Last hunters, first farmers : new perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture

Book

Last hunters, first farmers : new perspectives on the prehistoric transition to agriculture / edited by T. Douglas Price and Anne Birgitte Gebauer.

Price, T. Douglas (Theron Douglas) (Added Author). Gebauer, Anne Birgitte, 1951- (Added Author). School of American Research (Santa Fe, N.M.) (Added Author).

Summary:

During virtually the entire four-million-year history of our habitation on this planet, humans have been hunters and gatherers, dependent for nourishment on the availability of wild plants and animals. Beginning about 10,000 years ago, however, the most remarkable phenomenon in the course of human prehistory was set in motion. At locations around the world, over a period of about 5,000 years, hunters became farmers. Far more than the domestication of plant and animal species was involved in this revolution, which was accompanied by massive changes in the structure and organization of the societies that adopted agriculture and by a totally new relationship with the environment. Whereas hunter-gatherers live off the land in an extensive fashion, exploiting a diversity of resources over a broad area, farmers utilize the landscape intensively. The implications of these changes in human activity and social organization reverberate down to the present day.

The case studies presented here, ranging from the Far East to the American Southwest, provide a global perspective on contemporary research into the origins of agriculture. Downplaying more traditional explanations of the turn to agriculture, such as the influence of marginal environments and population pressures, the contributors to this volume emphasize instead the importance of the resource-rich areas in which agriculture began, the complex social organizations already in place, the role of sedentism, and, in some locales, the advent of economic intensification and competition. This volume resulted from an advanced seminar held at the School of American Research in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Contributors include Ofer Bar-Yosef, Anne Birgitte Gebauer, Charles Higham, Lawrence H. Keeley, Richard H. Meadow, Deborah M. Pearsall, T. Douglas Price, Bruce D. Smith, Patty Jo Watson, and W.H. Wills.

Record details

ISBN: 093345290X
ISBN: 9780933452909
ISBN: 0933452918
ISBN: 9780933452916
Physical Description: xiv, 354 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.
Edition: 1st ed.
Publisher: Santa Fe, N.M. : School of American Research Press : 1995.

Content descriptions

General Note:: Papers from a seminar held June 1992 at the School of American Research.
Bibliography, etc. Note:: Includes bibliographical references (pages 301-346) and index.
Formatted Contents Note:: New perspectives on the transition to agriculture / T. Douglas Price and Anne Birgitte Gebauer -- Explaining the transition to agriculture / Patty Jo Wilson -- The origins of agriculture in the Near East / Ofer Bar-Yosef and Richard H. Meadow -- The spread of farming into Europe north of the Alps / T. Douglas Price, Anne Birgitte Gebauer, and Lawrence H. Keeley -- The transition to rice cultivation in Southeast Asia / Charles Higham -- Domestication and agriculture in the New World tropics / Deborah M. Pearsall -- Seed plant domestication in Eastern North America / Bruce D. Smith -- Archaic foraging and the beginning of food production in the American Southwest / W.H. Wills -- Protoagricultural practices among hunter-gatherers : a cross-cultural survey / Lawrence H. Keeley -- A new overview of domestication / Brian Hayden.
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