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Some Explanations for the Rise of Cultural Complexity (15 pages)
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Page: of 15
Prenecprred
SOME EXPLANATIONS FOR THE RISE
OF CULTURAL COMPLEXITY IN
NATIVE CALIFORNIA WITH COMMENTS
ON PROTO-AGRICULTURE
AND AGRICULTURE’
Lowell John Bean and Harry W. Lawton
INTRODUCTION
Current anthropological interest in hunter-gatherer ecology and
research findings on hunters and gatherers in marginal-subsistence
environments of Australia, South Africa, and the Great Basin of the United
States have brought renewed attention to the California Indians. Anthropologists are finally coming to a realization that cultural development in
California was extraordinarily rich and complex despite what would appear
to have been the limitations of the native economic system.
Henry Lewis’s paper (1973, and this volume) on burning patterns
in northern California represents an extremely important new contribution
to our knowledge of California’s hunting and gathering economy. Lewis
has employed a systems approach to present the first geographically broad
and ecologically oriented demonstration of a primary means of environmental manipulation used by northern California Indian groups to increase
plant and animal resources. In fact, it seems probable in view of Lewis’s
findings that burning was the most significant environmental manipulation
employed by California Indians. A new understanding of the role of
native burning, coupled with our knowledge of other aspects of hunting and
gathering in California, makes it now possible we believe to provide a
more adequate explanation than previously presented for the failure of
agriculture to spread across the state prior to Et :
Until the twentieth century, the problem of why agriculture did not
become established in California was never really dealt with except in
terms of aboriginal lassitude or deficient intelligence. Any survey of
* This paper was originally published in Ballena Press Anthropological Papers 1,
1973. It is reprinted here with only minor corrections.
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