The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers

by Richard B. Lee (Editor), Richard Daly (Editor)

Hunting and gathering peoples, including Kalahari Bushmen, Australian aborigines, Eskimos, and Pygmies, are the subject of endless appeal. This illustrated reference volume is the first devoted exclusively to hunting and gathering peoples that is both accessible to the nonspecialist and written by leading scholars. It is a state-of-the-art summary of knowledge on the subject, covering an extraordinary range of materials: case studies of over fifty of the world's hunter-gatherers, the archaeological background, religion and world view, music and art, questions of gender, health and nutrition, and contemporary rights.

Genres: Anthropology, History, Archaeology, Reference

531 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Anthropologist

Reviews

[Private Account · Rating 5 out of 5]

EVERYTHING YOU THINK YOU KNOW ABOUT HUNTERS AND GATHERERS IS WRONG! This book is fascinating. So much more interesting than I thought it would be. I had no idea there were so many hunter gathers left in the world, or how differently they think about the world or how differently they behave or how hard it has been to force them to settle down. I had no idea that their groups were not tightly bound but rather loose, that they (for the most part) had no chiefs or authority figures until we came in and gave them religion or appointed a member of their tribe as the chief but that even then they don't "obey" anyone. They have no concept of what it means to "do as you are told" or to "do what you don't want to do". This is why Native Americans could not be turned into slaves. I had no idea that even today, governments around the world pay lip-service to allowing them to govern themselves while really doing fancy things to "school" their children with the age old idea that if you take over the raising of the children, you can assimilate the cultures that resist assimilation.

[Lee Broderick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a superb collection of papers; the book deserves to be on the shelf of any researcher interested in the area of study. Despite what the "encyclopedia" label may imply though, it's probably of less use to the interested layman: not really providing a general overview or introduction to the subject.

It does, however, have some fantastic photographs spread throughout the volume, congruent with it's coffee-table size. As such, it's similar in conception to the much earlier Cambridge Encyclopedia of Archaeology.

[xDEAD ENDx · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first three quarters of this encyclopedia is more of the encyclopedic aspect, with various hunter-gatherer (and unfortunately, former h-g and horticulturists) tribes and their history, ecology, economy, kinship, religious practices, politics, current situation, and resistance. The structure is awfully repetitive and there's so much similarity in content that it becomes hard for any of the tribal groups to stand out.

The last quarter of this collection picks up, where there is social commentary on h-g groups. With topics ranging from art and music to diet, gender roles, and cosmology, there's a lot here to support the lifeways of hunter-gatherers.

I imagine there is some use of this book as a reference, but the ethnographic information is so summary (or maybe more lacking conclusion) that I struggle to discern if there are any tribal groups I have a strong preference towards learning about in more depth.

[Valentín Serrano García · Rating 4 out of 5]

(3,5/5)
Very good, partly because it is difficult to find a well researched collection of essays like those of this book. Specially when it provides dozens of studies on particular cultures on each continent.
It has enough information of all of those tribes depicted, although sometimes the way it is shaped sounds repetitive.

Having said that, I find two serious weaknesses in this volume:
-It is too attacched to the myth of primitive harmony (too much Sahlins). There is some cherry-picking. Every one of this cultures seems to be perfect, and if problems have been found it is due to western contamination (there is much truth within this statement, of course, but...). [To counterweight this bias, I suggest you to read "Sick societies" Roger Edgerton]
-It is committed to defend this cultures from extinction (that's ok), but does so concealing (sometimes) that those hunting-gathering activities have been abandoned time ago. Or they just remain as a touristic atraction.

To be fair it must be acknowledged that the book is dated, cos it was published in 1999. Many of the articles date from the eighties...

[Mina Wagner · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have not read all of this book; it is not that kind of book. It contains anthropological articles on groups of hunter-gatherers from all over the world, and I read the relevant (very interesting) ones for the term paper I was writing.
But at the end of the book, unexpected bonuses of articles on topics relevant to hunter-gatherers in general, which were very interesting. Especially "Hunter-gatherers and human health" by S Boyd Eaton and Stanley B. Eaton III, which I had time to explore a little of for the term paper. Also "Hunter-gatherers and the myth of the marketplace", which uses traditional societies to disprove the universality assumed by standard economists for their "economic man" construction, which claims all humans are primarily motivated by greed. Several other topics too, including visual arts and gender relationships.
Recommended.