Overview

In this book, Robert L. Kelly challenges the preconceptions that hunter-gatherers were Paleolithic relics living in a raw state of nature, instead crafting a position that emphasizes their diversity, and downplays attempts to model the original foraging lifeway or to use foragers to depict human nature stripped to its core. Kelly reviews the anthropological literature for variation among living foragers in terms of diet, mobility, sharing, land tenure, technology, exchange, male-female relations, division of labor, marriage, descent and political organization. Using the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, he analyzes the diversity in these areas and seeks to explain rather than explain away variability, and argues for an approach to prehistory that uses archaeological data to test theory rather than one that uses ethnographic analogy to reconstruct the past.

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9781107024878

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Reviews

Advance Praise: Robert Kelly's book is a lodestone for hunter-gatherer studies, and this revised edition ensures that it will remain so for years to come. All of us who study hunter-gatherer societies, from undergraduates to seasoned researchers, will benefit from reading it. - Eric Alden Smith, University of Washington This revision, like the original Foraging Spectrum, is an extraordinary anthropological work. Its global comparative scope, theoretical detail, empathy toward foraging peoples, and accessibility for all readers make this volume totally unique. Not only is this the authoritative reference on hunter-gatherer socioecology, it is also a delight to read. - Bram Tucker, University of Georgia Ever the myth-buster, Kelly targets simplistic views of foragers as the 'people whom time forgot.' Crafted within the paradigm of human behavioral ecology, this fresh edition privileges diversity and foregrounds the newest thinking on technology, demography, sharing practices, reproductive ecology, and the development of inequality. Retaining the unique fusion of empirical and theoretical, this timely update makes The Lifeways of Hunter-Gatherers the best single source on hunter-gatherer behaviors, past and present. - David Hurst Thomas, American Museum of Natural History

'Using Latin America as a case study, Kaplan clearly explains the interplay between economics and politics in the international arena … A thoroughly analytical work with the potential to transform thinking about globalization and austerity measures worldwide. Summing up: highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, research, and professional collections.' L. O. Imade, Choice

Author Information

Robert L. Kelly is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. He has served as department head and as director of the Frison Institute. He is a past president of the Society for American Archaeology and a past secretary of the Archaeology Division of the American Anthropological Association. He has authored more than one hundred articles, books and reviews, including two of the most widely used archaeology college textbooks. He is internationally recognized as an expert in the ethnology and archaeology of hunting and gathering peoples. In the past forty years, he has worked on research projects throughout the western United States and Madagascar, and has lectured in Europe, Asia and South America. He is currently researching caves and high altitude adaptations in Wyoming, and the archaeology of ice patches in Glacier National Park, Montana.

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