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109
VI/1/2015
INTERDISCIPLINARIA ARCHAEOLOGICA
NATURAL SCIENCES IN ARCHAEOLOGY
homepage: http://www.iansa.eu
Book reviews
Volume VI ● Issue 1/2015 ● Pages 109–110
The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology
and Anthropology of Hunter-Gatherers.
Vicki Cummings, Peter Jordan, Marek
Zvelebil (Eds.).
Oxford University Press (April 24, 2014),
Oxford, UK, 1 360 pp., 123 illustrations,
ISBN: 9780199551224. £ 125 (hardcover).
Part I (
Theoretical Frameworks
) deals
with the concept of hunting and gathering
societies, mainly in terms of its evolution,
development, cultural and historical context,
as well as its current position in the scientifc
community (A. Barnard; M. Pluciennik;
A. Cannon). Presented within this scope
are some highly-discussed adaptive
approaches that emphasise the importance
of considering the social variables along
with the environmental ones (R. Garvey and
R. Bettinger). The last two chapters in this
part are devoted to valuable methodological
issues, namely ethnoarchaeological
investigations (P. Jane) and the impact of
gender studies on hunter-gatherer research
(K. Sterling).
Part II (
The Earliest Hunter-Gatherers
)
concentrates on the notion of foraging
itself with respect to early human evolution
(J. Robinson). This part concerns the
Neanderthals (J. Zilhão) and early modern
humans from the perspective of evolution
and extinction along with tracing their
biological and social traits. Much work
has been done in this area and the nine
subsequent chapters provide a critical up-
to-date and very valuable overview of
these processes taking place in various
areas involving: Africa (K. Kuykendall and
I. Heyerdahl-King); Asia (O. Bar-Yosef;
A. Derevianko, S. Markin and A. Tabarev;
M. Petraglia and N. Boivin; S. O’Connor
and D. Bulbeck); Europe (P. Pettit);
Australia (I. Davidson); and the Americas
(M. Kornfeld and G. Politis).
Part III (
Post-Glacial Colonisations
and Transformations
) looks at the post-
glacial epoch as a period characterised
by key environmental changes and the
human responses to them. To this end,
this part of the handbook outlines major
transformations and developments taking
place in the Mesolithic in areas of lower
latitude such as Africa (A. Smith) and
Asia (A. Moore; R. Rabett and S. Jones;
J. Habu), as well as in colder European
zones (J. Svoboda; G. Warren; F. Riede). As
the introductory chapter by V. Cummings
explains, a study into hunter-gatherers
in the post-glacial world has long been
a topic that is rather problematic to grasp
and deal with. As a consequence, several
remaining key issues for future research
in this period are stressed, including: more
detailed information on environmental and
cultural variability, along with a call for a
new integrative mode of thinking in order
to fully understand humans in the post-
glacial period in a broader sense.
Part IV (
Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherer
Innovations
) aims to highlight the fact that
hunter-gatherers should be perceived as
active beings having an intrinsic capacity
for change and innovation, as opposed
to the traditional view of pre-agricultural
societies being passive recipients of external
infuences. Technological innovations in
material culture (S. Kuhn and A. Clark;
P. Hommel), artistic skills (J. Lewis-
Williams), the emergence of coastal
economies (C. Wickham-Jones), structured
and symbolic mortuary practices (L. Nilsson
Stutz) and the presence of more complex
societies in terms of transformations of
social relations (B. Hayden) represent some
of the key issues discussed in this light.
These are accompanied by other chapters
dealing with the active management
and domestication of plants and animals
(D. Harris; A. Outram), emphasizing its
roots among prehistoric hunter-gatherers.
Although much work on hunter-gatherers
engaged in individual innovations has
already been published, the key element
stressed by the editors here is the “agency”
of hunter-gatherers leading to new patterns
of behaviour in more general terms.
Part V (
The Persistence of Hunting and
Gathering amongst Farmers in Prehistory
and Beyond
) goes on to consider the issues
surrounding the emergence and spread of
farming from the perspective of prehistoric
hunter-gatherers. In this part, contributors
discuss the process of Neolithisation in
various European regions (D. Gronenborn;
D. Raemaekers; V. Cummings and
O. Harris; C. Damm and L. Forsberg) on the
one hand, and forager-farmer interactions
in south-east Asia (H. Barton) and North
America (K. Spielmann) on the other.
