequently--primarily as part of a feasting complex. Ethnographic observations such as the raising of domestic animals exclusively for feasting purposes in New Guinea, Southeast Asia, the Near East, and elsewhere (Shnirelman, 1992, p. 36;Blanton and Taylor, 1995;Keswani, 1994;Leach, 1954, p. 72, Hayden andManeeprasert, 1995) also provide an important base of support for this model (see also Hayden, 1990). Linden (1995, p. 411) and Kaelas (1981) make a similar argument for the early Neolithic use of cereals as "luxury or ritual products, in Scandinavia and Germany.…”

“…Such items could not be easily obtained by others (especially by those lacking contacts in distant communities), but exotic items were often promoted as being required for effective functioning in social and political events (Bradley, 1984, p. 46;Hayden and Schulting, 1997). And, in turn, socially "necessary" events involving feasts and gift exchange entailed strong pressures increasing both production and consumption (Blackburn, 1976, p. 242;Blanton and Taylor, 1995). The third premise for modeling aggrandizers' roles in prestige technologies is that extractable resource conditions (i.e., resources that can be extracted with a community's existing technology and labor rather than with hypothetical innovations or population changes) determine how much aggrandizing or surplus-consuming behavior a community will tolerate.…”

Were luxury foods the first domesticates? Ethnoarchaeological perspectives from Southeast Asia

“…This, in fact, is a behavioural pattern which is so overwhelmingly common in tribal and peasant cultures throughout the world, whether in New Guinea (Blanton and Taylor 1995), Crete (Keswani 1994), rural France (personal observations) or Turkey, that the onus is clearly upon critics like Zeder to explain why the situation should have been different in earlier transegalitarian societies. This, in fact, is a behavioural pattern which is so overwhelmingly common in tribal and peasant cultures throughout the world, whether in New Guinea (Blanton and Taylor 1995), Crete (Keswani 1994), rural France (personal observations) or Turkey, that the onus is clearly upon critics like Zeder to explain why the situation should have been different in earlier transegalitarian societies.…”

Archaeology at the Millennium

“…Blanton and Taylor (1995), Izikowitz (1951:341, 354), Stanish (1994), Blackburn (1976:242), Lightfoot and Feinman (1982:66), Cowgill (1996), Boyd (1996:209), Tremaine (1997), myself, and others have noted that the major reason for the intensification of production is not the lack of food or the presence of population pressure. Rather, the reason for the intensification of production in transegalitarian societies is to produce more surpluses for feasting and other strategies used in the pursuit of power, wealth, and survival advantages.…”