Horticulture:

Feeding the
Household
Dr. Betty Faust
Visiting Professor
Dept. of Environmental Studies
SUNY ESF
Why agriculture?

When? Cimate change, warming,
wild grains - 10,000 - 7,000 BP

Cause? Settling down, population
growth, mothers-infants

Where? Middle East: Turkey, Iran,
Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Israel (earliest
studies)

What? Wheat, barley, goats, sheep
Where else?

China - millet and rice

India - millet, rice, wheat

W. Africa - red rice, sorghum, millet

Andes (S. America) - potatoes

Latin American lowlands - manioc

Mexico & Central America -
corn,beans, squash
Tropical Agriculture

Slash-and-burn, swidden, shifting
cultivation

Heat and humidity = rapid
degradation of humous

Tree roots, leaf fall - nutrients from
below, humous from above

Polyculture and intercropping -
foiling the competition
Sedentism

More babies, closer together

Sick and old survive longer

Investing in trees, cleared land,
root crops

Inheritance
Kinship - Politics -
Economics

Tribes - organizing groups and
territories

Kinship lines - marriages for
alliance

Conflicts resolved by tribal elders,
councils

Growing populations - wars over
land
Trade

Status symbols - shells, beadwork,
wampum belts

Clothing - embroidered, woven

Feathers and pelts

Jade, jewels, gold, silver, copper

Magnets, mirrors, dyes

Salt, dried and salted fish
Trobriand kula ring

Trade between islands - red shell
necklaces - clockwise

white shell armbands - counterclockwise
- BALANCED RECIPROCITY over time

SOCIAL CEMENT - beyond the family,
the island, trading partners east and west

Women at funerals - distribute food and
fiber skirts, accounts maintained - on
island
Yanamamo

The Vicious Circle - scarcity of women, fighting, value of sons
OR contact?

Hunting and horticulture - fighting over hunting grounds - protein?

Plantains, banans, manioc - 80% diet, protein from hunting

75 gms of protein/day - but times of scarcity

Post-partum taboo - 4 years nursing baby, female infanticide,
polygyny

contacts - changing diet, tools, working for money 1960s

gold miners
 poisoning rivers with mercury
 exposure to diseases
 fights over territory - national level

Darkness in El Dorado - accusing anthropologists of causing a
measles epidemic, fears of vaccines
PUEBLO INDIANS -
WEST

ARID LANDS, unpredictable
rainfall, uneven topography
 Diversification - high & low,
varieties planted
 Matrilineal (Hopi)
 Clans, Kachina - ancestor
 Religion - focused on clan,
integrating, sharing, peace
EASTERN PUEBLO

East - flood plains, predictable

Invest in irrigation systems

Patrilineal social organization
 centralized political leadership
 weak clans - moiety divisions
 organizing for war, protect
investment in irrigation systems