The Foraging Spectrum

The author wrote this book to show his archaeology students how dangerous anthropological analogy is and how variable the actual practices of foragers of the recent past and today are. By considering the actual—not imagined—reasons behind diverse behaviour, this book argues for a revision of many archaeological models of prehistory.

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The author wrote this book (which was originally published by Smithsonian Institution Press in 1995) to show his archaeology students how dangerous anthropological analogy is and how variable the actual practices of foragers of the recent past and today are. His survey of the anthropological literature points to differences in foraging societies’ patterns of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, exchange, gender relations, division of labor, marriage, descent, and political organization. By considering the actual—not imagined—reasons behind diverse behaviour, this book argues for a revision of many archaeological models of prehistory.