Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-27T02:31:53.874Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Demography of Finite Populations and the Origins of the Incest Taboo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2018

H. Martin Wobst
H. Martin Wobst*
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the Last Ten Years we have acquired a much better understanding of Band Society—the socio-cultural system that characterizes the behavior of most hunter-gatherers (Lee and DeVore 1968; Sahlins 1972; Williams 1974). The same decade has also added considerable detail to explanations of the evolution of Band Society into more complex socio-cultural systems (Binford 1968; Flannery 1968, 1969). Compared to its steady state and its demise, the origins of Band Society have received much less attention. This lack of concern is particularly perplexing given the rapid accumulation of paleoanthropological and archaeological data on human origins in the sixties and early seventies. In order to stimulate discussion in this area of anthropological research, this paper deals with the origins of one subsystem of band society—the mating strategies. The research reported here focuses on the effect of mating strategies and population size on age specific fertilities and on their potential role in the origins of the incest taboo.

Three areas of hunter-gatherer demography are immediately relevant to Band Society origins: population density, mating network, and population growth. Ethnographically studied huntergatherers characteristically live at population densities below one person per square kilometer (Sanders and Price 1968), the population which exchanges mates is usually not much larger than 500 (Birdsell 1968; Wobst 1974), and band societies generally show intrinsic rates of growth near zero (Weiss 1973). There is nothing in the archaeological record to suggest that prehistoric hunter-gatherers, on the average, had greater population densities, larger mating networks, or more rapid growth rates. If these factors were already operative during the Pleistocene, we can ask ourselves how they would have affected demographic processes earlier in human evolution.

Type
Research Article
Information
Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology , Volume 30: Population Studies in Archaeology and Biological Anthropology: A Symposium , 1975 , pp. 75 - 81
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1975

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

Binford, Lewis R., 1968 Post-Pleistocene adaptations. In New perspectives in archaeology|edited by Sally, R. and Binford, Lewis R., pp. 313–341. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Birdsell, J. B. 1968 Some predictions for the Pleistocene based on equilibrium systems among recent hunter-gatherers. In Man the hunter, edited by Lee, R. B. and DeVore, I., pp. 229–240. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Dyke, Bennett, and MacCluer, Jean W. (Editors) 1973 Computer simulation in human population studies. Academic Press, New York.Google Scholar
Flannery, Kent V. 1968 Archaeological systems theory and early Mesoamerica. In Anthropological archaeology of the Americas, edited by Meggers, Betty J., pp. 67–87. Anthropological Society of Washington, Washington. DC.Google Scholar
Flannery, Kent V. 1969 Origins and ecological effects of early domestication in Iran and the Near East. In The domestication and exploitation of plants and animals, edited by Ucko, Peter J. and Dimbleby, George, pp. 73–100. Duckworth, London.Google Scholar
Isaac, Glynn 1971 The diet of early man. World Archaeology 2:278–299.Google Scholar
Lee, Richard B., and DeVore, Irven (Editors) 1968 Man the hunter. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Mann, Alan E. 1968 The paleodemography of Australopithecus. Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Sahlins, Marshall 1972 Stone age economics. Aldine, Chicago.Google Scholar
Sanders, William T., and Price, Barbara J. 1968 Mesoamerica. Random House, New York.Google Scholar
Weiss, Kenneth M. 1973 Demographic models for anthropology. Society for American Anthropology, Memoirs 27.Google Scholar
Williams, Bobby Jo 1974 A model of band society. Society for American Archaeology', Memoirs 29.Google Scholar
Wobst, H. Martin 1971 Boundary conditions for Paleolithic cultural systems: a simulation approach. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Google Scholar
Wobst, H. Martin 1974 Boundary conditions for Paleolithic social systems: a simulation approach. American Antiquity 39:147–178.Google Scholar