The Legacy of the Foraging Spectrum and Mikea Ethnography: Do We Need Hunter-Gatherer Studies Anymore?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

One way to view the twentieth-century history of hunter-gatherer studies is as a long attempt to evaluate Victorian notions of foragers as primitive relics with actual data from real foraging peoples. This history came to a fiery climax during the Kalahari history debate of the 1990s, when researchers argued whether hunter-gatherers represent a special type reflective of past lifeways or whether they are oppressed rural proletariat like other peasants. Robert Kelly’s Foraging Spectrum offered a third road, one based on empirical data documenting the diversity of hunter-gatherer experiences; and Mikea people walk this road, conforming to and confounding forager stereotypes. Accepting that “foragers” are a diverse bunch, does it make sense to keep the category and continue to devote special study to it? I offer a cautious yes. First because past lessons haven’t been learned, and scholars continue to offer homogenized primitives, in other clothes. Second, because the political history of treating some people as hunter-gatherers has made them so. Third, because contemporary and historical foraging activities continue to teach us about human-environment interactions. One legacy of the Foraging Spectrum is a spectrum of new research trajectories.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38915.0