Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands


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Series: Ideas, Debates, and Perspectives 5
ISBN: 978-1-931745-64-2
Publication Date: Feb 2011
Price: Hb $40.00, Pb $25.00, Ebook $20.00
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Robert Whallon, William A. Lovis, and Robert Hitchcock

Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands explores the question of how information, broadly conceived, is acquired, stored, circulated, and utilized in small-scale hunter-gatherer societies, or bands. Given the nature of this question, the volume brings together a group of scholars from multiple disciplines, including archaeology, ethnography, linguistics, and evolutionary ecology. Each of these specialties deals with the question of information in different ways and with different sets of data given different primacy. The fundamental goal of the volume is to bridge disciplines and subdisciplines, open discussion, and see if some common ground-either theoretical perspectives, general principles, or methodologies-can be developed upon which to build future research on the role of information in hunter-gatherer bands.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Information and Its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands by Robert Whallon          
Chapter 2. Yupik Eskimo Gendered Information Storage Patterns by Caroline Funk                 
Chapter 3. Space, Information and Knowledge: Ethnocartography and North American Boreal Forest Hunter-Gatherers by William A. Lovis and Randolph E. Donahue              
Chapter 4. Modeling Hunter-Gatherer Information Networks: An Archaeological Case Study from the Kuril Islands by Ben Fitzhugh, S. Colby Phillips, and Erik Gjesfjeld               
Chapter 5. Environmental Knowledge Among Central African Hunter-Gatherers: Types of Knowledge and Intra-cultural Variations by Mitsuo Ichikawa, Shiho Hattori, and Hirokazu Yasuoka
Chapter 6. Where is That Job? Hunter-Gatherer Information Systems in Complex Social Environments in the Eastern Kalahari Desert, Botswana by Robert K. Hitchcock and James I. Ebert      
Chapter 7. Borrowed Names and Indexical Function in the Northern Uto-Aztecan Botanical Lexicon by Jane H. Hill                
Chapter 8. Rite, Ritual and Materiality of Information in Mesolithic Europe by Marek Zvelebil         
Chapter 9. The Role of Information Exchange in the Colonization of Sahul by Peter Veth, Nicola Stern, Jo McDonald, Jane Balme, and Lain Davidson               
Chapter 10. Information Exchange Amongst Hunter-Gatherers of the Western Desert of Australia by Jo McDonald and Peter Veth
Chapter 11. Rock Art Information among Hunter-Gatherers in Northwest Patagonia: An Assessment of Environmental and Territorial Models by Vivian Scheinsohn         
Chapter 12. Visits, “Fuegians” and Information Networks by Luis Alberto Borrero, Fabiana María Martin, andRamiro Barberena       
Chapter 13. Foraging for Information among Foragers—An Afterword by H. Martin Wobst    
Chapter 14. A Synopsis of Information and its Role in Hunter-Gatherer Bands by Robert Whallon and William A. Lovis