The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory: Why did Foragers become Farmers?

by Graeme Barker

The Agricultural Revolution in Prehistory addresses one of the most debated and least understood revolutions in the history of our species, the change from hunting and gathering to farming. Graeme Barker takes a global view, and integrates a massive array of information from archaeology and many other disciplines, including anthropology, botany, climatology, genetics, linguistics, and zoology. Against current orthodoxy, Barker develops a strong case for the development of agricultural systems in many areas as transformations in the life-ways of the indigenous forager societies, and argues that these were as much changes in social norms and ideologies as in ways of obtaining food. With a large number of helpful line drawings and photographs as well as a comprehensive bibliography, this authoritative study will appeal to a wide general readership as well as to specialists in a variety of fields.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Prehistory, Archaeology, Anthropology, Agriculture

598 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 1, 2006

About the author

Graeme Barker is Disney Professor of Archaeology at the University of Cambridge and Director of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. His research focuses on the relationships between past human societies and their environments and how they have transformed each other. He has worked in many different ecologies and with societies at different levels of complexity from the emergence of our species to Roman farmers and, currently in Borneo, present-day rainforest farmers and foragers.

Reviews

[Beto Durón · Rating 4 out of 5]

The implications agriculture has had on our world since its inception are fascinating. Understanding the reasons why foragers and hunters transitioned to agriculture provides valuable insights to our day to day lives and our future. This book does an outstanding job at outlining all the possible factors on why humanity transitioned to agriculture. This is an extremely well researched and highly academic book.

I read this in hopes of finding what drove the agricultural revolution in detail. This book does that and more as the author takes a deep dive into different geographical regions where foragers transitioned to agriculture. The book provides a well-defined and scientific overview of foragers and hunters. The book also does a great job at giving an overview of approaches utilized by researchers to come to conclusions as it relates to findings in the field.

The reason I gave the book four and not five stars is because throughout the book, the author throws out a bunch of facts and data. However, he fails to give the reader more information and provide more commentary from a non-science / anthropology standpoint of what it all means. As I read the chapters on the different geographical regions, I felt the author could have done a much better job at providing a bigger story to bring everything together. I found the conclusions at the end of every chapter extremely valuable. I wish most of the book read in a similar fashion to the conclusions.

[Rob Kall · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've long been interested in humanity's transition from hunter-gatherer to farmer. This academic book explores this in detail. I also interviewed the author.

[Zoë]

Very interesting! Barker unpacks not only how we arrive at our current understanding of the development of agriculture, but also how our previous understanding came about and how we have disproven that (thinking, particularly, about how researchers sorta just decided that African agriculture was developed in a certain way despite not having any evidence). He hints at some interesting discussions regarding the shift in mindset/our understanding of the world that came along with the transition from hunting to gathering and I both would have liked to hear more about that and also understand that it's beyond the scope of this book.

One part that wasn't new to me but that I think Barker illustrated really well was how the shift from foraging to farming is a spectrum and a gradual process, that it's not a linear/straight-forward "progression," though he does not put into question the implications this may have for our current society. Again, that is beyond the scope of this book, seeing as he is looking at "ancient history" and I'm thinking about "the 21st century" but just think about foraging practices in urban areas and produce that can only be foraged and are not cultivated/domesticated.

Overall, just a very cool book! And neat! (For me, specifically.)