An Unexplored Realm in the Heartland of the Southern Gulf ... - Famsi

structures that could provide long-term stability and co-operative care for expanding
families (Moore 1978). Female fertility rates improved, shorter spacing of birthing
intervals, and a decline in infant mortality all contributed to larger family units (Bender
1975:9; Boone 2002; Schultz and Lavenda 1998). A general understanding is that the
change to some level of sedentism, for whatever reason, resulted in larger family size
(Cohen 1978).
The third recurring entity required to permit the eventual emergence of inequality
is that of surplus (Carneiro 1981; Clark and Blake 1994; Cobb 2003; Earle 1997;
Feinman 1991; Junker 1998). Surplus constitutes the “fund of power” according to
Sahlins (1968:68), but what is the surplus at the center of this incipient social
organizational transformation? Humans can endure without status, prestige, and their
associated material components, but they cannot survive without food. The shift from
nomadic hunting and gathering to sedentism is contributable to the acquisition of
sufficient foodstuffs and, likewise, the increase in family size could not occur without
more than sufficient food resources. Therefore, in transegalitarian societies, biological
necessity mandates that initial surplus refers to food (Brown 2001; Dietler and Hayden
2001; Drennan 1991; Earle 1997; Upman 1990b).
The presence of some degree of sedentism is repeatedly associated with changes
in subsistence practices that moved societies away from restricted, fluctuating resources
and toward what they believed to have been more reliable resources (Bender 1990; Braun
1990; Brumfiel and Earle 1987:6; Earle 1991b; Ember and Ember 2003; Fish et al. 1992;
Pearson 2004; Plog 1990). Hayden (1995a) explains that hunter-gatherers employed a
strategy of maintaining their population levels in a dynamic equilibrium with their
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