Customer Reviews

The Foraging Spectrum: Diversity in Hunter-Gatherer Lifeways

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This book was written a decade ago, but nothing has come along yet to replace it. If you were to read a single book on the way that foragers live and have lived, this synthesis of the vast ethnographic literature would be an excellent choice. Kelly is keen to show that foraging peoples are quite diverse, a useful perspective for those of us who tend unconsciously to focus on the traits common to all foragers. By the end of the book, one has some sense of the range of possibilities for foraging societies, and a more sophisticated appreciation of the ways in which our paleolithic ancestors lived.

This book provides a useful historical overview of the hunter-gather literature as well as on the shifts within the anthropological discipline in terms of perspective -- from cataloging foraging groups to the revisionist literature emerging from the post-modern turn in the discipline. It's a great introduction to evolutionary anthropology and diet studies.

are examined very succinctly in this text. Beginning students of hunting and foraging behaviors will realize that the answer to the question "what do we eat?" is not an arbitrary cultural choice, but is instead both measurable and predictable. According to The Foraging Spectrum, such predictions are based on geographical area, climatology, and primary production, to name a few.

A fairly easy read, but dense. Not for a undergraduate student class. A lazy professor who wants to stimulate discussion with their graduate students would like this book.