Hunter-gatherers: an interdisciplinary perspective.

KELLY, ROBERT L.

CATHERINE PANTER-BRICK, ROBERT H. LAYTON & PETER ROWLEY-CONWY (ed.). Hunter-gatherers: an interdisciplinary perspective, xii+341 pages, 22 figures, 16 tables. 2001. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 0-521-77210-9 hardback 60 [pounds sterling]& US$90, 0-521-77672-4 paperback [pounds sterling] 20.95 & US$29.95.

The editors' purpose in this volume is to re-establish the lines of communication between analysts of the ecology, biology and society of foraging societies which have, in their opinion, broken down in recent years. Accordingly, the volume contains papers covering archaeology, optimal foraging, technology, linguistics, biology, health, demography, art and foragers' relations with nation-states.

The editors begin by claiming that foraging's most salient characteristic is the absence of control over the reproduction and gene pool of exploited species. However, that definition is at odds with foragers who often alter their environments, especially through burning. Although the editors find this definition useful, it is not followed up in the volume. Instead, there are papers by Winterhalder on optimal foraging approaches; Rowley-Conwy, Torrence, Kuhn and Stiner on archaeology; McConvell on linguistics; Pennington, Jenike and Froment on human biology; Conkey on art; and Layton on the status of modern foragers in the nation-state.

The papers are all good, but uneven in their accessibility. Winterhalder, for example, provides an easy review of optimal foraging, finishing with a succinct discussion of foragers' tendency to underproduce and criticisms of the optimization assumption. Likewise, the papers by Rowley-Conwy and Torrence are readable, speaking to `big' issues such as the antiquity of the `original affluent society' and concepts with which to understand forager technology. Kuhn and Stiner use ethnographic data to compare Mousterian and Upper Paleolithic archaeology, showing that Neanderthals were not human in the way we expect humans to behave. In a way, Conkey contributes to this position by pointing out that `art' -- which first definitively appears in the Upper Paleolithic -- is a cultural manifestation and culturally defined -- all evidence suggesting that humans were not human as we know them until late in human evolution. Although Kuhn, Stiner, Winterhalder and others show that ethnographic data can be usefully employed by archaeology, Layton reminds us that we need to remember the historical context of living foragers. If anything, this makes cross-cultural studies more important, since such studies are more likely to ferret out cases where the social context is more strongly influencing behaviour than, say, the natural environment. But other papers are less accessible. If this volume seeks to establish a dialogue, then the authors have to talk to more general points, and in an accessible language. McConnell's paper on linguistics is more concerned with a particular problem in Australian linguistic prehistory. The biological papers are often hard going, using measures that are not common in the foraging literature, with extensive discussion of biology that the uninitiated will find difficult.

These papers are intriguing, but they are also selective. Pennington, for example, focuses on a critique of Blurton-Jones' argument that nomadic !Kung women maximized their reproduction with a four-year birth spacing. He argues that there is no difference between the fertility of nomadic and sedentary !Kung, that long birth spacing is a function of venereal disease, and that past foragers should have had high fertility rates punctuated by periods of venereal disease-induced declines in fertility or high mortality. But he nearly ignores the effects of breast-feeding, aerobic activity, diet, and seasonality in diet quality on fertility. The other biological papers rely most heavily on African foragers, with ethnographic examples thrown in, in the sort of off-the-cuff use that Layton warns against.

Undergraduates will find the text dense. Graduate students will find it more useful, but will be surprised at what is excluded: mobility, `complex' hunter-gatherers, or social and political organization are virtually untouched.

Another area that is left aside is evolutionary psychology (EP). EP argues that humans are a product of genetic selection during the evolutionary environment of selection (EES) -- when everyone was a forager. Thus we have hunter-gatherer minds, with selection accounting for everything from male-female differences in spatial reckoning to morality. EP has never said when or where the EES existed -- just `back there'; but Kuhn and Stiner show that humans have been cultural beings for a short period of time, evolutionarily speaking. EP is one effort at synthesizing forager biology, behaviour and prehistory -- so why does not this volume, with the same purpose, comment on it?

Although individual papers are useful, some even intriguing (Pennington makes me rethink demography), the volume falls short of re-establishing an interdisciplinary debate. Unfortunately, most edited volumes do; there is no substitute for hard work by an ambitious individual to read, digest and synthesize the ever-growing number of focused studies. I was glad to read this book, but I still look forward to the synthesis, dialogue and debate at which this volume took aim.

ROBERT L. KELLY
Department of Anthropology
University of Wyoming
rlkelly@uwyo.edu