The phrase ‘cultural ecology’ was first used by the anthropologists Julian Steward and Leslie White in the 1950s. It was defined by Steward as ‘‘the adaptive processes by which the nature of society and an unpredictable number of features of culture are affected by the basic adjustment through which man utilizes a given environment.’’ It has come to mean the study of all aspects of the interaction between human cultures and their ecological environments. Like other sciences, much of cultural ecology is classificatory and descriptive. In particular, cultural ecologists commonly distinguish among societies with different subsistence patterns (ways of making a living from nature), distinguishing in particular among hunting and gathering, horticultural, pastoral, and intensive agricultural societies.
Hunting and Gathering
In hunting and gathering societies, people eat wild food (see Hunter-Gatherers, Ancient). They do little to actively control the reproduction of exploited species. They do utilize a great array of plant and animal species of which they possess detailed knowledge, but commonly concentrate on the tubers, seeds, nuts, and fruits of plants as well as small animals and birds. A few have specialized in hunting large animals. Hunter-gatherers may be sedentary if a rich store of resources is available locally as was the case with salmon for the Nuu-chah-nulth of the British Columbia coast and with sea mammals for the Chumash of the California coast. In such cases, population sizes can become large and social organization complex. In most cases, however, hunter-gatherers live in small bands of an average of 25 or so and rarely more than 40 people. They are mobile in some or all of three ways. First, they may travel frequently, foraging through a familiar landscape on a route timed to when resources are expected to become available. Second, they may instead, or in addition, make trips, often in smaller groups, out from a short or longer-term home base, collecting resources which are brought back to the home base. Finally, they may migrate into a wholly new area.
The social organization of hunter-gatherers tends to be fairly simple, with a low level of division of labor based on age and gender. Birth rates are lower than in horticultural societies with the spacing of children achieved in part by lengthy nursing. Women tend to specialize in gathering plant material, men in hunting animals. The more mobile they are, the fewer are their material possessions. Social inequality is low. Animal food, particularly large animals, is shared among families, a practice which works like insurance. It reduces the risk for all concerned when the results of hunts are variable and surpluses cannot be stored. Membership in bands tends to be fluid with families and individuals sometimes moving between bands, such shifts having the effect of equalizing band sizes more and permitting new family formations.
Once all humans were hunter-gatherers and it was by means of this mode of subsistence that they spread out to populate the Earth. As all parts of the world became inhabited, however, and some groups turned to agriculture to make a living, hunter-gatherers came to be limited to more marginal habitats. Relationships between hunter-gatherers and farmers tend to be uneasy for obvious reasons, but in some cases, mutualistic relationships have been established with trade between them, based on an exchange of wild for cultivated foods. Despite the limitations that most people having turned to agriculture has placed on hunter-gathers, many anthropological studies have shown that this way of life remains successful for some - even providing greater leisure, for example, than other modes of subsistence. Some hunter-gatherers that have been studied by anthropologists are Australian Aborigines, the Inuit of the Canadian arctic, the San of the Kalahari desert in southern Africa and the Batak of the Philippines.
Horticulture
Horticultural societies practice small-scale agriculture with human labor using hand tools and without draft animals, although they may keep small domesticated animals such as chickens and pigs. The extent to which horticulturalists alter the landscape and control the reproduction of domesticated species in order to make a living from nature can vary greatly. Slash and burn or shifting cultivation is sometimes practiced in tropical forests where fields are cleared, planted, and abandoned after a few years when the soil becomes exhausted. Swidden agriculture is a more sustainable system in which fields are reused regularly after a fallow period. Because the diversity of biological species increases towards the equator and decreases towards the poles, tropical horticulture can be a very complex phenomenon with many different species whose requirements complement each other interplanted, which mature at different times, and are used for different purposes. Elsewhere, the intensity of cultivation can vary greatly between and within societies. Small intensively cultivated gardens, sometimes terraced, may be maintained near home, while plots for different species which are less intensively cultivated are located further afield. The degree of control over the reproduction of domesticated species can also vary from simply controlling what species grows where to practicing some selective breeding, choosing the best individuals in a domesticated species for material to plant and breed.
Horticulturalists are sedentary. Their population sizes, birth rates, and density (numbers per unit land area) are typically larger and social organization more complex than that of hunter-gatherers. Horti-culturalists live in families which may or may not be extended, with family households commonly grouped in villages. Groups which are actually or mythically related by common descent (lineages, clans) are commonly recognized, with the whole constituting a tribe or ethnic group which shares a common culture, language, and way of life. Disputes within and between lineages/clans tend to be settled by informal discussion among the senior males of the groups involved although some develop chiefdoms (see below). The less intensive the cultivation, the more likely it is that rights to cultivate plots can be redistributed among families by clan elders as family sizes wax and wane but the more intensive the cultivation, the more these rights come to approach being treated as family property. Some examples of horticultural societies which have been studied by anthropologists are the Dani of highland New Guinea, the Nuer and Dinka of East Africa, the Kofyar of the Jos Plateau of Northern Nigeria, and the Yanomamo of northwestern Brazil.
