What Do We Really Know about Food Storage, Surplus, and Feasting in Preagricultural

Communities?
Author(s): Ian Kuijt
Source: Current Anthropology, Vol. 50, No. 5 (October 2009), pp. 641-644
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological
Research
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/605082 .
Accessed: 09/06/2013 09:39

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

The University of Chicago Press and Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research are collaborating
with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Current Anthropology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 130.209.6.50 on Sun, 9 Jun 2013 09:39:40 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 5, October 2009 641

Rethinking the Origins of Agriculture

What Do We Really Know about Food

Storage, Surplus, and Feasting in
Preagricultural Communities?
by Ian Kuijt

In studying the origins of agriculture it is critical that we envision food production as a long-term
human process that centers on the control and management of cycles of plant reproduction, including
the harvesting, storage, and planting of seed stock. Drawing upon a growing body of literature
illustrating multiple trajectories and pathways to agriculture, I see domestication as developing
through coevolution between human beings and the resources they exploited. A more detailed
understanding of the process and pathways of the origins of agriculture requires us to disentangle
a complex knot of different yet interrelated factors, including food storage, food surplus, and feasting.
I argue that archaeologists have yet to develop a detailed understanding of the scale and economic
contributions of food storage in preagriculturalist communities. Evidence from the Near East indicates
that use of storage practices increased dramatically after domestication. Analysis indicates that while
there was a level of food storage in predomesticate and agricultural context, it was small scale. Finally,
I argue that in some cases, discussions of food storage and feasting been reduced to claims of universal
importance rather than a contextualized and detailed exploration within a specific cultural, temporal,
and geographical case study.

Food production is the economic cornerstone of agricultural
societies. While researchers often associate food production
with agriculture, a growing number of studies have illustrated
that a variety of forms of food production, with different
intensities and targeted foods, existed in a wide range of hunt-
ing-gathering-foraging and agricultural societies. It is impor-
tant, moreover, to disentangle the concept of food production
from agriculture and to model these changes as a gradual
social process. In his foundational article on low-level food
production, Smith (2001a, 16) focuses our attention on food
production as a long-term human process that centers on the
control and management of cycles of plant reproduction, in-
cluding the harvesting, storage, and planting of seed stock
and changes in selective pressure on plants. While alternative
perspectives exist (e.g., Hayden 2009, in this issue), researchers
generally agree that food production emerged from the need
Ian Kuijt is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology
of the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A.
[ikuijt@nd.edu]). This paper was submitted 26 IX 08 and accepted
1 V 09.
to secure sufficient foods for short- and long-term use to
overcome seasonal or annual variations. Such longer-term
goals, moreover, require the processing and storage of these
resources.
Rather than viewing the transformation from hunter-
gatherer to agriculturalist societies as being explained in uni-
versalist terms, researchers such as Smith (2001a, 219), Pear-
sall (2009, in this issue), and Winterhalder and Kennett (2009,
in this issue) suggest that our modeling of the origins of
agriculture must be contextualized in case studies and that
there is a growing body of literature illustrating multiple tra-
jectories and pathways to agriculture. Following Rindos
(1984) and others, I see domestication as developing through
coevolution between human beings and the resources they
exploited. In operationalizing this, I envision early forager/
cultivators as unintentional agents of dispersal, protection that
promoted certain plant species and, in some cases, attributes
of these plants. At later points, it makes sense that people
would have recognized the utility of such resources and would
have intentionally adjusted their practices to accommodate
these. Research by Willcox (2005) highlights that in the con-

䉷 2009 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2009/5005-0009$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/605082

