Acorn-eating and ethnographic analogies: a reply to McCorriston.

Mason, Sarah L.R.

Joy McCorriston's paper in the march 1994 Antiquity, on acorn-eating and agricultural origins, used California ethnographies as analogues for the ancient Near East. This reply exploes some issues of analogy and explanation that g beyond the important specifics of the matter.

Determining acorn dependence

McCorriston's paper centres around the question of whether Natufian populations could have depended on acorns as a food resource, given the absence of direct archaeobotanical evidence. McCorriston cites two ethnographic examples of `foraging cultures' dependent on acorns - California and the Eastern Woodlands of North America, of which California offers the ecological analogy closer to the Near East. In the ethnographic literature, the role of acorns (and other wild plant foods) has been underemphasized in the Eastern Woodlands, and over-emphasized in California (Mason 1992: 62-3,72-3).

Should the Eastern Woodlands be characterized as a `foraging culture'? All the groups in this area that McCorriston cites were practising agriculture when records of them were made. Ethnographies of eastern North American Indians report reliance on cultivated maize, often stored in large quantities, with major contributions from other cultivated plants (mainly beans and various cucurbits), hunted animals and fish, but not on wild plants (see e.g. Trigger 1978. Use of wild plant foods was not stressed by early observers; others have noted that they were more important in the subsistence system than often portrayed (Feest 1978; Fenton 1978; Salwen 1978).

What is meant by `dependence', in the Eastern Woodlands, California, or the Natufian? Acorns are less emphasized in the Eastern Woodlands literature than are other wild plant foods whose harvest and processing involved relatively complex technology and sequences (e.g. hickory nuts, wild rice and maple sugar), but their use is, nevertheless, probably mentioned as often as that of hickories (e.g. Swanton 1946: 293, table 2). Acorns are emphasized as important during crop failures and other times of need (e.g. Driver 1953: Merriam 1918; Waugh 1916).

By contrast, California ethnography accords acorns the role of principle staple (e.g. Bean & Saubel 1972; Driver 1953; Heizer & Elsasser 1980). However, emphasis on an `acorn economy' has long been questioned (e.g. Bean & Lawton 1973); and others see California Indians as having a generalized subsistence strategy, using a diversity of foods (Heizer & Elsasser 1980; Hammett 1991).

In both California and the Eastern Woodlands, some peoples could reasonably be considered to have been dependent on acorns. Acorns took different places in subsistence both within and between the two regions. Acorns have been noted as a seasonal or `famine' food in many ethnographic or historical records world-wide (Mason 1992: chapter 3); such a characterization has influenced interpretation of their ancient role (Mason 1992: 189-90;1995). Acorn use in times of hardship does not make them unimportant (Mason 1992, 198); people using acorns on that basis could be as `dependent' on them as the California Indians, albeit in a different way. Only if the concept of dependence, is explicitly defined is it possible to look for its signature in the archaeological record.

Acorns and ecological analogies

The ecological similarities between California and the Near East may not suffice to permit generalized analogy. Characteristics both of acorns and of other resources may have differed. The yield of acorns is highly variable, both between and within species, and between different places and times (Mason 1992: 162-4, appendix 3). Areas with several different species of oak may be buffered against acorn crop failure (Basgall 1987; Mason 1995; McCarthy 1993); where only one or two species are found, individual trees may crop well in different years, resulting in a good crop every year (Parsons 1962; Smith 1929), or there may be widespread crop failure (Jones 1959). Nine species of oak are currently found in the area stretching from the western end of the Fertile Crescent south to the southern Levant within which sites defined as Natufian have been located. California is home to 13 species (including the closely related tan `oak' Lithocarpus densiflora), not all with overlapping ranges. Whether the yield of acorns in the Levant would have been comparable with that in California is uncertain.