Pastoralism
Pastoralists derive all or the majority of their food and other resources from domesticated animals which they herd - goats, sheep, llamas, camels, cattle etc., or less commonly simply follow, for example, reindeer. Pastoralism is really a form of gathering except that instead of gathering directly, pastoralists herd herbivores that gather, that is, which graze on grasses or browse on bushes that humans cannot digest, and then the people live on the animals - on their milk, blood, meat, wool, hides, dung (useful for fuel), etc. The animals may provide transportation as well. Like hunter-gatherers, all pastoralists are mobile to varying degrees. They may be almost continuously nomadic, herding their animals on a route timed to when resources are expected to be available, for example, among waterholes, between lowland and upland pastures, etc. Alternatively, or in addition, they may make trips (often in smaller groups, usually composed of younger males, but which can extend to all males) out from, and back to, a shorter or a longer-term home base. The most common intentional landscape alteration they engage in is burning to control the ratio of grass to brush but they often practice quite sophisticated selective breeding of their animals. Pastoralists live at higher population densities than hunter-gatherers but lower than horticulturists. Because they often have animals available for transporting goods, they usually have more material possessions than hunter-gatherers.
Social organization among pastoralists can vary from small band-like groups of families all the way through tribes and in some cases chiefdoms (see below). More commonly however, like horticultural-ists, pastoral societies are segmentary with a number of lineages to varying degrees of depth recognized. At the most inclusive level, a group of clans constitute the tribe. Some examples of pastoral societies which have been studied by anthropologists are the Saami of northern Scandinavia, the Nuer and Maasai of east Africa, and the Najavo of the American southwest.
Intensive Agriculture
Intensive agriculturalists farm with energy from animals yoked to plows. They alter the landscape much more than do horticulturalists, plowing larger fields and employing a great variety of methods of intensification (acquiring more resources per unit land area) by irrigating (controlling floods, diverting streams, building dams and canals, digging wells, and terracing) as well as by fertilizing, rotating crops, and selectively breeding crops and livestock. Agricultural production typically is concentrated on a single root or grain crop. Their population sizes, birth rates, and population densities are all higher than those of horticultural societies. Intensive agriculturalists are sedentary. Their farming yields a surplus beyond that needed to feed those who actually do the work of farming and caring for animals. This permits at least some craft specialization and, in the case of the most productive, a whole strata or series of strata of craft specialists and religious, political, military, and bureaucratic leaders in archaic states. Despite its productivity, the narrowing of diet which tends to occur under intensive agriculture and the social inequality which increases may result in deficiency diseases and poorer health, at least for some. Those who do the actual agricultural work may live, or live part of the time, near their fields. However, intensive agricultural societies all include villages or towns with ceremonial centers, and in the case of states, a series of such, which form satellites around an even larger urban center.
Social organization under intensive agriculture is based on chiefdoms or states. Chiefdoms can arise by coercion, but are commonly believed to arise most often in horticultural and pastoral societies beginning with ‘big men’. These are senior clan males whose personal qualities - spiritual power, deep ecological knowledge, wisdom in settling disputes, oratorical or fighting ability, and so on - set them apart as charismatic and they acquire power and prestige. As mentioned previously, they may become responsible for settling disputes and redistributing land and other resources among families within clans as family sizes wax and wane. The same thing can occur on a higher level as one clan, having acquired a reputation for producing such men, is elevated and serves the same functions among clans.
Chiefdoms have emerged when these chiefly statuses on one or more levels become hereditary. Chiefdoms tend to be politically unstable for three sociological reasons. One is greed. Their material demands (gifts, tribute, etc.) originally seen as just compensation for the time and effort put into managing the community’s affairs, may become excessive. Religious manipulation and coercion may come to replace service more and more, and as a consequence, they may be overthrown by revolt from below. The second is the succession problem. Sons may not possess the abilities of their fathers, or there may be conflict among them over succession. The third is that the ecological conditions supporting more intensive agriculture and pastoralism and which, by their surplus production, lead to the nucleation of chiefdoms, can lead to similar nucle-ation in adjacent territories. This can lead to disputes and wars over territory and subjects, particularly if resources become scarce for ecological reasons. Some examples of intensive agriculturalists that have been studied by anthropologists are the Tamang of Nepal, the Mexican village of Cacurpe, and the Kofyar of central Nigeria.
Ecological factors (other than access to plentiful water for productive agriculture) such as locations that are a crossroad for trade, play a role in the rise of states. With state level social organization (sometimes called ancient or archaic civilizations), kinship as the basis of large-scale social organization is broken down and replaced by endogamous strata. The bond of kinship that binds leaders to followers, even in chiefdoms, is broken. Instead, a state religion typically holds that kings of states have a different, supernatural origin from commoners, giving them a divine right to rule. Strata replace kinship as the most important organizing principle in society. One is born into a distinct strata of which at least two, commoner and nobility, are present. The leaders of states have more power than do those of chiefdoms, with a greater capacity to raise taxes, make laws, regulate and engage in long distance trade, draft soldiers, and allocate land and labor. The largest settlement is a city and large architectural projects like palaces, tombs, and ceremonial centers are undertaken. States have larger and more different kinds of nonagricultural specialists including a variety of full-time craft specialists as well as full-time priests, administrators, soldiers, architects, and builders of public buildings, and not uncommonly artists, scientists, and historians. The latter primarily record dynastic history. All human groups are known to have mechanisms to control and reduce aggression and violence within the group and to engage in it between groups, whether these be bands of hunter-gatherers, the tribes of hor-ticulturalists and pastoralists, or the chiefdoms and states of intensive agriculturalists. Obviously, however, the consequences of group aggression and violence (war) are greater the larger the units involved. For obvious reasons states have primarily been studied by archaeologists and they include states that emerged independently on all continents except for Antarctica and Oceania, for example in the Nile Valley, Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, Northern China, Mesoamerica, and in the Andean region of South America.
World History
