What Do We Really Know about Food Storage ...

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Storage, Surplus, and Feasting in. Preagricultural Communities? by Ian Kuijt. In studying the origins of agriculture it is critical that we envision food production as ...
Current Anthropology Volume 50, Number 5, October 2009

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Rethinking the Origins of Agriculture

What Do We Really Know about Food Storage, Surplus, and Feasting in Preagricultural Communities? by Ian Kuijt In studying the origins of agriculture it is critical that we envision food production as a long-term human process that centers on the control and management of cycles of plant reproduction, including the harvesting, storage, and planting of seed stock. Drawing upon a growing body of literature illustrating multiple trajectories and pathways to agriculture, I see domestication as developing through coevolution between human beings and the resources they exploited. A more detailed understanding of the process and pathways of the origins of agriculture requires us to disentangle a complex knot of different yet interrelated factors, including food storage, food surplus, and feasting. I argue that archaeologists have yet to develop a detailed understanding of the scale and economic contributions of food storage in preagriculturalist communities. Evidence from the Near East indicates that use of storage practices increased dramatically after domestication. Analysis indicates that while there was a level of food storage in predomesticate and agricultural context, it was small scale. Finally, I argue that in some cases, discussions of food storage and feasting been reduced to claims of universal importance rather than a contextualized and detailed exploration within a specific cultural, temporal, and geographical case study.

Food production is the economic cornerstone of agricultural societies. While researchers often associate food production with agriculture, a growing number of studies have illustrated that a variety of forms of food production, with different intensities and targeted foods, existed in a wide range of hunting-gathering-foraging and agricultural societies. It is important, moreover, to disentangle the concept of food production from agriculture and to model these changes as a gradual social process. In his foundational article on low-level food production, Smith (2001a, 16) focuses our attention on food production as a long-term human process that centers on the control and management of cycles of plant reproduction, including the harvesting, storage, and planting of seed stock and changes in selective pressure on plants. While alternative perspectives exist (e.g., Hayden 2009, in this issue), researchers generally agree that food production emerged from the need Ian Kuijt is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology of the University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, U.S.A. [[email protected]]). This paper was submitted 26 IX 08 and accepted 1 V 09.

to secure sufficient foods for short- and long-term use to overcome seasonal or annual variations. Such longer-term goals, moreover, require the processing and storage of these resources. Rather than viewing the transformation from huntergatherer to agriculturalist societies as being explained in universalist terms, researchers such as Smith (2001a, 219), Pearsall (2009, in this issue), and Winterhalder and Kennett (2009, in this issue) suggest that our modeling of the origins of agriculture must be contextualized in case studies and that there is a growing body of literature illustrating multiple trajectories and pathways to agriculture. Following Rindos (1984) and others, I see domestication as developing through coevolution between human beings and the resources they exploited. In operationalizing this, I envision early forager/ cultivators as unintentional agents of dispersal, protection that promoted certain plant species and, in some cases, attributes of these plants. At later points, it makes sense that people would have recognized the utility of such resources and would have intentionally adjusted their practices to accommodate these. Research by Willcox (2005) highlights that in the con-

䉷 2009 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2009/5005-0009$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/605082

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text of the Near East early cultivators and agriculturalists appear to have followed a range of pathways to agriculture. As with Smith (2001b) and Winterhalder and Kennett (2009), I believe that a more detailed understanding of the process and pathways of the origins of agriculture requires us to distinguish between different yet interrelated factors that help us understand the origins of agriculture and food production. In this brief discussion I want to begin to separate the intertwined threads of food storage, food surplus, and feasting. My argument here is that these factors have become entrenched in the literature in ways that are both confusing and underdeveloped, and at the same time they have been decontextualized so as to potentially obscure some of the interrelationships between different factors. I am in broad agreement that these factors potentially played important social and economic roles in the transition from foraging to farming. My concern is that while we agree on their potential importance, in some cases debate been reduced to claims of universal importance rather than a contextualized and detailed exploration within a specific cultural, temporal, and geographical case study.

