HIS109Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 12: Tell Abu Hureyra, Ghazal, Linear Pottery Culture
Professor Katharine Patton Jan. 9, 2017
ANT200 LECTURE 2.1
ORIGINS OF AGRICULTURE, INTRODUCTION: THE MIDDLE EAST
LECTURE OUTLINE:
• Defining domestication
- Food production
• Domestication, sedentism, and social organization
• Explanations for domestication
• Archaeological evidence
• Major/Primary centres of domestication
• Epipalaeolithic/Neolithic Middle East
• Spread of agriculture into Europe
Why Should You Care About This?
• One of the most significant events in world (pre) history
• Changes in settlement and social organization
• No state level society has existed without domesticated plants and animals
What About “Food Production”?
• Management of wild resources or farming
• Harvesting resources in large quantities
• Storage (Increase in energy expenditure)
• Hunter-gatherers can also be food producers
Domestication: A result of conscious human action
• Lewis Henry Morgan (Ancient Societies, 1877 = LEVELS)
- Savagery (Hunter Gatherers)
- Barbarism (Farmers)
- Civilization (State Level, if not at least Chiefdom)
- “Absolute control of the production of food”
- Devoted a lot of time in documenting and thinking about indigenous societies
- Conscious decision in a way to dominate natural world
• V. Gordon Childe
- Marxist
- 1940s
• Neolithic Revolution
- Changed every facet of human life (technology, relations between people, between
animals, production, food etc.)
- Most important allowed people to control production of food
• David Rindos
- Agriculture a co-evolutionary, symbiotic process
- A process between people and plants (or animals)
- Three modes of domesticated behaviour
- Specialized mode modifications to the landscape (burning,
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Professor Katharine Patton Jan. 9, 2017
• Tim Ingold
- Studied relationships in hunter gatherers in northern environment
- Shift from relationships to trust to domination
Defining Domestication
• Domestication: relationship between humans and plants and animals
- Protection, reproduction
• Technology: tools for harvesting and processing; storage
• Community: settled villages
Farming vs. Hunting and Gathering
• Less time acquiring food than farmers
- More leisure time
• Marc Cohen
- Healthier than early farmers
Consequences of Domestication
• Nutritional Problems
- Chronic iron-deficiency
- Increase in tooth disease
- Enamel hypoplasia = issue with growth due to stress
• Decrease in stature
• Harris Lines = issue with growth due to stress
- Disease
• Spread of disease facilitated by sedentism
- Living with animals
- Diseases spread from animals to humans
Explanations for Domestication
• External triggers
- Climate change
- Population growth
• Ester Boserup
- Climate and population
• Binford
- Internal Triggers
- Surplus food and social organization
• Hayden
- Feasting foods first to be domesticated
Other Archaeological Signatures of Domestication
• Found outside natural range
• Age and Sex profiles of zoo-archaeological assemblages
- Dominated by females and young
- Another sign of domestication
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Food production: domestication, sedentism, and social organization, explanations for domestication, archaeological evidence, major/primary centres of domestication, epipalaeolithic/neolithic middle east, spread of agriculture into europe. Why should you care about this: one of the most significant events in world (pre) history, changes in settlement and social organization, no state level society has existed without domesticated plants and animals. What about food production : management of wild resources or farming, harvesting resources in large quantities, storage (increase in energy expenditure, hunter-gatherers can also be food producers. Domestication: a result of conscious human action: lewis henry morgan (ancient societies, 1877 = levels) Civilization (state level, if not at least chiefdom) Devoted a lot of time in documenting and thinking about indigenous societies. Conscious decision in a way to dominate natural world. Absolute control of the production of food : v. gordon childe. Changed every facet of human life (technology, relations between people, between animals, production, food etc. )
