Complex Hunter-Gatherers

This topic studies foraging societies that developed sedentism, storage, social inequality, and dense populations without farming, challenging the idea that complexity requires agriculture.

Definition

The study of foraging societies exhibiting traits such as sedentism, food storage, social ranking, and high population density that were once associated only with farming communities.

Scope

It examines the archaeological and ethnographic evidence for hunter-gatherers who departed from the small, mobile, egalitarian band model—societies such as those of the Pacific Northwest Coast, the Jomon of Japan, and parts of Mesolithic Europe. The topic addresses the conditions, often rich and predictable resources, that allowed storage, sedentism, status differentiation, and monument building among non-agricultural peoples.

Core questions

• What conditions allow hunter-gatherers to become sedentary and socially complex?
• How does social inequality arise without agriculture?
• What role does resource abundance and storage play in forager complexity?
• How does the foraging spectrum vary across environments and societies?

Key theories

Emergence of cultural complexity among foragers

The argument, developed by Price and Brown, that social and economic complexity can develop among hunter-gatherers under conditions of resource abundance and storage, decoupling complexity from the adoption of farming.

The foraging spectrum

Robert Kelly's framework that hunter-gatherer societies vary continuously along dimensions such as mobility, storage, and territoriality in response to environmental and social variables rather than forming a single type.

History

The recognition of complex hunter-gatherers grew from dissatisfaction with the egalitarian band model popularized at the Man the Hunter conference in 1966. Studies of the Northwest Coast, Jomon Japan, and rich Mesolithic sites in the 1980s, especially the Price and Brown volume, established that sedentism, storage, and inequality could develop among foragers, reshaping theories of social evolution.

Debates

Origins of social inequality

Researchers debate whether inequality among complex foragers arises mainly from ecological abundance and storage, from competitive feasting and aggrandizing individuals, or from demographic circumscription, with implications for explaining later state formation.

Key figures

• T. Douglas Price
• James A. Brown
• Robert L. Kelly
• Brian Hayden

Seminal works

• price1985
• kelly2013

Frequently asked questions

Can hunter-gatherers be socially complex?

Yes. Some foraging societies developed sedentary villages, food storage, hereditary status, and even monuments without farming, especially where resources were abundant and predictable.

Which societies are classic examples?

The peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast of North America and the Jomon of prehistoric Japan are often cited, along with certain resource-rich Mesolithic communities in Europe.