Abstract
Hunter-gatherer theory is fundamentally comparative, materialist, and evolutionary, and these ideas have very ancient roots. Two distinct general models of hunter-gatherers are introduced: the developmental model, which historically emphasized progressive social evolution and saw hunter-gatherers as a basal or low point in progressive evolutionary schemes, and the ecological model, which emerged in the 1960s and saw hunter-gatherers as “lay ecologists” in harmony with the environment. Key elements of social evolutionary theory are explored in this chapter (the ecological model reviewed in Chap. 2). Three concepts were particularly influential: the idea of progress, the idea of environmental influence, and the idea of political economy. Spencer and Powell were important figures in early social evolutionary thought; theoretically, they shared the idea that natural selection acted on early (hunting and gathering) peoples but disagreed about social policy. The core of their disagreement, however, was not about theory per se, but rather the implications of theory for how contemporary social policy ought to be carried out: actively planned (Powell and Ward) or passively left to the environment (Spencer). British hunter-gatherer ethnography and archaeology was largely disinterested in hunter-gatherers, environmental relationships, and materialist accounts. Rather, British scholarship focused on more complex social settings and agricultural societies with the view that hunter-gatherers offered little in the way of understanding the contemporary social issues of the time.
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Notes
- 1.
Here and throughout the remainder of the text, we distinguish between the early version of cultural materialism (cf. Harris 1968) and the later version (cf. Harris 1979). Both are concerned with the problem of adaptation, but the latter presents a model of the processes through which adaptation is effected that the former lacks.
- 2.
The evolutionary theory developed by Hallpike (1986), however, differs fundamentally from traditional social evolutionary theory in rejecting the assumption that technology and adaptation to the environment become less important as social complexity increases. Thus, Hallpike contends that in the hunter-gatherer case, “demands on functional and adaptive efficiency are very low” and a “wide range” of solutions, social and technical alike, “will all work perfectly well” (Hallpike 1986, pp. 141–142). In Hallpike’s view, the range of workable possibilities available to hunter-gatherers is almost unlimited, efficiency being irrelevant; Oldowan tools and Australian section systems are cited as cases in point (Hallpike 1986, p. 114, 142).
- 3.
It was not this fixed continuum, or chain, into which eighteenth-century Europe first attempted to fit primitive peoples, however (contra Schrire 1984, p. 4). Rather, by then a growing awareness of logical and moral inconsistencies in the static interpretation of the physical universe (one cause for growing doubt regarding the authority of the Church and clergy in such basic matters as morality and philosophy) led to the reinterpretation of the chain of being as a process acting over time.
- 4.
Some of these evolutionary implications were quite specific. Hippocrates, Bodin, and Montesquieu, for instance, all noted that differences of climate caused peoples of the northern, southern, and temperate regions to assume intellectual qualities reminiscent of the three ages of man: youth, middle age, old age (Glacken 1967, pp. 440–441). Such observations contained the rudiments of an evolutionary theory. There was, further, from at least the Middle Ages onward the belief that civilization was moving, variously, from east to west, north to south, south to north, or, for Jefferson in the New World, west to east (cf. Glacken 1967, pp. 276–278, 597). Absolute direction here seems to have been less important than simple distance from a central point; in nearly all such theories, cultural development increased and the force of environment decreased as one moved from distant times and places closer to home (cf. Glacken 1967, p. 272, 286, 444). Here, again, are the rudiments of a model of evolution; indeed, many early evolutionary theories were similarly structured, cultures near at hand tending to be portrayed as more advanced than ones far away. As students of the Kulturkreise pointed out, of course, the inverse correlation between distance and development could be explained in other ways (e.g., through the diffusion of cultural complexes from culture cores or centers).
- 5.
It is possibly this historical connection with political theory that explains why environmental theories and theorists have so seldom essayed determinist interpretations. As Glacken’s history of environmental theories shows, it is the theme of tension between the forces of environment and culture, and the problems this raises regarding the issue of morality, that dominates the historical development of theories of environmental influence. It has been generally appreciated since the time of the Ancients, for instance, that theories of environmental influence are in one sense inherently good, and in another, inherently bad. They were good in their implied relativism; one cannot judge the culture of another in terms of one’s own, the environments being different. Jefferson made such a case for the North American Indian (Hallowell 1960, p. 15; cf. Pearce 1988, pp. 93–94). Environmental theories, however, were at the same time inherently dangerous: In their fatalism and determinism they seem to deprive individuals from any real power to change their nature, which was a result of climate (for an analogous argument regarding genetic fatalism, see Chard 1969, p. 73). St. Thomas Aquinas, Bodin, Montesquieu, and countless others less notable considered that contradiction and consistently decided that the effect of environment, although powerful, can be overcome—as modern civilization, government, and technology all show. Precisely the same nature-culture dualism found in these political philosophers would later be seen in the anthropological theories of, among others, Boas, Kroeber, Forde, and Steward.
