Peterson, Jane

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Marquette Universitye-Publications@MarquetteSocial and Cultural Sciences Faculty Research andPublications Social and Cultural Sciences, Department of1-1-2012Review of Changing Natures: Hunter-Gatherers, FirstFarmers and the Modern WorldJane PetersonMarquette University, jane.peterson@marquette.eduPublished Version. American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 116, No. 1 ( January 2012). DOI:10.3764/ajaonline1161.Peterson © 2012 Archaeological Institute of America. Used with permission.Changing Natures: Hunter-Gatherers, First Farmers and the Modern World | American Journal of ArchaeologyJanuary 2012 (116.1)ONLINE REVIEW: BOOKChanging Natures: Hunter-Gatherers, First Farmers and theModern WorldJane PetersonBy Bill Finlayson and Graeme M. Warren (Duckworth Debates in Archaeology). Pp. 144, figs. 15.Duckworth, London 2010. €12.99. ISBN 978-0-7156-3813-2 (paper).This slim volume is part of the Duckworth Debates in Archaeology series. The theme of the series isto introduce both students and serious scholars to a contemporary debate in archaeology. The debatepresented here coalesces around what types of explanatory frameworks are best suited tounderstanding the Neolithic Revolution. Finlayson and Warren provide a provocative exegesis of thegeneralizing and synthetic narratives archaeologists commonly deploy to describe the transitions fromhunter-gatherer to first farmer and beyond. The authors unpack the standard origin models byexamining implicit assumptions, historical and theoretical influences, and relevant ethnographic andarchaeological data. In doing so, they promote theoretical approaches that emphasize local variationand community-level analyses. This call for an interpretive shift is consistent with broader trends inarchaeology and across the social sciences that increasingly stress human agency, practice, andhistorical contingency at the expense of evolutionary models.The book is organized into six chapters, with a short preface. Several recurrent themes are interwoventhroughout the text. The authors emphasize the historical developments and influences of thestandard classificatory categories of “hunter-gatherer” and “Neolithic farmer.” They argue thatarchaeologists have generally been complicit in applying these concepts uncritically to prehistoricgroups. This results in the perpetuation of biased and politically charged narratives of revolutionarychange and hampers our ability to conceptualize the transition in meaningful ways. Extendedexamples from the authors’ areas of geographic expertise, the southern Levant of southwest Asia(Finlayson) and western Europe (Warren), are interspersed as case studies. References are used moresparingly than in many scholarly works, which enhances the flow and development of the argument.This is especially welcome for students interested in engaging with a complex theoretical debate whoare often, in my experience, overwhelmed by citations.The authors claim that many of the existing models for the origins of agriculture succumb to theseductive, yet inaccurate, metaphor of a linear, progressive cultural development. Human groups areoften depicted as marching in syncopation from their hunter-gatherer origins to the early villagefarmers who paved the way for the current shape and structure of our modern lives. The authorshighlight some of the problems inherent with stereotypical views of hunter-gatherers and first farmersin chapters 1 and 2. For example, while ethnographers tend to view hunter-gatherer societies asextremely diverse and flexible in terms of subsistence practices, social organization, mobility patterns,and the like, archaeologists have used the term in more reductive ways, encoding “hunter-gatherer” asan origin point for subsequent cultural developments. The authors issue a valuable reminder thathunter-gatherer systems are neither simple nor lacking in structure. Elaborate social mechanisms andkinship systems keep these societies in balance. To view them as a social “ground zero” from whenceall economic and social complexity emerge is both inaccurate and historically rooted inracist sensibilities.Empirically, the archaeological record provides numerous examples that also challenge the notion of aChanging Natures: Hunter-Gatherers, First Farmers and the Modern World | American Journal of Archaeologylinear, progressive development. Detailed examples from southwest Asia and Europe are provided inchapters 3–5. The Epipaleolithic groups in southwest Asia, known as Natufian, are discussed in somedetail. Numerous data sets document that Early Natufian groups (ca. 12,500–11,500 B.C.E.) have twoessential hallmarks that situate them on the cusp of agriculture (preadapted, if you will): (1) increasedsedentism and (2) increased use of plant foods, specifically cereals. After 11,500 B.C.E., however, thelogical, linear progression to village farming does not materialize. Instead, during the subsequent LateNatufian (11,500–10,000 B.C.E.), populations appear to disperse into sites that are smaller and lesspermanent. Other examples in the text challenge a unidirectional, inexorable march toward farming.The authors spend considerable time discussing the generally ahistorical treatment of both prehistoricand modern hunter-gatherer groups.The archaeological treatment of early farming groups has also been encumbered by a series ofprogress-laden assumptions that bear closer scrutiny. Neolithic farmers are characteristically viewedas living in increasingly large and complex settlements. These nucleated sites present novel socialchallenges. How, for example, does one forge a sense of order and community among larger and morediverse populations? A common scholarly argument sees increased social differentiation andhierarchical decision-making structures as predestined outcomes that emerge to manage the newrealities of food-production systems. Here, again, the authors contest this narrative by looking at thearchaeological record. In southwest Asia, large, nucleated settlements, referred to as megasites bysome, occur in the Late Pre-Pottery Neolithic B (LPPN-B) period (ca. 8,000–7,700 B.C.E.). Theywould seem ideal candidates to support this scenario of nucleation leading to status differentiation.However, closer scrutiny reveals that most of these villages were abandoned at the end of LPPN-B.They did not develop into more complex, protourban places. Furthermore, there is considerableconsensus among Near Eastern Neolithic scholars that LPPN-B villagers were working hard tomaintain an egalitarian ethos. Architectural, mortuary, and bioarchaeological data sets indicate littleevidence for stratification among the roles, residences, and rituals of the period.Some of the most provocative discussions in the text focus on the extent to which we forgeconnections between ourselves and the first Neolithic farmers. Evolutionary models have been soinfluential in part because they reinforce a structural dichotomy that resonates with our modern,western mindset. If, as the authors argue, hunter-gatherers are commonly constructed as wholly“other,” culturally distinctive, and lacking in structure and complexity, Neolithic farmers are, incontrast, constructed as people like us, people we recognize as like ourselves. In the Neolithic mirror,we see families working harder, struggling with reduced social and economic flexibility, andwitnessing the beginnings of institutionalized inequality. But we must demonstrate, not assume thedegree to which early farming communities experience these changes. The authors warn that toassume a cultural phylogeny that links the Neolithic directly to the modern can be problematic.Chapter 5 examines this issue with specific reference to the symbolic and cognitive realms.Several influential senior scholars (e.g., Colin Renfrew, Trevor Watkins, Jacques Cauvin) haveproposed that the Neolithic mind underwent a cognitive revolution in parallel with the socioeconomicdevelopments associated with new agricultural lifestyles. The hallmarks of the cognitive changes arevariously described as the ability to process larger and more complex types of information, engagematerially with the world around them in fundamentally new ways (mediated by new symbolicrepertoires), and externalize the natural world. Because of these cognitive developments, Neolithicfolks are now apparently on an intellectual par with us in some fundamental way that hunters-gatherers were/are not. Like the authors, I suspect many anthropologists find this corollary highlyproblematic. Archaeologically, invoking a cognitive revolution would seem to improve our ability toChanging Natures: Hunter-Gatherers, First Farmers and the Modern World | American Journal of Archaeologydecipher the symbolic content of Neolithic images and artifacts. Yet assuming that Neolithichumanlike figurines are now gods and goddesses or that distinctive architectural features are nowsanctuaries and temples because, after all, they are doing religion like we do it now does not reallyrender these interpretations more satisfying.In chapter 6, the authors recapitulate their main points. First, they do not question that the advent offarming brought about changes that were transformative and, in some places, laid the foundation forincreased political and social complexity. But they remind us that broadly synthetic, progressivemodels for the rise of agriculture reinforce reductive and unreflective assumptions about both hunter-gathers and early farmers. Having convincingly demonstrated that such models often falter in light oflocal data sets and detailed analyses, Finlayson and Warren advocate bottom-up historical approachesthat examine the pace, timing, and directionality of cultural change on a more human scale.Jane PetersonDepartment of Social and Cultural SciencesMarquette UniversityMilwaukee, Wisconsin 53201jane.peterson@marquette.eduDOI: 10.3764/ajaonline1161.Peterson

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