The document discusses Hadza forager women in Tanzania and their subsistence patterns of food collecting. It explains that foraging, also called hunting and gathering, was the dominant human subsistence strategy for most of our history. Foragers live in small, mobile groups at low population densities in order to sustainably collect wild foods from their environment based on its carrying capacity. While foraging is now a minority subsistence practice, examples are given of historically known foragers like the Ju/’hoansi in southern Africa and the Inuit in Arctic regions who have adapted their strategies based on environmental conditions.

1. Hadza Forager Women, Tanzania
Subsistence Patterns:
Food Collectors

2. Subsistence
• Subsistence Strategy:
– Also called “Mode of Production”
– The dominant way a culture gets its food
– In practice, many cultures use mixed
strategies

3. Major Strategies
• Food Collecting:
– Foraging (also called Hunting-Gathering)
• Food Production:
– Domesticated Plants (Agriculture),
Domesticated Animals (Pastoralism)

4. Adaptation
• Humans adapt to their environments
• Cultural Ecology
– Adapt through culture (learned behaviors,
invented tools)
– Adapt through biology (long-term physical
changes reflecting environmental conditions,
e.g. more or less melanin in skin based on
amount of ultra-violet rays from the sun)

5. Environment and Subsistence
• Subsistence:
– Practices are affected by environment, culture
and technology
• Carrying Capacity:
– The capacity of a given region to support a
society of people, given a particular
subsistence practice
– Increasing investments in environment (e.g.
planting crops, use of fertilizer, technology)
leads to a rise in carrying capacity

6. Environment and Subsistence
• Optimal Foraging Theory:
– States that foragers (food collectors) maximize
caloric intake versus energy output
– Based on presumption of rational decision-
making
• Environment limits possibilities, but does
not dictate practices
– Variation in practices seen in similar
environments
– Variation in what is considered “food”

7. Foragers
• Subsistence strategy using food occurring
in nature
– “Hunting and gathering”
– Main strategy for most of human history
– Shift away from foraging occurred during the
Neolithic Revolution
• c. 10,000 years ago
• Emergence of domesticated foods
– Less than 1/4 million foragers today

8. Foragers: Characteristics
• Low population densities, live in small groups
– Live in balance with resources
– Necessary for strategy to be sustainable
• Often nomadic/semi-nomadic
– Must travel to where resources are available
– No formal property ownership
• Basic social institution is the family or band
– Group formation is dynamic, fluid
– Groups can break apart and reform if necessary
• Now live in marginalized environments
– Resource-rich environments now used by other people

9. Historically Known Foragers

10. Foragers: The Ju/’hoansi
• Live in Kalahari desert of Africa
• Frequent nomads, must move
many times a year to access
resources
• Environmental knowledge and
access to land is key to survival
• In temperate regions like this,
women’s work (plant-based
calories) contributes more to
overall diet
• Now becoming sedentary due to
government policies

11. Foragers: The Inuit
• Circumpolar regions:
Arctic and sub arctic
• Semi-nomadic,
move less frequently
based on harsh
landscape
• Rely heavily on
hunting and fishing
to make a living
• Few plants available

12. Foragers: Summary
• Today’s foragers live in sub-optimal
environments for their lifestyle; optimal
environments now occupied by others
• Temperate region foragers (like Ju/’hoansi) have
less division of labor overall
– men and women can each do most tasks on their own,
except men responsible for large game hunting
• Circumpolar region foragers (like Inuit) have
sharper division of labor between males and
females
– males hunt/fish, women process all of the food back at
camp