This content downloaded from 130.209.6.50 on Sun, 9 Jun 2013 09:39:40 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
 642
text of the Near East early cultivators and agriculturalists ap-
pear to have followed a range of pathways to agriculture.
As with Smith (2001b) and Winterhalder and Kennett
(2009), I believe that a more detailed understanding of the
process and pathways of the origins of agriculture requires us
to distinguish between different yet interrelated factors that
help us understand the origins of agriculture and food pro-
duction. In this brief discussion I want to begin to separate
the intertwined threads of food storage, food surplus, and
feasting. My argument here is that these factors have become
entrenched in the literature in ways that are both confusing
and underdeveloped, and at the same time they have been
decontextualized so as to potentially obscure some of the
interrelationships between different factors. I am in broad
agreement that these factors potentially played important so-
cial and economic roles in the transition from foraging to
farming. My concern is that while we agree on their potential
importance, in some cases debate been reduced to claims of
universal importance rather than a contextualized and de-
tailed exploration within a specific cultural, temporal, and
geographical case study.
Trying to Find the Refrigerator: Food
Storage and the Origins of Agriculture
Food production, social inequality, and storage are interre-
lated. Despite the general acceptance of this proposition, the
roles of storage in emerging social inequality and the devel-
opment of food production remain poorly understood. Food
storage is an awkward topic for researchers as it is not always
manifested in ways that are visible or material (see Forbes
and Foxhall 1995; Ingold 1983; Stopp 2002; Testart 1982).
The reconstruction and definition of what is storage is highly
complex, and centers on practices and materials that are not
always well preserved. The identification of storage features,
as well as the scale of storage, is undermined by several con-
straints. First, due to differential preservation, not all food
storage can be identified in the archaeological record. While
not random, direct preservation of foods through burning or
other agents of conservation is inconsistent and unlikely to
be representative of the entire range of foods used and stored
in a prehistoric economy. Second, ethnographic accounts of
hunter-gatherers and farmers provide evidence for a wide
range of storage practices, some of which occur off site (Stopp
2002). Third, while we can use ethnography to help us un-
derstand the past use of architectural features, it is possible
that Neolithic storage practices differed from our comparative
cases. The archaeological understanding of past storage prac-
tices is based largely on preserved features and structures that
are empty, and burned paleobotantical remains are rarely re-
covered. Researchers are often left with no alternative but to
develop circumstantial arguments that specific features were
used for food storage.
Some researchers (e.g., Hayden 2009, in this issue) argue
that the pre-agricultural Near Eastern Early (14,500–12,800
This content downloaded from 130.209.6.50 on Sun, 9 Jun 2013 09:39:40 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 5, October 2009
cal BP) and Late Natufian periods (12,800–11,500 cal BP)
were characterized by sufficient food storage and surplus to
allow for individuals to gain social power over others. The
Natufian periods, which are distinctly different from each
other, were characterized by significant seasonal residential
sedentism and the extensive harvesting of wild plants (Bar-
Yosef 1998). As with earlier peoples, the Early and Late Na-
tufians were focused on intensive and extensive harvesting of
wild cereals (Bar-Yosef 1998). Natufian people utilized a re-
markably wide range of wild plants and animals and probably
had a detailed knowledge of the seasonality and availability
of these resources. Certainly the increased degree of sedentism
in the Early Natufian period suggests that people were able
to reduce seasonal food risks to the point where they could
live in the same areas for one or more season of the year.
Researchers (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998; Goring-Morris and Belfer-
Cohen 1998; Munro 2004) working in the Levant have illus-
trated that there is surprisingly little direct evidence for food
storage in either the Early or Late Natufian periods. In dis-
cussing storage in Early Natufian settlements Bar-Yosef (1998,
164) states, “Despite expectations to the contrary, storage in-
stallations are rare in Natufian sites. The few examples include
a paved bin in Hayonim Terrace and several plastered pits at
‘Ain Mallaha, which could have served as underground storage
facilities.” Along similar lines, Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen
(1998, 80) state, “Although evidence is virtually non-existent,
it is likely that there were advances in storage facilities.” Par-
adoxically, there is clear indirect evidence for food processing
and storage, including the presence of sickles and food pro-
cessing tools, such as mortars, pestles and bowls, all of which
are interpreted as evidence for gathering and processing of
pulses, cereals, almonds, and other plants. Collectively, this
indicates that Early Natufian people must have engaged in
some form of lower-level food storage.
Even the almost total lack of evidence for Early Natufian
food storage seems robust compared to the paucity of storage
features in the Late Natufian. As outlined by Munro (2004),
with the possible exception of the site of ‘Ain Mallaha, ex-
cavations at all other Late Natufian sites, including Baaz Rock-
shelter, ‘Iraq ed-Dubb, Hilazon Tachtit Cave, Hatoula, and
Abu Hureyra, provide no direct evidence storage bins, silos,
or other features that could be construed as storage features.
One could argue that Late Natufian storage is invisible for
methodological or preservation reasons, but if we are going
