INTRODUCTION TO ARCHAEOLOGY Nancy White - Touro Institute

The population pressure hypothesis, advocated by Binford and others, pointed to increasing
human populations that required more food than could be obtained in the wild, resulting in
intensification of production. But there was no explanation of how population sizes grew so
much. We know that population sizes of any animal are usually naturally regulated, and humans
should be no different. By what cultural ways did these systems get adjusted? It is no surprise
that population growth models emerged in the 1970s, when Americans and others began to
realize that we are currently overpopulating our planet and using up all the resources.
We already discussed the systems models for agricultural origins in Mexico, in which the genetic
responsiveness of maize worked to make it more and more important in the diet. Lately more
fashionable are social models (described in the book, p. 202) in which the behavior of
particularly self-aggrandizing individuals is highlighted; they would be the ones to try to acquire
influence and wealth by building up food surpluses and exchanging them for goods and services
and followers. My take on such explanations emphasizing this kind of human agency is that they
are direct results of the late-twentieth-century social climate of Wall Street greed: not all cultures
value such individualism as we do; in fact, many abhor it.
All these models do not always explain things and are not often testable (especially the social
ones). Especially difficult is being able to tell which came first: the population growth, the food
production, the sedentism, or the evidence of social inequality and elites?
What are the important species domesticated in the Old World? For animals, the earliest
anywhere in the world is the dog. For what purposes would dogs be domesticated? We think of
them as companions, as they may have been, but it is possibly more likely they were for work
and protection—pulling loads on sleds, helping the hunt, and warning of intruders. What about
as a food source? Many cultures still eat puppy stew; you can get it in the butcher shop in the Far
East, and the Aztecs bred a small hairless dog for eating (Chihuahua!). Sheep and goats, as you
can easily imagine, were early under human control in the Middle East. Species such as pigs and
chickens were also early in east Asia. Cattle, horses, and other larger mammals came much later;
as you can imagine, the wild aurochs was probably not easy to tame and control.
What Old World domesticated plants are important? You are familiar with the grain crops—
wheat, barley, rye; these are all grasses. Lentils, pistachios, and dates in the Middle East, and rice
and millet and many others in the Far East, were important early. Many students do not know
about some of these plants. (I pass around some dates, red and green lentils, millet that we know
from salad bars and birdseed). Don’t forget plants that are for things other than eating. Cotton
and flax have seeds that give oil and fiber that gives fabric (flax makes linen for mummy
wrappings). Spices, drugs, many other important species are known archaeologically.
What domesticated plants were important in the New World? A major staple was maize, but
before it came along in some areas were domesticated squashes, and manioc in South America.
Many students are unfamiliar with manioc; some of us only see it in tapioca pudding, but we in
Tampa can eat it in Cuban restaurants, where it is called yuca or cassava. It is important to
distinguish it as a root crop from all the seed crops. Seeds can be preserved more easily, but
propagation of manioc by sticking new canes into the ground leaves very little archaeological
evidence.