- 6.
As Ingold (1992) points out, the structural-functionalist Radcliffe-Brown—a British social anthropologist interested in understanding hunter-gatherers in other than evolutionary-materialist terms—is an exception to the argument developed here. It is worth noting, however, that his earliest work, conducted from 1906 to 1908 with Andaman hunter-gatherers (Radcliffe-Brown 1922, 1933), was initiated, and largely carried out, as an historical-evolutionary project, and his Australian work, carried out from 1910 to 1912 (Radcliffe-Brown 1913, 1931), produced a carefully reasoned ecological explanation for the presence of patrilineal descent (Radcliffe-Brown 1931, p. 107) that proved seminal to Julian Steward’s explanation for the patrilineal band (Petersen 2006; Steward 1936, p. 333). In the end, however, Ingold (1992) is right: Radcliffe-Brown was largely disinterested in the material conditions of hunter-gatherer life; indeed, he was willing to ignore on-the-ground realities concerning Australian aboriginal social institutions, specifically the “horde,” when they clashed with his structural-functional preconceptions. In short, the more interested Radcliffe-Brown became in structural-functionalism, the less interested he became in hunter-gatherer lifeways.
- 7.
As Burrow (1966, pp. 59–63) discusses, carried to its logical conclusion, this implication could be devastating to social evolutionary theory itself. If social progress had reached its conclusion in Britain, then neither the lessons that could be learned from primitives nor the study of social evolutionary processes in general were any longer of instructive value to British political economy. In short, social evolution could make social evolutionary theory obsolete.
- 8.
Haddon, in 1898–1899, mounted one of the first overseas anthropological expeditions to the Torres Straits. However, the way for it had been paved by an earlier expedition, the purpose of which had been exclusively natural-historical (Burrow 1966, p. 86). The succeeding anthropological expedition was meant to salvage a record of expiring cultures, not to devising theories or put them to the test. As a direct result, in its preoccupation with endless description, Haddon’s report is reminiscent of early attempts at empirical research in British sociology most of which, as Burrow (1966:88–90) documents, lost their way in a morass of detail that remained incomprehensible in the absence of a generalizing theory.
- 9.
Spencer was, of course, far less popular in Britain than America (cf. Burrow 1966; Peel 1972, pp. xxxvi–xxxiv). Even in America, Spencer’s influence was much greater outside than within the social sciences, anthropology in particular. Among the lay public, his acceptance was furthered in no small part by his emphasis on individualism and self-sufficiency—ideals that Americans endorsed, and by the popular conviction, particularly among the captains of industry in postbellum America, that success was something that anyone could achieve, the accomplishments of some and the failure of others being explicable in terms of individuals rather than systems. Spencerism explained in natural terms how it could come to pass that equally free men could be so markedly unequal in wealth (cf. Hofstadter 1944, p. 46).
- 10.
- 11.
The British experience, in this respect, differs markedly from the one in the United States, where there has seldom been any suggestion of historical connection between archaeologists (or, for that matter, ethnographers) and the cultures they study and where, as a consequence, there has always been a clear separation between the disciplines of anthropology and history. Put another way, British archaeology has tended to deal with a classical past that helps define what the civilized Briton is; American archaeology has tended to deal with a savage past that helps to define what civilized Americans are not (see Chap. 2). Americanist historical archaeology is an exception in this regard—but clearly one that proves the rule.
- 12.
The historical linkage between British social evolutionary theory and political theory sometimes caused this chauvinism to have unfortunate results that adversely affected the development of social evolutionary theory. For instance, James Mill’s bombastic utilitarian attacks against Asian culture and Asianists (particularly Sir William Jones) attempted to trace some elements of Western culture to India and the Near East, and caused a generation of British scholars to completely avoid the field of Asian studies (Burrow 1966, pp. 42–49). As a consequence, when developing his theories of the historical development of Aryan culture, Maine (1861) had to turn for help to the work of a German, Max Muller, there being no British successor to the seminal Sanskrit scholar Jones. Maine was prisoner to his political heritage in more fundamental ways however; his understanding of evolution assumed that the probability of parallel development applied only in cases of common historical ancestry—in his case, Aryan ancestry.
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Bettinger, R., Garvey, R., Tushingham, S. (2015). Progressive Social Evolution and Hunter-Gatherers. In: Hunter-Gatherers. Interdisciplinary Contributions to Archaeology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-7581-2_1
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