Cultivating domestic cereals, as the ‘affluent’ foragers of the Pacific Coast knew well, is enormously hard work.38 Serious farming meant serious soil maintenance and weed clearance. It meant threshing and winnowing after harvest. All these activities would have got in the way of hunting, wild food collection, craft production, marriages and any number of other things, not to mention storytelling, gambling, travelling and organizing masquerades. Indeed, to balance out their dietary needs and labour costs, early cultivators may even have strategically chosen practices that worked against the
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