ciety. At one site, Danger Cave in Utah, millstones used for
grinding grain, seeds, and nuts, along with some of the earli-
est basketry in North America, have been excavated. Th e Co-
chise culture (ca. 7000–200 b.c.e.), which evolved out of the
Desert culture, hunted and trapped small mammals (deer,
antelope, and rabbits) as well as small reptiles (snakes and
lizards). Th e people migrated with the seasons, inhabiting
the desert fl oor in the winter and higher elevations (mesas) in
the summer. Th ey also gathered wild plants, such as yuccas,
prickly pears, junipers, and piñons. Some archaeologists be-
lieve that the fi rst evidence of the cultivation of maize (corn)
north of Mexico occurred in this region around 3500 b.c.e.
Th is may have been a result of contact with Mesoamerican
cultures to the south.
In the early part of the Archaic Period in South America
the mastodon, prehistoric horse, and ground sloth species died
out, and hunters shift ed to deer, camelids (such as llamas and
alpacas), guanacos, guinea pigs, and other small mammals.
Coastal sites began to exploit marine resources (fi sh and shell-
fi sh), especially aft er 5000 b.c.e. Maize was fi rst cultivated in
the Peruvian highlands around 3500 b.c.e. and a shift to ag-
ricultural and agropastoral subsistence became widespread in
South America by 2000 b.c.e. Th e emergence of ceramics, an-
other indicator of sedentary non-nomadic existence, occurred
at roughly the same time, around 1800 b.c.e.
It is likely that the llama and alpaca were domesticated
around 3000 b.c.e. In the late Archaic Period and aft erward,
hunting on the high plains of mountain regions in South
America combined with domestication of camelids resulted
in a system of regular migration (transhumant nomadism)
between diff erent altitudes, from the valleys in the wet, sum-
mer season to higher elevations in the dry, winter season.
See also agriculture; art, cities; climate and geogra-
phy; clothing and footwear; economy; employment
and labor; family; festivals; food and diet; gender
structures and roles; hunting, fishing, and gather-
ing; language; literature; migration and population
movements; military; mining, quarrying, and salt mak-
ing; natural disasters; religion and cosmology; roads
and bridges; settlement patterns; social organiza-
tion; storage and preservation; towns and villages;
trade and exchange; war and conquest.
FURTHER READING
L. B a r tosiew icz a nd H. Gre en fi eld, eds., Transhumant Pastoralism in
Southern Europe (Budapest, Hungary: Archaeolingua, 1999).
Ofer Bar-Yosef and Anatoly Khazanov, eds., Pastoralism in the Le-
vant: Archaeological Materials in Anthropological Perspectives
(Madison, Wisc.: Prehistory Press, 1992).
Barbara Bender, Farming in Prehistory: From Hunter-gatherer to
Food-producer (London: J. Baker, 1975).
J. L. Bintliff , Natural Environment and Human Settlement in Pre-
historic Greece (Oxford, U.K.: British Archaeological Reports,
1977).
Juliet Clutton-Brock, ed., Th e Walking Larder: Patterns of Domesti-
cation, Pastoralism, and Predation (London: Unwin-Hyman,
1989).
Roger Cribb, Nomads in Archaeology (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1991).
Rada Dyson-Hudson and Neville Dyson-Hudson, “Nomadic Pasto-
ralism,” Annual Review of Anthropology 9 (1980): 15–61.
George C. Frison, Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains (New York:
Academic Press, 1978).
Daniel H. Garrison, ed., Horace: Epodes and Odes, vol. 10 (Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1991).
Anatoly M. Khazanov, Nomads and the Outside World, trans. Julia
Crookenden, 2nd ed. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press,
1994).
Henri Lhote, “When the Sahara Was Green.” In Th e World’s Last
Mysteries (Pleasantville, N.Y.: Reader’s Digest Association,
1978).
Richard MacNeish, “Food-Gathering and Incipient Agriculture
Stage in Prehistoric Middle America.” In Handbook of Middle
American Indians: Archaeology of Northern Mesoamerica, vol.
1, eds. Gordon F. Eckholm and Ignacio Bernal (Austin, Tex.:
University of Austin Press, 1971).
James L. Newman, Th e Peopling of Africa: A Geographic Interpreta-
tion (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1995).
Karim Sadr, Th e Development of Nomadism in Ancient Northeast
Africa (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991).
C. R. Whittaker, ed., Pastoral Economies in Classical Antiquity
(Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988).▶ numbers and counting
introduction
Systems of numbers and counting emerged and developed
at diff erent times throughout the ancient world. Th e earliest,
most advanced systems came from Mesopotamia and the In-
dus Valley of India. In contrast, numbers and counting were
much slower to develop in ancient Europe. In most cases, the
ancients were not interested in developing complex systems
of mathematics to solve abstract problems. Counting and
numbers arose as a way to help people solve practical, day-
to-day problems.
Th us, counting was typically synonymous with measure-
ment. Th e ancients needed to take accurate measurements of,
for example, fi elds and tillable ground in order to assign land
to farmers, particularly in areas of the world where boundar-
ies could change because of fl ooding, as in ancient Egypt and
Mesopotamia. Th ey also needed to calculate the volume of
crops or the number of bricks needed for a construction proj-
ect. Linear measurements were needed for such activities as
constructing buildings, and some cultures, such as the Meso-
americans and the Mesopotamians, developed fairly sophis-
ticated forms of geometry for this purpose.
Th e ancients lacked sophisticated tools for making these
kinds of measurements and for fi xing consistent units of mea-
surement. Accordingly, they oft en turned to the physical world,
including their own bodies, to devise units of measurement. Anumbers and counting: introduction 797