For subsistence models, total yield is less important than food value. North American oaks belong to three sub-groups (strictly subsections or sections. Mason 1992: 100-102), of which the red oaks (Erythrobalanus) bear acorns particularly high in fat and tannins (Mason 1992: chapter 6). Some studies have suggested that, despite their higher tannin content, and consequent requirements for more processing, red-oak acorns were preferred over white-oak species, perhaps because of their high fat, or caloric, content (Hammett 1991; Reidhead 1976. What data there is (Mason 1992; tables 8 & 9) suggests that Levantine oak species bear acorns most similar in their fat content to the North American white oaks. Information on the relative caloric values of acorns in the two regions would be important to any subsistence model, though data on this is particularly problematic (Mason 1992: 170-71).

To what extent the use of resources can be related to their food value or other quantifiable factors is debatable. To suggest that Californian Indian and Naturian population densities can be directly compared, as McCorriston does (p. 1976), requires this assumption, and assumes that the resources available to populations were equivalent. The available data on acorns does not allow us to assume these regions are directly analogous; undoubtedly there are similar differences in other categories of resources, all of which need to be considered if models such as that proposed by McCorriston are to be tested.

Archaeological evidence and ethnographic

analogy

Archaeobotanical evidence Having suggested that acorn dependence was unlikely in the Natufian, McCorriston concludes (p. 103) that evidence for acorn use would include the recovery of shells and cotyledons from archaeological contexts: these remains are systematically recovered from sites in the Eastern Woodlands. She states, `if acorns ... were routinely exposed to fire through preagrarian food preparation ... they will eventually be recovered as they have been in Kebaran and Neolithic contexts, (p.98). Of the finds cited, only the charred acorn remains from Kebaran Ohalo II (Kislev et al. 1992) are likely to have been preserved as a result of fire exposure during processing. Those from the Neolithic levels at Nahal Hemar were preserved by desiccation (Kislev 1988: 76), those from Catal Huyuk were recovered from a destruction layer (Helbaek 1964; Mellaart 1964), and the single acorn find, from Beidha consisted of an impression in a clay wall (Helbaek 1966: 63). Jilat 7 is not a Natufian site with evidence for `nuts, but not acorns' (p. 98) as it dates to the Neolithic (PPNB) (Garrard et al. 1994).

Regarding techniques used for processing acorns, Eastern North America may be an inappropriate archaeobotanical analogy. As McCorriston points out, differing processing techniques may affect the likelihood of preservation. There are few finds of acorns from California, where the archaeobotanical record is extremely poor (Colten & Erlandson 1991; Hammett 1991). Many potential ways of processing acorns involve little contact with fire (Mason 1992, chapter 3); even when fire is used, remains may result which are unlikely to be recovered or identified, e.g. as very small fragments of cotyledon tissue or as amorphous fragments derived from soup, mush or acorn-flour bread produced by pounding, grinding, or long cooking (Mason 1992: 194; 1995; Mason et al. 1994). Some archaeologically visible parts of acorns, particularly the cupules and shells, may never reach residential bases if they are removed prior to transport (Metcalfe & Barlow 1992). The paucity or absence of acorn remains from both Levantine and Californian sites may reflect either failure to recover or recognize remains or taphonomic differences relating to processing sequences.

Altefactual evidence Acknowledging the problems of depositional, preservation and sampling biases (p. 98), McCorriston turns to the archaeological and ethnographic record from California, and to suggestions that acorns were not an important resource until later prehistoric and protohistoric times; the ethnographic reports of heavy reliance on acorns relate to groups who `eked out a marginal existence at the periphery of white American ranches, on land transformed by suppression of indigenous burning regimes and the introduction of exogenous plant and animal taxa (pp. 100-101). Some support for this argument is derived from finds of ground-stone tools (Basgall 1987) - particularly the purported association of mortars and pestles with acorn processing. Yet the morphology of ground-stone tools is an unreliable guide to specific function (Wright 1991: 314-4; 1994; 240-42); it is likely that prehistoric groundstone tools were multifunctional. Wright's analysis of ground-stone tool assemblages in the Levant shows that mortars and pestles predominate throughout the Natufian period (1994: 252, 254, tables 6 & 7). And if arguments regarding the positive correlation of mortars and pestles with acorns are accepted, then acorns may not have been important in early sites in California, but they must have been in the Levantine Natufian.

