Horticultural Mode of Production

Horticulture is an ancient life style, first "invented" by cultures in southwest and east Asia by 7-10,000 B.C. The area sometimes referred to as the "fertile crescent", which includes much of the modern southwest Asian countries of Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Iran and Turkey, was where domestication is currently dated as earliest in the world. In general, the "crescent" is the upland area in a crescent-shape around the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, the two large rivers that drain into the Persian Gulf after passing through the length of Iraq. Subsequently horticulture was developed independently in other parts of the world, such as northern China, Mexico, and Columbia/Peru. During the archaeological period called the Neolithic, horticulturists expanded from these centers into many other parts of the world.

For this course, the two major examples of recent horticultural societies are the Yanomamo and the traditional Hmong (as they were in Laos up to and shortly after WW II).

Common Traits

Common characteristics of the horticultural mode of production include the following:

1. Dependency on domesticated plants. Domesticated animals may or may not be present. Horticultural societies have little or no capital or energy investment in irrigation, or drainage systems, draft animals, or specialized implements of cultivation/harvesting. A simple hoe or digging stick, easily manufactured by individual family groups, is the primary agricultural tool; the metal plow is conspicuously absent.

Typical horticultural societies have practiced either swidden (slash and burn) and/or mixed farming to avoid soil depletion. Limited irrigation and/or drainage. Horticultural societies were well-adapted to, and persist in, the poor soils of the tropical rain forests and in other areas unsuitable to continuous intensive agriculture. (For a brief description of swidden in Indonesia, click here. )

Burning prior to planting in northern Thailand

2. Sedentary villages (though in some areas, villages had to move every 10-15 years due to soil depletion)

larger, denser populations; village size typically between 200-500 people
more calories produced per unit area of land than foraging
horticulture lessens the costs of bearing children, since children do much productive labor
as a result, horticulture societies tend to prefer large families
population densities of over 50 people per square mile
larger material inventory than hunters/gatherers and more permanent house structure

3. Horticulturists have less leisure time than foragers, but usually more than either intensive agriculture or industrial mode. Typically, females work harder and longer than males, which is true of all subsequent modes of production.

4. Primarily there is a sex division of labor, usually with more rigid divisions than foragers. There are often at least part-time craft, religious, and other specialists.

5. Inheritance of property, status, land-use rights, etc. now a major concern. Inheritance is related to kinship,and unilineal descent groups are common. Most horticultural societies are patrilineal, although matrilineal descent finds its highest frequency among horticulturists.

6. High concern with ritual and supernatural mechanisms for resolving conflict, although kinship and established kin roles remain important.

7. Villages and households are self-sufficient, and do not rely on trade with outsiders to survive.

Population and Health

8. Population and health

Diets frequently have less protein than those of foragers, and may actually be protein and fat deficient. Horticulturists are usually primarily dependent upon one or two crops, and long periods of famine result if those crops fail.
Contagious diseases are more of a problem, and many such diseases probably evolved when humans became horticulturists. Larger, denser, and more sedentary populations increased sanitation problems, while domestication of grains helped attract rats, mice, and insects which spread many diseases (typhus,malaria and plague, for example.) For "old world" cultures, close proximity to domesticated animals helped introduce new diseases, such as influenza, anthrax, and smallpox. (See article "Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race" (in Unit 1).
Infant mortality, again often due to simple bacterial infections, remains high. Infanticide (particularly female infanticide) and abortion more common.
Males tend to have more prestige than females, and the common preferential treatment of boys and men is associated with higher death rates among girls and women.
Horticulturists often have the belief that women are dangerous, polluting, or weakening to men; taboos around menstruation particularly severe, and other tabus restricting sexual intercourse are common.
The effect of these last two beliefs on population is that girls and women tend to die at a higher rate than boys and men. The result is that by adulthood, there are more males than females in the population, which tends to limit population growth.
Children, however, are generally viewed as economic assets, and large families are desirable. Population expanded rapidly in areas where horticulture started, necessitating migration as the initial response to the threat to the standard of living.

Social/Political Structure

Horticultural societies are politically organized into either tribes, associated with big men, or chiefdoms, associated with chiefs.

