Intensive gathering describes the tending-to of edible wild plants to assure their continuous availability at known, convenient locales. Intensive gathering methods include weeding, discouraging predators, pot-irrigation, and limited harvesting to ensure reproduction. The same system of methods is involved in cultivation, a process which additionally requires systematic soil preparation and planting to tending and harvesting. This human manipulation ultimately results in the

domestication Domestication is a multi-generational Mutualism (biology), mutualistic relationship in which an animal species, such as humans or leafcutter ants, takes over control and care of another species, such as sheep or fungi, to obtain from them a st ...

of involved plant life. Intensive gathering results in a higher total yield but at a lower efficiency compared to a highly mobile

hunter-gatherer A hunter-gatherer or forager is a human living in a community, or according to an ancestrally derived Lifestyle, lifestyle, in which most or all food is obtained by foraging, that is, by gathering food from local naturally occurring sources, esp ...

lifestyle. Thus, intensive gathering is a product of sedentism and increased population density. Intensive gathering of plant foods at the expense of hunting large game, which was becoming scarcer as population density increased, was common worldwide in the two millennia preceding

agriculture Agriculture encompasses crop and livestock production, aquaculture, and forestry for food and non-food products. Agriculture was a key factor in the rise of sedentary human civilization, whereby farming of domesticated species created ...

. Archeological evidence of intensive gathering includes marked increases in the frequency of particular or groups of

taxa In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

relative to prior periods or nearby regions within the same period and bags of several thousand seeds.

Examples

The limited and poor-quality nut resources of California's lower Sacramento Valley motivated the peoples living there to practice intensive gathering of ''

Brodiaeoideae Brodiaeoideae are a monocot subfamily of flowering plants in the family Asparagaceae, order Asparagales. They have been treated as a separate family, Themidaceae. They are native to Central America and western North America, from British Colum ...

'' corms and small seeds, especially goosefoot seeds, by at least 2500 BP. Intensive gathering of small seeds was adopted elsewhere in central California in around 1,000 BP as population densities reached the higher capacities of more nut-rich areas. Small-seed production was increased by the invention of the seed beater, by expanding the gathering season to include unripe seeds, by managed burning of stands, and by cultivation and ultimately domestication. During the early

Bronze Age The Bronze Age () was a historical period characterised principally by the use of bronze tools and the development of complex urban societies, as well as the adoption of writing in some areas. The Bronze Age is the middle principal period of ...

, in the Samara river valley and possibly other parts of the south Russian steppes, pastoralism was practiced alongside intensive gathering, which was replaced by agriculture only in the

Iron Age The Iron Age () is the final epoch of the three historical Metal Ages, after the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age. It has also been considered as the final age of the three-age division starting with prehistory (before recorded history) and progre ...

References

{{Reflist Horticulture Foraging

Examples

See Also

References