Trying to Find the Refrigerator: Food Storage and the Origins of Agriculture Food production, social inequality, and storage are interrelated. Despite the general acceptance of this proposition, the roles of storage in emerging social inequality and the development of food production remain poorly understood. Food storage is an awkward topic for researchers as it is not always manifested in ways that are visible or material (see Forbes and Foxhall 1995; Ingold 1983; Stopp 2002; Testart 1982). The reconstruction and definition of what is storage is highly complex, and centers on practices and materials that are not always well preserved. The identification of storage features, as well as the scale of storage, is undermined by several constraints. First, due to differential preservation, not all food storage can be identified in the archaeological record. While not random, direct preservation of foods through burning or other agents of conservation is inconsistent and unlikely to be representative of the entire range of foods used and stored in a prehistoric economy. Second, ethnographic accounts of hunter-gatherers and farmers provide evidence for a wide range of storage practices, some of which occur off site (Stopp 2002). Third, while we can use ethnography to help us understand the past use of architectural features, it is possible that Neolithic storage practices differed from our comparative cases. The archaeological understanding of past storage practices is based largely on preserved features and structures that are empty, and burned paleobotantical remains are rarely recovered. Researchers are often left with no alternative but to develop circumstantial arguments that specific features were used for food storage. Some researchers (e.g., Hayden 2009, in this issue) argue that the pre-agricultural Near Eastern Early (14,500–12,800

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cal BP) and Late Natufian periods (12,800–11,500 cal BP) were characterized by sufficient food storage and surplus to allow for individuals to gain social power over others. The Natufian periods, which are distinctly different from each other, were characterized by significant seasonal residential sedentism and the extensive harvesting of wild plants (BarYosef 1998). As with earlier peoples, the Early and Late Natufians were focused on intensive and extensive harvesting of wild cereals (Bar-Yosef 1998). Natufian people utilized a remarkably wide range of wild plants and animals and probably had a detailed knowledge of the seasonality and availability of these resources. Certainly the increased degree of sedentism in the Early Natufian period suggests that people were able to reduce seasonal food risks to the point where they could live in the same areas for one or more season of the year. Researchers (e.g., Bar-Yosef 1998; Goring-Morris and BelferCohen 1998; Munro 2004) working in the Levant have illustrated that there is surprisingly little direct evidence for food storage in either the Early or Late Natufian periods. In discussing storage in Early Natufian settlements Bar-Yosef (1998, 164) states, “Despite expectations to the contrary, storage installations are rare in Natufian sites. The few examples include a paved bin in Hayonim Terrace and several plastered pits at ‘Ain Mallaha, which could have served as underground storage facilities.” Along similar lines, Goring-Morris and Belfer-Cohen (1998, 80) state, “Although evidence is virtually non-existent, it is likely that there were advances in storage facilities.” Paradoxically, there is clear indirect evidence for food processing and storage, including the presence of sickles and food processing tools, such as mortars, pestles and bowls, all of which are interpreted as evidence for gathering and processing of pulses, cereals, almonds, and other plants. Collectively, this indicates that Early Natufian people must have engaged in some form of lower-level food storage. Even the almost total lack of evidence for Early Natufian food storage seems robust compared to the paucity of storage features in the Late Natufian. As outlined by Munro (2004), with the possible exception of the site of ‘Ain Mallaha, excavations at all other Late Natufian sites, including Baaz Rockshelter, ‘Iraq ed-Dubb, Hilazon Tachtit Cave, Hatoula, and Abu Hureyra, provide no direct evidence storage bins, silos, or other features that could be construed as storage features. One could argue that Late Natufian storage is invisible for methodological or preservation reasons, but if we are going to base our argument on physical data rather than speculation, then we must recognize that there was no substantial food storage for the 1,200 years before the start of the Neolithic and origins of agriculture. This brief discussion highlights three points. First, archaeologists have yet to develop a detailed understanding of the scale and economic contributions of food storage in preagriculturalist communities. Preliminary study of this topic in the Near East (e.g., Kuijt 2008) indicates that use of storage practices increased dramatically after domestication. Second, preliminary analysis of storage data from individual settle-

Kuijt Assessing Preagricultural Food Production

ments highlights that while there was a level of food storage in predomesticate and agricultural context, it was small scale. As noted by Smith (2001a), this supports the argument that in some locations domestication was a long-term process. Third, analysis and modeling of the social and economic context of preagricultural life in the Near East, needs to distinguish between the very different Early and Late Natufian cultural adoptions, rather than treating these as a single homogenous adaptation (e.g., Hayden 2004). This decontextualization has obscured our reconstruction of the transition to agriculture in this critical region.