9. Tribes

Egalitarian (meaning there was an equal distribution of resources, goods, and authority or power)
Political leaders are called big men, after a literal translation of the term given these men among horticultural New Guinea tribes. Big Men act as redistributive leaders, with goods and resources flowing to them which are subsequently redistributed among the people. They have no true authority, and have no power to enforce any of their requests. Hence they are often highly verbal and charismatic people.
Egalitarian redistributive exchange becomes important; however, reciprocal exchange usually remains the primary method by which resources and goods are distributed in the culture. In any type of redistribute exchange, goods/resources flow into a political center (in this case the big man) who redistributes the goods. In egalitarian redistributive exchange, the result is to maintain a fairly egalitarian culture, and the big man had no more wealth than anyone else in the society.
Big men tend to work harder than others, and achieve prestige by giving away goods; they must lead by persuasion and example, since they have no formal authority. At the end, they may have fewer goods than others. The position is not inherited.
Big men function (etically) to intensify production, encouraging people to work longer and harder for the prestige of their group. The "group" in this case is either a kin group, such as lineage or clan, or the entire village or even tribe. Intensification thus produces more food, allowing the village to maintain its standard of living (for a time) in the face of rising population. The emic reason for working longer and harder is prestige, and big men were probably the first people in the world to discover that people will work longer and harder for prestige.
Redistribution often takes place as part of feasts; feasts are often given for rival big men from rival clans or villages. Groups boast about how much they have given away at their feasts, and in this way gain prestige.
Contributions to the big man are voluntary, though supported by religious beliefs, desire for prestige, cultural ideas of appropriate behavior, fear of shame or ridicule from others, etc.

10. Chiefdoms

Political leaders are chiefs, and usually unite several villages. Chiefdoms tend to be larger than tribes. Chiefs have true authority, and are usually wealthier than others.
Non-egalitarian. Chiefdoms are the first type of society where significant differences of wealth, prestige, and authority exist between groups of people. Usually, the chiefs and immediate supporters are notably better off in terms of material items and food. In terms of social differences, such cultures are often referred to as ranked. Also, chiefs and supporters usually posses certain prestige items which may be reserved for them.
Stratified redistributive exchange important. In stratified redistributive exchange, goods and resources flow into the political center (the chief and his immediate followers) and are then redistributed to the people. However, the political center keeps more for themselves. Stratified redistributive exchange is not only found in chiefdoms, but also in intensive agriculture and industrial modes of production. (Taxes in American culture are a form of stratified redistributive exchange.) Chiefdoms also relied on reciprocal exchange and increasingly, market exchange.
Contributions to the political center are not voluntary, although contributing is supported by religious beliefs and cultural values. By withholding some of the contributions and distributing them only to a select group of followers, chiefs often create a military/police group which will obey the chief. This gives the chief true power and authority, and they can compel others to do their bidding. Such authority is normally reinforced by the religious belief system, which may hold chiefs to be semi-divine or actually gods.
Chiefs often do not labor at food production, or do so only in highly symbolic fashion. The position tends to be inherited. Still, chieftainships must often be validated by waging war, obtaining goods, and favorably rewarding followers via the redistributive system. Usually chieftains are supposed to be generous, even though it is culturally viewed as right that chiefs should have more wealth, power and prestige.
Because of the non-egalitarian nature of chiefdoms, they are usually viewed in anthropology as being transitional to the true political state found in intensive agriculture.

And Finally

11. Warfare tends to be common in horticultural societies, particularly chiefdoms.

Horticulturists have a bigger investment in land and other material goods as compared to foragers; they can not leave as readily if threatened from the outside.
Horticulturists can more easily support men away fighting a war than can foragers, at least for short periods of time.
Some anthropologists have hypothesized that persistent war in horticultural societies may be an "excuse" justifying the higher prestige awarded males in these cultures,hence justifying unequal treatment of women; etically this would be adaptive behavior as it helps limit population growth.
Etically, warfare may also serve to spread population out over relatively scarce resources, such as game or water.
In chiefdoms, rival chiefs often go to war in order to gain resources and goods to reward their own followers, as well as to increase their own wealth, power and prestige.

12. Religious beliefs generally take the magical approach, and religious experts are shamans. As in so many other ways, however, in chiefdoms religious specialists may be the true priests found in intensive agriculture or industrial states.

13. Horticulturists are relatively efficient in preserving resource base; as population sizes grow, however, horticulturists may have major negative ecological effects on local areas. Historically, horticulture as a mode of production spread rapidly from the original centers, primarily by direct migration of peoples. The migrating horticulturists either destroyed or incorporated existing foragers, or pushed them into extremely marginal environments unsuitable for farming. Within 5,000 years of the development of horticulture (by 3-5,000 B.C.), horticulturists were found in all areas of the world suitable for farming by the available technology.