CULTURAL ECOLOGY AFST 235
Hargrove
how environment impacts humans-----how humans affect the environment
Julian Steward: The Theory of Cultural Change (1955) introduced the anthropological theory of
cultural ecology (became prevalent through the 1970s): "a heuristic device for understanding
the effect of environment upon culture."
Relationship between human populations, environmental adaptations, and cultural beliefs and
practices
*cultural adaptations to changing environments
how cultural systems adapt to maximize subsistence in particular ecosystems with
particular available resources/ technological advancements [bow, arrow, traps, nets,
etc.]
[sidebar]------Ex: AFRICA-Cattle Herding
https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2018-08/wuis-ald082718.php
Theoretical and methodological models (of cultural ecology) offer distinct tools to analyze past
human groups (cultural anthropology, archaeology, ethnography, paleoanthropology)
“how humans are affected by the environment, how they used it,
modified it, sought to understand it”
insight into: [which we will begin to see unfold in Ancient Africa, as we dive into “Egypt” on Friday]
Social organization
Distribution of wealth and power (hierarchy-SURPLUS)
Subsistence strategies
Art
Folk knowledge* (building a comprehensive view across space and time-African epistemology)
Transportation
Trade and exchange patterns
Migrations and movements (forced and voluntary)
Band
Tribe
Chiefdom
State
Crop cultivation, domestication and the origins of farming
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Favourably wet climate from 8000 BCE allowed intensive collection of grains (‘cereals’)
and root crops
Human protection and sowing of these crops, led to levels of interdependence, and thus
their domestication
Similarly, favoured animals were protected and herded, leading to their domestication
Impact of agriculture
 Larger settlements
 Increase in population
 More permanent housing, mud and stone
 More possessions and more sophisticated tools
 Need for seasonal planning led to more complex society
 Food surpluses led to trade for raw materials and luxuries
 Divisions in wealth within society
Pastoralism
 Domestic animals were a source of food, especially milk
 Settlements less permanent than cultivators
 Movement in search of seasonal pastures
The ‘agricultural revolution’
 Huge potential changes, but not complete or sudden
 Farming left large populations dependent upon the weather
 Hunting, gathering and fishing remained important
 Change in world view:
 Religion linked to origins of farming and cattle domestication
Origins of farming and pastoralism in tropical Africa
Climate change
 11,000 – 9000 BCE very dry period
 9000 – 6000 BCE new ‘wet phase’: origins of farming in Africa
 Expansion of rainforest, rivers and wetlands
 Sahara became grassland savannah
Nilo-Saharan beginnings
 Nilo-Saharans began grain collecting tropical sorghum and millet
 Independent invention of pottery by 8000 BCE
 Crops domesticated and spread through north Africa and Sahara
 Possible domestication of wild cattle of Red Sea hills
Tsetse fly
 Spread sleeping sickness to cattle and humans
 Pastoralists avoided tsetse areas: low-lying, thickly wooded, moist valleys
 Pastoral specialists therefore favoured open grasslands