How Much Food Was in the Refrigerator: Surplus and the Origins of Agriculture When did different low-level food production economies get to the point where they accumulated a significant food excess or surplus? In a situation similar to the limited research on storage, archaeologists have yet to develop a sophisticated economic analysis of food storage and when, or even whether, people were able to regularly store food beyond their annual consumption needs, including banking grain to overcome losses from spoilage, to provide seed for planting, and to offset potential years of crop failure. For this discussion I am going to define excess as an amount or quantity beyond what is considered normal or sufficient. As is noted by several researchers (e.g., Forbes and Foxhall 1995; Harris 2002), storage systems can secure an excess beyond the immediate annual household needs. For a true excess or surplus, it is necessary to produce enough yearly food resources to cover the subsistence needs of the group, to secure sufficient stored food to overcome any seasonal or yearly shortage, and still have remaining amounts that can be used for trade, exchange, or some form of social currency. So, the critical issue is not whether there was storage but rather whether there was anything left over after all the other human consumption needs were satisfied. To assess whether specific groups had a food excess it is necessary to understand the basic subsistence needs of a household. These needs would be based on the types of food available, the timing and spatial distribution of these resources, and the ability of groups to harvest, process, and store foods. The salient point is to recognize not only that these decisions are case specific but also that storage represents a critical form of risk management. This relationship is a clear one: in general, the more food people were able to store, the better off they were. In contexts of high resource variability, people will attempt to minimize risk in multiple ways, including stockpiling food in case of repeated crop failures (Winterhalder and Goland 1997). Forbes and Foxhall (1995) provide us with some basic guidelines. Their work illustrates that in the context of highly variable plant resources, with

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high annual and interannual variation, agriculturalists store sufficient food to last them for multiple years. The critical question becomes whether there is archaeological evidence to support the argument that Late Natufian households stockpiled sufficient foods for members to survive through multiple crop failures. What about at different points in the Neolithic period? I am not aware of any current economic and subsistence analysis that has explored this question through archaeological data. While some researchers (e.g., Hayden 2004) are assuming there was a food excess or surplus, they have yet to present detailed analysis to support this argument. In fact, available Natufian and Neolithic evidence does not support arguments for a food excess before the later stages of the Near East Neolithic, several thousand years after the appearance of domesticated plants and animals (Kuijt 2008).

Natufian Feasting and the Origins of Agriculture? Was feasting a universal factor in the origins of agriculture and development of social inequality in all areas of the world? Certainly, in the case of the Near East, Hayden (Hayden 2004, 2009) argues that it was. Working on the premise that predomestication technological innovations resulted in a surplus in food resources, he argues that this facilitated the utilization of new food sources, as well as permitting higher extraction levels of known sources, and resulted in increased levels of food storage. To Hayden, such a surplus could then be used for competitive feasting and economic-based completion and the conversion of such surpluses into other goods, social debts, and services. This view has been criticized from a range of perspectives. Smith, for example, has identified two major concerns with Hayden’s model. First, Smith (2001b, 220) illustrates that none of the early plant and animal domesticates qualify as labor-intensive prestige goods. The earliest domesticates were food staples, not prestige goods. Thus, if feasting was critical to domestication, then the goal must have been that of increasing the amount of food for human consumption, not the use of luxury goods. Second, as noted by Smith and others (e.g., Belfer-Cohen 1995; Kuijt and Goring-Morris 2002), the period directly before the appearance of domesticates provide no clear evidence for systematic social differentiation or social inequality. Smith (2001b, 221) states “There is, simply put, no well-documented correlation anywhere in the world between the emergence of social inequality and the first appearance of domesticates.” Third, ethnographic sources illustrate that feasting occurs in the social context of coexisting integrative and competitive processes, not just competition (Twiss 2008). Finally, I would argue that much of our discussion of feasting is decontextualized. I am not questioning the argument that under certain circumstances feasting serves as a means of political consolidation, or, as argued by Hayden (2009), that feasting can serve as a risk-reduction strategy; we

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are in general agreement on these points. Rather, I believe that current publications on feasting are undermined not only by a lack of detailed case study analysis of the possible evidence for feasting in archaeological contexts (however, see Twiss 2008 for the Near East) but, just as importantly, almost no consideration of the potential fit between specific case studies and ethnographic examples of feasting.