Relative costs of food resources

Much of the argument against the Natufian use of acorns rests on their being a labour-intensive resource, following Basgall's (1987) estimates for California. Basgall compared estimated energy costs for acorns with data from O'Connell & Hawkes's (1981) work among the central Australian Alyawara. There are problems inherent in generalizing between resource types in such different environments, even before these are transferred again to the Levant. The lack of standard methodologies introduces more problems. Basgall (p. 28) states that search costs have not been excluded from O'Connell a Hawkes's estimates, whereas these authors state (1981:124) that search costs are excluded. In the published data on acorn yields, nutritional values, and processing costs, errors frequently creep into calculations, and large discrepancies occur between different studies (Mason 1992: 156-73, 175-9,182-3), caused by different species studied, local ecological factors, actual differences in the time or effort required to carry out different processes (harvesting, shelling, etc.) between different operators, the range of other sources drawn upon (e.g. on nutritional values of acorns, for which Baumhoff's (1963, after Wolf 1945) data for five Californian species is often used as a catch-all), and the number and value of arbitrary (or `guesstimated') figures. No study has examined the relative costs of collecting acorns in different areas, or of processing acorns in different ways, and rarely have differences between oak species been examined; so it is difficult to know whether differences are real, or to what extent they simply reflect assumptions made, or differences in methodology. In another examination of the relative costs of foods applied to the Near East, Wright (1994) has used data derived from estimates of acorn utilization costs in the Great Basin (Simms 1987) to suggest that `acorns yielded far more calories per hour than small seeds - partly as a result of lower processing costs, (1994; 244), a conclusion somewhat at odds with McCorriston's. The relative costs of using acorns, small seeds, or indeed any other plant food resources in the Natufian are unresolved.

Conclusions

The environments occupied by Natufians and by Californian Indians have been much altered; accurate reconstruction is essential if the validity of analogy between the two areas is to be assessed. McCorriston's suggestion of a Natufian Levant rich in perennial grasslands (1994: 104) is at odds with her previous reconstruction of an environment in which annual species were spreading rapidly (McCorriston & Hole 1991). The interpretation of the Natufian as a period with population growth, reduced mobility and increasing sedentism, a social organization with co-operative labour in hunting gazelles (McCorriston & Hole 1991:50-51), and a time when resources came increasingly under pressure (McCorriston & Hole 1991: 50-51), parallels features which McCorriston (1994) feels reflect an acorn-dependent economy. Instead of turning to acorns, McCorriston A Hole's Natufians intensified their harvesting of - among other resources - annual seeds, leading rapidly to cereal cultivation and domestication. The relative costs of these resources are undetermined, whatever is the case, the different responses to purportedly similar conditions which McCorriston sees in Californian Indians and, together with Hole, in Natufians in fact point to significant differences between the two regions. How valid is an analogy drawn between two such regions? What were the differences in the environments or available resources between these two places? Might they have influenced developments?

Many of these problems can be recognized in other published models of past subsistence (Mason 1992: chapter 8). Assessment of models will depend on a more fundamental understanding of resource characteristics, especially of the extent to which different resources can be characterized as `high-quality' or `low-quality', `preferred' or otherwise. It also requires more explicit definitions of terms such as `dependence', `intensive', and `staple'. Meanwhile, ethnographic analogy can play an important part in the interpretation of archaeological data, and in modelling past human behaviour, and can be especially useful in the detection of potential biases in the archaeological record, but great care must be exercised if we are critically to examine deadlocked reconstructions' of the past, as McCorriston suggests, and provide credible alternatives.

Acknowledgements. Many thanks to Mark Blumler, Ann Butler, Sue Colledge, Jon Hather, Gordon Hillman, John Watson, Katherine Wright and Daniel Zohary for reading and commenting on this paper; also to James O'Connell and an anonymous reviewer for their comments. Thanks also to Joy McCorriston for helpful comments; and to Andy Garrard and Katherine Wright for help with references.

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