The Significance of Food Storage Among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Patterns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities [and Comments and Reply]

Testart, Alain; Forbis, Richard G.; Hayden, Brian; Ingold, Tim; Perlman, Stephen M.; Pokotylo, David; Rowley‐Conwy, Peter; Stuart, David E.

doi:10.1086/202894

Cited by 411 publications

(185 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Food storage is an essential development for food production, sedentism and farming, and represents a major evolutionary threshold for human civilization (12). Archaeologists have only recently started to document food storage among cultures before the appearance fully developed agro-pastoralist economies, and assess whether, when, or even if, people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome spoilage, and to provide seed for planting and potential years of crop failure.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Kuijt

Finlayson²

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

208

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Food storage is a vital component in the economic and social package that comprises the Neolithic, contributing to plant domestication, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and new social organizations. Recent excavations at Dhra' near the Dead Sea in Jordan provide strong evidence for sophisticated, purpose-built granaries in a predomestication context Ϸ11,300 -11,175 cal B.P., which support recent arguments for the deliberate cultivation of wild cereals at this time. Designed with suspended floors for air circulation and protection from rodents, they are located between residential structures that contain plant-processing instillations. The granaries represent a critical evolutionary shift in the relationship between people and plant foods, which precedes the emergence of domestication and large-scale sedentary communities by at least 1,000 years.Near East ͉ Neolithic ͉ forager-farmer transition N ew archaeological work at the PPNA (Pre-Pottery Neolithic A; Ϸ11,500-10,500 cal B.P.) site of Dhra', located next to the Dead Sea in Jordan, reveals clear evidence for large-scale storage in sophisticated, purpose-built granaries before the domestication of plants. Evidence for PPNA food storage illustrates a major transition in the economic and social organization of human communities. The transition from economic systems based on collecting and foraging of wild food resources before this point to cultivation and foraging of mixed wild and managed resources in the PPNA illustrates a major intensification of human-plant relationships.People in the PPNA were the first in the world to develop systematic large-scale food storage. In the Early Natufian period (Ϸ15,000/14,500-12,800 cal B.P.), people used a remarkably wide range of wild plants and animals, lived in relatively large well-made semisubterranean buildings for much of the year, and undoubtedly had a detailed knowledge of the seasonality and availability of these resources (1). Certainly the apparent increased degree of sedentism in the Early Natufian period suggests that people were able to reduce seasonal food risks to the point where they could live in the same areas for 1 or more seasons of the year. There is, however, surprisingly little direct evidence for food storage (2, 3). The strongest is from 'Ain Mallaha (4), where pits are often termed silos although their specific function is unclear. There is indirect evidence in the Natufian for plant food processing, including the presence of sickles, mortars, and pestles. Although Natufian people probably engaged in some form of low-level food storage, they also situated their settlements where they were able to use high-yield food resources from multiple natural ecotones in different seasons. With the onset of the climatic downturn of the Younger Dryas, people in the Late Natufian period (Ϸ12,800-11,500 cal B.P.) returned to more mobile economic and subsistence strategies. Late Natufian people abandoned earlier settlements, adopted new systems seasonal residential movement, and rarely built residential structu...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Testart (12) argues that food storage, population growth, sedentism, and social inequality are often interlinked. With greater sedentism, increased birth rates, and increased quality and quantity of domesticated foods we see the foundation for economic developments.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Kuijt

Finlayson²

2009

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

208

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“…Village leaders or headmen are often older charismatic adult men with many kin ties and allies (Arhem 1981;Kracke 1978;Maybury-Lewis 1974;Mindlin 1985;von Rueden, Gurven, and Kaplan 2008); they often carry no real authority or power to reward and punish but instead may coordinate activities, host events, and negotiate relationships with outsiders. Horticulturalists characterized by high mobility, little storage, small group size, and interdependence are more likely to be egalitarian, similar to foraging groups, whereas horticulturalists that differ along these dimensions tend to display greater levels of inequality, as found among complex hunter-gatherers (Testart 1982). Property ownership and territoriality are more culturally explicit among horticulturalists than among many foragers, while leveling mechanisms designed to maintain egalitarianism (Wiessner 1996) are less evident but not absent.…”

Section: Status Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sedentism, resource concentration and predictability, surplus production and storage, and higher population density have all been linked to greater inequality in subsistence populations (Carneiro 1970;Hayden 1995;Testart 1982;Upham 1990). An often-cited but incomplete idea is that agriculture permits a surplus sufficient to maintain nonproductive classes such as warriors, priests, and politicians (Childe 1954) and inequalities beyond those due to age, sex, and abilities.…”

Section: Status Differentiationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead to Inequality

Gurven¹,

Mulder²,

Hooper³

et al. 2010

Current Anthropology

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“…The reported cases of strati…ed hunter-gatherer communities are located in exceptionally favourable ecological niches; for example, in rich marine and aquatic habitats (Erlandson 2001;Kennett 2005;Pálsson 1988;So¤er 1985;So¤er 1989;Testart 1982;Vanhaeren and d'Errico. 2005;Yesner 1980).…”

Section: Agriculture and Social Strati…cationmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Economics of Social Stratification in Premodern Societies

Rowthorn

Guzmán

Rodríguez-Sickert

2014

The Journal of Mathematical Sociology

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We present a microeconomic model of social strati…cation, which includes an endogenous fertility component. In the model, egalitarian and strati…ed societies coexist. The latter are divided into two hereditary classes: a warrior elite and a productive class. The model entails that the extra cost warriors must incur to train and equip their children for war determines the relative sizes of both classes and the degree of economic inequality. Higher costs of warrior children imply a greater economic advantage for warriors and a smaller ratio of warriors to producers. These results are consistent with the historical evidence. Finally, we explore conditions under which the social contributions of the warrior elite could discourage a revolution.

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The Significance of Food Storage Among Hunter-Gatherers: Residence Patterns, Population Densities, and Social Inequalities [and Comments and Reply]

Cited by 411 publications

References 22 publications

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Evidence for food storage and predomestication granaries 11,000 years ago in the Jordan Valley

Domestication Alone Does Not Lead to Inequality

The Economics of Social Stratification in Premodern Societies

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