Final Thoughts Coming back to the question posed at the start of this essay, understanding the process and pathways of the origins of agriculture requires us to disentangle a complex knot of different yet interrelated factors. Here I have started by trying to separate the intertwined threads of food storage, food surplus, and feasting. Recently feasting has become a fashionable and important topic of study. While we are gaining a better understanding of the ethnographic context of feasting, most applications of these data sets to the origins of agriculture are decontextualized and without any serious consideration of the fit to specific case studies. In contrast to studies of feasting, the nature of and interrelationships between the topics of storage and surplus reflect a poorly understood gap in our reconstruction of the forager-farmer transition. I hope that this gap will be closed with future research.

References Cited Bar-Yosef, O. 1998. The Natufian culture in the Levant, threshold to the origins of agriculture. Evolutionary Anthropology 6(5):159–177. Belfer-Cohen, A. 1995. Rethinking social stratification in the Natufian culture: the evidence from burials. In The archaeology of death in the ancient Near East. Oxbow Monographs 51. S. Campbell and A. Green, eds. Pp. 9–16. Oxford: Oxbow. Forbes, H., and L. Foxhall. 1995. Ethnoarchaeology and storage in the ancient Mediterranean beyond risk and survival. In Food in antiquity. J. Wilkins, D. Harvey, and M. Dobson, eds. Pp. 69–86. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. Goring-Morris, N., and A. Belfer-Cohen. 1998. The articulation of cultural processes and Late Quaternary environmental changes in Cisjordan. Pale´orient 23(2):71–93. Harris, D. R. 2002. Development of the agro-pastoral economy in the Fertile Crescent during the Pre-Pottery Neolithic period. In The dawn of farming in the Near East. Studies in early Near Eastern production, subsistence, and environment, vol. 6. R. T. J. Cappers and S. Botttema, eds. Pp. 67–83. Berlin: ex oriente. Hayden B. 2004. Sociopolitical organization in the Natufian: a view from the northwest. In The last hunter-gatherer:

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societies in the Near East. British Archaeological Reports International Series. C. Delage, ed. Pp. 263–308. Oxford: John and Erica Hedges. ———. 2009. The proof is in the pudding: feasting and the origins of domestication. Current Anthropology 50: 597–601. Ingold, T. 1983. The significance of storage in hunting societies. Man, n.s., 18(3):553–371. Kuijt, I. 2008. Demography and storage systems during the southern Levantine Neolithic demographic transition. In The Neolithic demographic transition and its consequences. Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and O. Bar-Yosef, eds. Pp. 287–313. New York, Springer. Kuijt, I., and N. Goring-Morris. 2002. Foraging, farming, and social complexity in the Pre-Pottery Neolithic of the southern Levant: a review and synthesis. Journal of World Prehistory 16(4):361–440. Munro, N. D. 2004. Zooarchaeological measures of hunting pressure and occupational intensity in the Natufian: implications for agricultural origins. Current Anthropology 45(suppl.):S6-S33. Pearsall, D. M. 2009. Investigating the transition to agriculture. Current Anthropology 50:609–613. Rindos, D. 1984. The origins of agriculture: an evolutionary perspective. Orlando, FL: Academic Press. Smith, B. D. 2001a. Low-level food production. Journal of Archaeological Research 9:1–43. ———. 2001b. The transition to food production. In Archaeology at the millennium. G. Feinman and T. Price, eds. Pp. 199–230. New York: Kluwer Academic/Plenum. Stopp, M. P. 2002. Ethnohistoric analogues for storage as an adaptive strategy in northeastern subarctic prehistory. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 21:301–328. Testart, A. 1982. The significance of food storage among hunter-gatherers: residence patterns, population densities and social inequalities. Current Anthropology 23:523–538. Twiss, K. C. 2008. Transformations in an early agricultural society: feasting in the southern Levantine Pre-Pottery Neolithic. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 27(4): 418–442. Willcox, G. 2005. The distribution, natural habitats and availability of wild cereals in relation to their domestication in the Near East: multiple events, multiple centres. Vegetation History and Archaeobotany 14:534–541. Winterhalder, B., and C. Goland. 1997. An evolutionary ecology perspective on diet choice, risk, and plant domestication. In People, plants, and landscapes: studies in paleoethnobotany. K. J. Gremillion, ed. Pp. 123–160. Tuscaloosa, University of Alabama Press. Winterhalder, B., and D. J. Kennett. 2009. Four neglected concepts with a role to play in explaining the origins of agriculture. Current Anthropology 50:645–648.