Hunter-Gatherers and Prehistory

Summary

Robert Kelly’s seminal work, The Foraging Spectrum, cataloged diversity among ethnographic foragers to demonstrate the tremendous range of cultural, economic, demographic, and political systems within the broad category, "hunter-gatherer." While we have a clear understanding that ethnographic foragers are diverse, archaeological interpretations of prehistoric hunter-gatherers still tend to be seen through the lens of ethnographic analogy. The creative and critical use of ethnographic data is difficult, and doing archaeology as Kelly tells us is like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle without a picture on the box. The question remains, what is the proper role of ethnographic data in archaeological research, particularly of prehistoric hunter-gatherers? In addition, how can we highlight diversity in prehistoric foragers and discover novel lifeways that extend beyond the ethnographic record? These are the central questions and goals of this symposium, and individual papers and participants will each contribute pieces to a prehistoric hunter-gatherer puzzle.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Foraging Spectra: Hunter-Gatherer Diversity in Prehistory

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