Making It Cool: Modern Lessons in Reinterpreting, Reappropriating and Understanding Hunter Gatherer Studies

Summary

Studies of hunter-gatherers have recently garnered less attention than ever before. This has occurred in large part due to a correlation between a reduced number of forager societies and relevancy with such reduced numbers. In effect, there exists a dogma where studying hunter-gatherers is no longer pertinent to today’s society, nor to the anthropological subfield. However, my paper begs to differ. Hunter-gatherer studies, specifically my own amongst modern populations of the Ata of Negros Island of the Philippines, continues to provide fruitful and revitalizing information on hunter-gather studies, complexities associated with dealing with modernity, and most significantly, deeper insights into ways that scientists can understand multi-varied levels of resiliency amongst hunter gatherers diachronically and spatially. My ethnoarchaeological research acknowledges that forager societies still remain resilient proposing that adaptations to modernity undertaken by forager societies described by researches for the past half-century, not only apply today, but can also be used to elaborate on multi-varied ways that foragers have adapted to modernity in the past. Due to our auspicious ability to tap into these still existing marginalized societies, lessons are still to be learned about foragers and these perspectives may be the keys to invigorating hunter- gatherer studies for the future.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage