Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T22:21:20.075Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Acorn-eating and ethnographic analogies: a reply to McCorriston

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Sarah L. R. Mason
Sarah L. R. Mason*
Affiliation:
Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H OPY, England
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Joy McCorriston's paper in the March 1994 ANTIQUITY, on acorn-eating and agricultural origins, used California ethnographies as analogues for the ancient Near East. This reply explores some issues of analogy and explanation that go beyond the important specifics of the matter.

Type
Notes
Information
Antiquity , Volume 69 , Issue 266 , December 1995 , pp. 1025 - 1030
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Basgall, M. 1987. Resource intensification among huntergatherers: acorn economies in prehistoric California. Research in Economic Anthropology 9: 21–52.Google Scholar
Baumhoff, M.A. 1963. Ecological determinants of aboriginal California populations. University of California Publications in American Archaeology and Ethnology 49: 155–236.Google Scholar
Bean, L.J. & Lawton, H.W. 1973. Introductory article: some explanations for the rise of cultural complexity in native California with comments on proto-agriculture and agriculture, in Lewis, H.T. (ed.), Patterns of Indian burning in California: ecology and ethnohistory: 5–47. Ramona (CA): Ballena Press.Google Scholar
Bean, L.J. & Saubel, K.S. 1972. Temalpakh (from the earth): Cahuilla Indian knowledge and usage of plants. Banning (CA): Malki Museum Press.Google Scholar
Browicz, K. 1982. Chorology of trees and shrubs in south-west Asia and adjacent regions. Warsaw: Poznán.Google Scholar
Colten, R.H. & Erlandson, J.M. 1991. Perspectives on early hunter-gatherers of the California coast, in Erlandson, J.M. & Colten, R.H. (ed.), Hunter-gatherers of early Holocene coastal California: 133–9. Los Angeles (CA): University of California.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Driver, H.E. 1953. The acorn in North American Indian diet, Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science 62: 56–62.Google Scholar
Feest, C.F. 1978. North Carolina Algonquins, in Trigger (ed.): 271–81.Google Scholar
Fenton, W.N. 1978. Northern Iroquoian culture patterns, in Trigger (ed.): 296–321.Google Scholar
Garrard, A. Baird, D. & Byrd, B.F. 1994. The chronological basis and significance of the Late Paleolithic and Neolithic sequence in the Azraq basin, Jordan, in Bar-Yosef, O. & Kra, R.S. (ed.), Late Quaternary chronology and paleoclimates of the eastern Mediterranean: 177–99. Tucson (AZ): Radiocarbon.Google Scholar
Hammett, J.E. 1991. Ecology of sedentary societies with-out agriculture: paleoethnobotanical indicators from native California. Unpublished Ph.D thesis, University of North Carolina. Chapel Hill (NC).Google Scholar
Heizer, R.F. & Elsasser, A.B. 1980. The natural world of the California Indians. Berkeley (CA): University of California Press.Google Scholar
Helbaek, H. 1964. First impressions of the Çatal Hüyük plant husbandry, Anatolian Studies 14: 121–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Helbaek, H. 1966. Pre-pottery Neolithic farming at Beidha: a preliminary report, Palestine Exploration Quarterly 98: 61–6.Google Scholar
Jones, E.W. 1959. Biological flora of the British Isles: Quercus L., Journal of Ecology 47: 169–222.Google Scholar
Kislev, M.E. 1988. Nahal Hemar cave. Desiccated plant remains: an interim report: Atiqot (English Series) 18: 76–81.Google Scholar
Kislev, M.E. Nadel, D. & Carmi, I. 1992. Epipalaeolithic (19,000 BP) cereal and fruit diet at Ohalo II, Sea of Galilee, Israel, Review of Palaeobotany and Palynology 73: 161–6.Google Scholar
Mason, S.L.R. 1992. Acorns in human subsistence. Unpublished Ph.D thesis, University College London.Google Scholar
Mason, S.L.R. 1995. Acornutopia? Determining the role of acorns in past human subsistence, in Wilkins, J. Harvey, D. & Dobson, M. (ed.), Food in antiquity: 12–24. Exeter: Exeter University Press.Google Scholar
Mason, S.L.R. Hather, J.G. & Hillman, G.C. 1994. Preliminary investigation of the plant macro-remains from Dolní Vestonico II, and its implications for the role of plant foods in Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Europe, Antiquity 68: 48–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mccarthy, H. 1993. Managing oaks and the acorn crop, in Blackburn, T.C. & Anderson, K. (ed.),Before the wilderness: environmental management by native Californians: 213–28. Menlo Park (CA): Ballena Press.Google Scholar
McCorriston, J. 1994. Acorn eating and agricultural origins: California ethnographies as analogies for the ancient Near East, Antiquity 68: 97–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCorriston, J. & Hole, F. 1991. The ecology of seasonal stress and the origins of agriculture in the Near East, American Anthropologist 93: 46–69.Google Scholar
Mellaart, J. 1964. Excavations at Çatal Hüyük, 1963: third preliminary report, Anatolian Studies 14: 39–123.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merriam, C.H. 1918. The acorn, a possibly neglected source of food, National Geographic Magazine 34 (2): 129–37.Google Scholar
Metcalfe, D. & Barlow, K.R. 1992. A model for exploring the optimal tradeoff between field processing and transport. American Anthropologist 94: 340–56.Google Scholar
O’Connell, J.F. & Hawkes, K. 1981. Alyawara plant use and optimal foraging theory, in Winterhalder, B. & Smith, E.A. (ed.), Hunter-gatherer foraging strategies: 99–125. Chicago (IL): University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Parsons, J.J. 1962. The acorn-hog economy of the oak woodlands of southwestern Spain, Geographical Review 52: 211–35.Google Scholar
Reidhead, V.A. 1976. Optimization and food procurement at the prehistoric Leonard Haag site, southeastern Indiana: a linear programming model. Unpublished Ph.D thesis, Department of Anthropology, Indiana University.Google Scholar
Salwen, B. 1978. Indians of southern New England and Long Island: early period, in Trigger (ed.): 160–76.Google Scholar
Simms, S.R. 1987. Behavioural ecology and hunter-gatherer foraging: an example from the Great Basin, Oxford: British Archaeological Reports. International Series 381.Google Scholar
Smith, J.R. 1929. Tree crops: a permanent agriculture New York (NY): Harcourt, Brace.Google Scholar
Swanton, J.R. 1946. The Indians of the Southeastern United States, Bulletin of the Bureau of American Ethnology 137.Google Scholar
Trigger, B.G. (ed.). 1978. Handbook of North American Indians 15. Northeast. Washington (DC): Smithsonian Institution.Google Scholar
Waugh, F.W. 1916. Iroquois foods and food preparation. Ottawa: Canadian Geological Survey. Memoirs of the Canadian Geological Survey 86. Anthropological Series 12.Google Scholar
Wolf, C.B. 1945. California wild tree crops: their crop production and possible utilization. Santa Ana Cañon (CA): Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden.Google Scholar
Wright, K. 1991. The origins and development of ground stone assemblages in Late Pleistocene Southwest Asia, Paléorient. 17 (1): 19–45.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, K. 1994. Ground-stone tools and hunter-gatherer subsistence in Southwest Asia: implications for the transition to farming, American Antiquity. 59 (2): 238–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar