Patterns of Subsistence
Part II
Modes of Subsistence

Subsistence strategies are ways in which
societies transform the material resources
of the environment into food.

Anthropology, particularly ecological
anthropology, is interested in the
interactions between human cultures and
their environments.
Food-Foraging Societies

Foraging is a food-gathering strategy that does
not involved food production or domestication of
animals but, rather, relies on hunting, fishing,
and gathering wild plant foods.

Some characteristics of foraging societies are
mobility, small group size, flexible division of
labor by gender, food sharing, egalitarianism,
communal property and rarity of warfare.
Food-Foraging Societies (cont)

Egalitarianism is a political doctrine that
holds that all people should be treated as
equals, having the same political,
economic, social, and civil rights.

Up until about 10,000 years ago, humans
lived by foraging.
Food-Foraging Societies (cont)

Foraging strategies vary
in productivity, but in
general, support lower
population densities than
other subsistence
systems.

Carrying capacity: the
number of people that
the available resources
can support at a given
level of food-getting
techniques.
Density of social relations:
is the number and intensity
of interactions among the
members of a camp, the
more populous a group the
higher the rate of conflict.

Food-Foraging Societies (cont)

All foragers exploit the diversity of their
environments.

The availability of water is crucial, the
distance between their water source and
their food sources must not be so great
that more energy is required to gather
water than can be obtained from the food.
Food-Foraging Societies (cont)

Typically, but
definitely not always,
foraging is done
where there is a wide
range of vegetal
foods that provide
most of their diet.
In milder climates where there is predictable vegetal
food sources foragers may experience times of leisure.

Food-Foraging Societies (cont)

Evidence demonstrates that the sexual
division of labor in which men hunt and
women gather wild fruits and vegetables
is an extremely common phenomenon
among foraging societies worldwide.
Food-Foraging Societies (cont)
Reciprocal altruism is
when food at one
point in time is
exchanged for food at
some later time.
 The acquisition of
difficult-to-acquire
foods often requires
coordinated efforts of
several individuals.