The core of this part lies in the contrasting
This huge handbook focuses on the
phenomenon of hunter-gatherers from the
perspective of two disciplines, namely
archaeology and anthropology. The
volume under review here is written by
a distinguished group of internationally-
recognised researchers under the leadership
of Vicki Cummings (Reader in Archaeology
at the University of Central Lancashire),
Peter Jordan (Director of the Arctic Centre
at the University of Groningen) and Marek
Zvelebil (deceased Professor of European
Prehistory at the University of Sheffeld).
The book is a complex piece of work
providing a detailed critical review of
several present-day investigations that
vary both in their scope and approach. The
61 essays are well-organized into seven
thematic sections, comprised of individual
chapters that cover specifc issues and case
studies from around the world.
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IANSA 2015 ● VI/1 ● 109–110
Book Reviews
110
views of the process – referring directly to
older models based on migration and the
diffusion of ideas in the European chapters,
as opposed to other world regions, where
the spread of farming is seen relatively
variable with no clear dichotomy between
foragers and farmers, as pointed out by
V. Cumming in this part’s introduction.
She also emphasizes a need for focusing on
regional variability and constructing new
frames of references for understanding the
transition to farming in European regions.
Part VI (
The Ethnohistory and
Anthropology of “Modern” Hunter-
Gatherers
) fnally leads to the anthropological
understanding of the ethnographically-
documented contemporary hunter-gatherers.
The opening chapter by P. Jordan is
extremely useful, discussing the role of
historical and political circumstances that
have impacted on the directions of hunter-
gatherer research – and presenting some
general research trends including the shift
from a comparative perspective the study
of typical features of all hunter-gatherer
societies to the investigation of more local
patterns of forager subsistence, social
life, or ideology. The following chapters
present case studies and discussions from
various world areas, such as the traditional
study regions of Africa (R. Hitchcock;
B. Hewlett and J. Fancher), Australia
(I. Keen), the Great Basin and California
(D. Robinson) and the Pacifc Northwest
Coast (S. O’Neill), along with the rather
newly-investigated regions of South-East
Asia (J. Fortier), South America (G. Politis
and A. Hernando), or northern Euroasia
(M. Hudson; J.-P. Taavitsainen). Much
welcome is that the authors have avoided
a descriptive approach characterizing
individual societies as known from earlier
works (
e.g.
Lee, Daly 1999). Instead they
consider regional research histories, the
specifcs of individual hunter-gatherer
societies, and last, but not least, future
research directions.
Part VII (
Future Directions in Hunter-
Gatherer Research
) completes the
handbook by giving many theoretical
and methodological developments and
future opportunities in the study of hunter-
gatherers – ranging from adaptive and
evolutionary approaches, such as the study
of technological issues (R. Kelly) or the
application of cultural transmission theory
(J. Eerkens, R. Bettinger and P. Richerson)
and archaeogenetic research (V. Černý
and L. Pereira), through to some new
interpretative themes like the study of hunter-
gatherer mobility (B. David, L. Lamb and
J. Kaiwari), the advancing investigation into
social relations and personhood (N. Finlay),
or material studies (H. Cobb) and religion
and rituality (D. Whitley), to integrative
research perspectives including gender
studies (R. Jarvenpa and H. Brumbach)
and subsistence strategies (R. Schulting).
The editors in the introductory chapter
rightly point out that: although hunter-
gatherer research into the archaeology and
anthropology of hunters and gatherers has
undergone dramatic changes over the last
decades, current research is revealing an
enormous diversity that integrates a whole
range of new methods, approaches and
research areas, and on which future research
should be developed.
The book is characterised by a general
effort to critically overview and discuss the
central themes and debates at the heart of
this interest and outline some of the most
essential directions for future research in
the feld of hunter-gatherer societies. The
layout of the chapters is appropriate with
very useful introductory pages in each
part; the bibliography is a representative
picture of what has been done concerning
this topic. Despite the fact that some issues
have already been discussed elsewhere (
e.g.
Bailey, Spikins eds. 2008), the handbook
is, without doubt, extremely valuable –
particularly in terms of its interdisciplinary
approach. In this regard, especially the
traditional labels of timelessness, uniformity
and universal simplicity of hunter-gatherer
populations have been severely challenged.
This book covers a lot of issues and,
because of this, suffers from not being able
to deal with some subjects in more detail.
On the other hand, the volume completely
fulfls its intent and will certainly serve as
an important milestone in the development
of hunter-gatherer studies for students,
teachers, researchers and others having an
interest within this broad feld. This set of
papers will thus surely become a standard
work of reference for years to come.
References
BAILEY, G., SPIKINS, P. (Eds.) 2008:
Mesolithic Europe.
Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
LEE, R. B., DALY, R. H. (Eds.) 1999:
The
Cambridge encyclopedia of hunters and
gatherers.
Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Michaela Divišová