to base our argument on physical data rather than speculation,
then we must recognize that there was no substantial food
storage for the 1,200 years before the start of the Neolithic
and origins of agriculture.
This brief discussion highlights three points. First, archae-
ologists have yet to develop a detailed understanding of the
scale and economic contributions of food storage in pre-
agriculturalist communities. Preliminary study of this topic
in the Near East (e.g., Kuijt 2008) indicates that use of storage
practices increased dramatically after domestication. Second,
preliminary analysis of storage data from individual settle-
Kuijt Assessing Preagricultural Food Production
ments highlights that while there was a level of food storage
in predomesticate and agricultural context, it was small scale.
As noted by Smith (2001a), this supports the argument that
in some locations domestication was a long-term process.
Third, analysis and modeling of the social and economic con-
text of preagricultural life in the Near East, needs to distin-
guish between the very different Early and Late Natufian cul-
tural adoptions, rather than treating these as a single
homogenous adaptation (e.g., Hayden 2004). This decontex-
tualization has obscured our reconstruction of the transition
to agriculture in this critical region.
How Much Food Was in the
Refrigerator: Surplus and the
Origins of Agriculture
When did different low-level food production economies get
to the point where they accumulated a significant food excess
or surplus? In a situation similar to the limited research on
storage, archaeologists have yet to develop a sophisticated
economic analysis of food storage and when, or even whether,
people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual
consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome
losses from spoilage, to provide seed for planting, and to offset
potential years of crop failure. For this discussion I am going
to define excess as an amount or quantity beyond what is
considered normal or sufficient. As is noted by several re-
searchers (e.g., Forbes and Foxhall 1995; Harris 2002), storage
systems can secure an excess beyond the immediate annual
household needs. For a true excess or surplus, it is necessary
to produce enough yearly food resources to cover the sub-
sistence needs of the group, to secure sufficient stored food
to overcome any seasonal or yearly shortage, and still have
remaining amounts that can be used for trade, exchange, or
some form of social currency. So, the critical issue is not
whether there was storage but rather whether there was any-
thing left over after all the other human consumption needs
were satisfied.
To assess whether specific groups had a food excess it is
necessary to understand the basic subsistence needs of a
household. These needs would be based on the types of food
available, the timing and spatial distribution of these re-
sources, and the ability of groups to harvest, process, and
store foods. The salient point is to recognize not only that
these decisions are case specific but also that storage represents
a critical form of risk management. This relationship is a clear
one: in general, the more food people were able to store, the
better off they were. In contexts of high resource variability,
people will attempt to minimize risk in multiple ways, in-
cluding stockpiling food in case of repeated crop failures
(Winterhalder and Goland 1997). Forbes and Foxhall (1995)
provide us with some basic guidelines. Their work illustrates
that in the context of highly variable plant resources, with
This content downloaded from 130.209.6.50 on Sun, 9 Jun 2013 09:39:40 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
643
high annual and interannual variation, agriculturalists store
sufficient food to last them for multiple years.
The critical question becomes whether there is archaeo-
logical evidence to support the argument that Late Natufian
households stockpiled sufficient foods for members to survive
through multiple crop failures. What about at different points
in the Neolithic period? I am not aware of any current eco-
nomic and subsistence analysis that has explored this question
through archaeological data. While some researchers (e.g.,
Hayden 2004) are assuming there was a food excess or surplus,
they have yet to present detailed analysis to support this ar-
gument. In fact, available Natufian and Neolithic evidence
does not support arguments for a food excess before the later
stages of the Near East Neolithic, several thousand years after
the appearance of domesticated plants and animals (Kuijt
2008).
Natufian Feasting and the Origins of
Agriculture?
Was feasting a universal factor in the origins of agriculture
and development of social inequality in all areas of the world?
Certainly, in the case of the Near East, Hayden (Hayden 2004,
2009) argues that it was. Working on the premise that pre-
domestication technological innovations resulted in a surplus
in food resources, he argues that this facilitated the utilization
of new food sources, as well as permitting higher extraction
levels of known sources, and resulted in increased levels of
food storage. To Hayden, such a surplus could then be used
for competitive feasting and economic-based completion and
the conversion of such surpluses into other goods, social
debts, and services.
This view has been criticized from a range of perspectives.
Smith, for example, has identified two major concerns with
Hayden’s model. First, Smith (2001b, 220) illustrates that
none of the early plant and animal domesticates qualify as
labor-intensive prestige goods. The earliest domesticates were
food staples, not prestige goods. Thus, if feasting was critical
to domestication, then the goal must have been that of in-
creasing the amount of food for human consumption, not
the use of luxury goods. Second, as noted by Smith and others
(e.g., Belfer-Cohen 1995; Kuijt and Goring-Morris 2002), the
period directly before the appearance of domesticates provide
no clear evidence for systematic social differentiation or social
