[Sca-cooks] pre-Columbian foods

[Edouard de Bruyerecourt]

[slipping on my anthropological pith helmet...]

Martin G. Diehl wrote:

>What if it was a 5,000 to 6,000 year trip to the the Orkneys 
>at a time when the neolithic standing stone monuments were 
>being erected?  
>
>I'd like to know how much of the daylight hours were 
>needed for food production in those distant times.  
>
Generally, anthropolical studies of hunter-gather cultures show that it 
takes about 20 hours of labour per adult per week to provide for the 
nessessary needs, including clothing and shelter. Pastoral and agarian 
cultures become increasingly more labour intensive.

Now it might be argued that subsistance farming in someplace like the 
Orkneys would take more time, but it could just as easily be argued that 
at this time, the farming was being used as a supplement to the fishing. 
The farming may have been initially a heavily managed 'gathering' rather 
than trust to the weather on a small place like an island.

Assuming that the farming and fishing don't take up all your available 
daylight hours, what is there really to do besides repair the stone 
walls to your house, or your tools? I really don't get the sense that a 
cooperative event like building a stone monument over time might 
seriously impact subsistance. If you consider that the monument might 
have some religious purpose, with the intent of gaining better weather 
and better harvests/fishing, then the time spent in building it _is_ 
time spent in subsistence activities. And given the limited resources 
and 'another place to go', any large scale activity that reinforces 
community cooperation helps out in the long run. (The !Kung, who pretty 
much have most of the Kalahari dessert to wander off into, solve social 
conflicts and low harvest by breaking off into smaller groups that 
wander off in different directions: a little harder to do on an island.)

The Native Americans of the Great Plains developed a rich decorative 
arts, given the time spent in camp not doing subsistance work. The 
Northern Plains had more bead and quill work, requiring more time, since 
they had more free time during the winter months, with the Southern 
Plains had more bright colours, since they were on the move more often 
and had less time for detail work. Admittedly, these were not 
subsistance farmers also building stone monuments.

>As an example, 
>
>    "It's believed to have taken as many as 200,000 
>    [man] hours to build both the Brodgar ring and 
>    the Standing Stones of Stenness, another nearby 
>    ring of stones."
>
>>From http://www.herald.ns.ca/stories/2002/09/14/f160.raw.html
>
>If those 200,000 man hours came out of the food economy 
>... how were those man hours replaced? 
>
Mathwise, if would take 325 men (or just adults) about two years to 
contribute 200k 'man' hours if they just provided an hour a day, six 
days a week.

If the workers only provided four hours a week (a half day once a week), 
it would take a 1000 workers one year, 500 worker for two years, 250 
workers for four years, etc.

I don't see 200,000 working hours as that big a dent in a susbsistance 
economy, unless one assumes it happened all at one. I doubt Brodgar and 
Stenness were built all at once in the same year. Given their 
appearance, each stone might represent a single event (special occasion) 
or an annual project. The work could be spread over a hundred year 
period, and at 6000 years ago, it's not going to be easy to detirmine 
that from the record.

The modern US 40-hour 'work week' is 2080 hours a year. Meaning it would 
take 100 of us working full time just under a year to do the job.

Something I've noted over time is modern Western world humans tend to 
grossly underestimate the skill, physical and mental abilites, and 
mental ingenuity of 'primative' societies. One of my more or less 
humourous memories is camping with a bunch of university archaeology 
students who are at a loss if they don't have the right modern tool. Or 
wander around camp for ten minutes looking for the ax/hatchet to pound 
in a stake that I hammered in ten seconds later with a river cobble I 
found five feet away. These are the same people who are studying and 
trying to recreate a lifestyle with less tools than they currently have.

Now, my ending moral with food context is that the medieval cook, unless 
they are attempting to do their master proud by impressing sophisticated 
guests, are going to find and adapt the most simple and efficient way of 
cooking _anything_.  Efficient as in less work and using the most of the 
resources at hand. One example might be that boiling a fowl doesn't 
require quite the tending and rotating that roasting over a fire might 
(again, that feast exception), and is easier to debone than carving. 
Plus you have the begining of a stock or sauce already in the pot.

-- 
Edouard, Sire de Bruyerecourt
bruyere at jeffnet.org
================================================================
"Good people do not need laws to tell them to act responsibly, 
while bad people will find a way around the laws." 
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)