Increasingly, it now appears that food production (with domesticates) was only one strategy among many intensification techniques that characterized complex hunter-gatherer and subsequent horticultural subsistence. To understand what social, political, and cultural changes actually took place as the result of food production and domestication, we must first develop a better understanding of the cultures that these developments emerged from. In the Near East, in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, domestication developed among complex hunters and gatherers, notably the Natufian and Jomon cultures. However, the first well-documented complex hunter-gatherers to appear in the archaeological record lived in the periglacial savannahs of Upper Palaeolithic of southwestern Europe, about 35 000 years ago. These were exceptionally rich environments for hunting, unparalleled anywhere in the world for their biomasss and diversity. Upper Palaeolithic technology was well adapted to taking large numbers of animals. While these regions were too cold to support the domestication of plants, some archaeologists like Paul Bahn have argued that horses were probably tamed, bridled, and kept. However, with the disappearance of the southwestern European savannahs after the Ice Age, these savannah cultures collapsed and reverted to more simply organized societies with lower populations and minimal art or prestige items. Some people argue that the Upper Palaeolithic cultures migrated north and developed into the historic Saami reindeer hunters and herders.
Elsewhere in the world, complex hunter-gatherers only began to appear with the advent of the Mesolithic, some 10 000-15 000 years ago when new technological developments rendered other environments highly productive. Some of these technological developments included the first systematic forms of fishing (using hooks, nets, and weirs) and the first effective use of grass seeds (procured and processed with grinding stones, sickles, and probably baskets). These and other similar technological developments opened up vast quantities of new resources in some environments, making it possible to establish economic, social, and ritual structures based on the production of dependable surpluses. Some of the most common types of environments where these complex forms of societies developed were riverine or coastal areas in which large quantities of fish could be procured, or areas like the Near East where large quantities of cereal grains could be harvested. The result was a more widespread emergence of complex types of hunter-gatherers than had previously existed (only in periglacial savannahs during the Upper Palaeolithic). These cultures are referred to as ‘complex hunter-gatherers’ to distinguish them from the simpler forms of hunter-gatherers that existed in the Middle and Lower Palaeolithic, and in some cases continued to exist in less productive environments up until contemporary times.
Whether food producing or not, archaeological and ethnographic complex hunter-gatherers had a number of resource and social characteristics in common, including:
• intensified techniques of food production and usually storage;
• a predictable production of surpluses;
• recognition of private ownership of some resources and products (especially stored produce);
• pronounced socioeconomic differences within communities (including hereditary elites and slavery, in the more developed cases; see Social Inequality, Development of);
• heterarchical sociopolitical structures with inverted social pyramids; and
• the rise to prominence of some aggrandizers using an array of strategies including transegalitarian types of feasting, wealth exchanges, use of wealth to obtain marriage partners for elite families (via bride-prices or dowries), investments of wealth in offspring, wealth-based alliances and conflicts, development of prestige items (for social and political transactions), and a wealth-based restriction of access to supernatural powers (often via secret societies).
None of these traits appear to any significant degree among simpler hunter-gatherers. In fact, many of these traits are the complete antithesis of simple hunter-gatherer values and practices. Simple hunter-gatherers eschew any idea of social classes, slavery, economically based hierarchies, private ownership of essential resources, or wealth. Rather, they emphasize communal ownership and unrestricted access to essential food resources, sharing, egalitarian practices, and freedom of movement.
Complex hunter-gatherers with the above social and material characteristics appear to have emerged before food production in key areas like the Near East, Japan, and Europe and to have continued their basic form of sociopolitical organizations fundamentally unchanged during the first several thousand years of the Neolithic. In fact, it can be argued that it was the competitive social and political forces in the early complex hunter-gatherer communities that provided the relentless driving force behind increasing surpluses via food production (with or without domesticates). In this respect, it will be especially useful to examine the role of prestige items and feasting in terms of the pressures that they created for intensifying production.
World History