inequality. Smith (2001b, 221) states “There is, simply put,
no well-documented correlation anywhere in the world be-
tween the emergence of social inequality and the first ap-
pearance of domesticates.” Third, ethnographic sources il-
lustrate that feasting occurs in the social context of coexisting
integrative and competitive processes, not just competition
(Twiss 2008). Finally, I would argue that much of our dis-
cussion of feasting is decontextualized. I am not questioning
the argument that under certain circumstances feasting serves
as a means of political consolidation, or, as argued by Hayden
(2009), that feasting can serve as a risk-reduction strategy; we
 644
are in general agreement on these points. Rather, I believe
that current publications on feasting are undermined not only
by a lack of detailed case study analysis of the possible evi-
dence for feasting in archaeological contexts (however, see
Twiss 2008 for the Near East) but, just as importantly, almost
no consideration of the potential fit between specific case
studies and ethnographic examples of feasting.
Final Thoughts
Coming back to the question posed at the start of this essay,
understanding the process and pathways of the origins of
agriculture requires us to disentangle a complex knot of dif-
ferent yet interrelated factors. Here I have started by trying
to separate the intertwined threads of food storage, food sur-
plus, and feasting. Recently feasting has become a fashionable
and important topic of study. While we are gaining a better
understanding of the ethnographic context of feasting, most
applications of these data sets to the origins of agriculture are
decontextualized and without any serious consideration of
the fit to specific case studies. In contrast to studies of feasting,
the nature of and interrelationships between the topics of
storage and surplus reflect a poorly understood gap in our
reconstruction of the forager-farmer transition. I hope that
this gap will be closed with future research.
References Cited
Bar-Yosef, O. 1998. The Natufian culture in the Levant,
threshold to the origins of agriculture. Evolutionary An-
thropology 6(5):159–177.
Belfer-Cohen, A. 1995. Rethinking social stratification in the
Natufian culture: the evidence from burials. In The ar-
chaeology of death in the ancient Near East. Oxbow Mono-
graphs 51. S. Campbell and A. Green, eds. Pp. 9–16. Ox-
ford: Oxbow.
Forbes, H., and L. Foxhall. 1995. Ethnoarchaeology and stor-
age in the ancient Mediterranean beyond risk and survival.
In Food in antiquity. J. Wilkins, D. Harvey, and M. Dobson,
eds. Pp. 69–86. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Goring-Morris, N., and A. Belfer-Cohen. 1998. The articu-
lation of cultural processes and Late Quaternary environ-
mental changes in Cisjordan. Paléorient 23(2):71–93.
Harris, D. R. 2002. Development of the agro-pastoral econ-
omy in the Fertile Crescent during the Pre-Pottery Neo-
lithic period. In The dawn of farming in the Near East.
Studies in early Near Eastern production, subsistence, and
environment, vol. 6. R. T. J. Cappers and S. Botttema, eds.
Pp. 67–83. Berlin: ex oriente.
Hayden B. 2004. Sociopolitical organization in the Natufian:
a view from the northwest. In The last hunter-gatherer:
This content downloaded from 130.209.6.50 on Sun, 9 Jun 2013 09:39:40 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 5, October 2009
societies in the Near East. British Archaeological Reports
International Series. C. Delage, ed. Pp. 263–308. Oxford:
John and Erica Hedges.
———. 2009. The proof is in the pudding: feasting and the
origins of domestication. Current Anthropology 50:
597–601.
Ingold, T. 1983. The significance of storage in hunting soci-
eties. Man, n.s., 18(3):553–371.
Kuijt, I. 2008. Demography and storage systems during the
southern Levantine Neolithic demographic transition. In
The Neolithic demographic transition and its conse-
quences. Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and O. Bar-Yosef, eds.
Pp. 287–313. New York, Springer.
Kuijt, I., and N. Goring-Morris. 2002. Foraging, farming, and
social complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the south-
ern Levant: a review and synthesis. Journal of World Pre-
history 16(4):361–440.
Munro, N. D. 2004. Zooarchaeological measures of hunting
pressure and occupational intensity in the Natufian: im-
plications for agricultural origins. Current Anthropology
45(suppl.):S6-S33.
Pearsall, D. M. 2009. Investigating the transition to agricul-
ture. Current Anthropology 50:609–613.
Rindos, D. 1984. The origins of agriculture: an evolutionary
perspective. Orlando, FL: Academic Press.
Smith, B. D. 2001a. Low-level food production. Journal of
Archaeological Research 9:1–43.
———. 2001b. The transition to food production. In Ar-
chaeology at the millennium. G. Feinman and T. Price, eds.
Pp. 199–230. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum.
Stopp, M. P. 2002. Ethnohistoric analogues for storage as an
adaptive strategy in northeastern subarctic prehistory. Jour-
nal of Anthropological Archaeology 21:301–328.
Testart, A. 1982. The significance of food storage among
hunter-gatherers: residence patterns, population densities
and social inequalities. Current Anthropology 23:523–538.
Twiss, K. C. 2008. Transformations in an early agricultural
society: feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neo-
lithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 27(4):
418–442.
Willcox, G. 2005. The distribution, natural habitats and avail-
ability of wild cereals in relation to their domestication in
the Near East: multiple events, multiple centres. Vegetation
History and Archaeobotany 14:534–541.
Winterhalder, B., and C. Goland. 1997. An evolutionary ecol-
ogy perspective on diet choice, risk, and plant domesti-
cation. In People, plants, and landscapes: studies in pa-
leoethnobotany. K. J. Gremillion, ed. Pp. 123–160.
Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press.
Winterhalder, B., and D. J. Kennett. 2009. Four neglected
concepts with a role to play in explaining the origins of
agriculture. Current Anthropology 50:645–648.