The Unity of Hunting-Gathering Societies

The study of food-collectingsocieties has become a mainstream interest in anthropology since the "Man the Hunter" conference in Chicago in 1966. Evolutionary theory had largely been discredited as a useful framework for the analysis of human societies by about 1920; it was tainted with racism, colonialism, and the belief that certain groups of living human beings represented "primitive" or "early" forms of society. The distinctions discussed concern the techno-economic level, where much analysis of potential transformations among foraging societies is focused. Food-collecting societies become food-purchasing ones; men and women become workers or unemployed workers; children become schoolchildren, truants, or delinquents; girls become wives or unmarried mothers; the old become pensioners. Research however has tended to stress the existence of flexible, loosely organized structures in many food collecting groups. Social characteristics of these societies fail to conform to the classic models of food collectors; sedentism was present, together with a high population density, social stratification, and in some cases even slavery.

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