sedentism

sedentism, a way of life in which many members of a society live in one place year-round or nearly year-round. Mobility is not completely absent in sedentary societies—individuals and even whole communities may move in a sedentary society—but mobility is limited in terms of the number of individuals involved or in terms of frequency of movement. Sedentism is often contrasted with nomadism, a way of life in which people move regularly either following wild resources as hunter-gatherers or taking herds of animals to different pasture as part of mobile pastoralism. Most societies in the modern world are sedentary.

Defining and identifying sedentism

Sedentary societies are those that are less mobile than other, often older societies. Members of these societies tend to live in the same place year-round, although anthropologists often differ as to what they define as sedentary and what they put under another category such as semisedentary. Complicating attempts to define sedentism is the wide variety of behaviors that may be considered a sedentary lifeway. For example, some societies practice shifting sedentism, a system in which a community lives in the same place several years before moving the entire settlement to another spot. In others, a portion of the group lives in permanent dwellings all year while some members travel for extended periods of time each year to take animals out to distant pastures (see also pastoral nomadism). Even in communities with a very low degree of residential mobility, individuals must engage in what archaeologist Lewis R. Binford termed in a 1980 article “logistical mobility,” or movement in service of work or subsistence activities.

Archaeologists use a variety of features to identify sedentism in the past. Evidence for long-term habitation includes the presence of material culture that is impossible or difficult to move. Rather than creating light dwellings that can be moved or abandoned with relative ease, sedentary peoples often build substantial houses, along with public buildings and storage facilities. Ceremonial structures, monuments, earthworks, and an increase in burials often accompany sedentary settlements. Large, heavy, or breakable tools such as grinding stones and ceramic storage jars increase in usage as a society becomes more sedentary. Plants and animals may give archaeologists insight into the seasonality of settlements. Because plants produce pollen or seeds only in certain seasons, the presence of these in or on human-made objects can indicate that humans were present at a site during certain seasons. Many animals give birth only in particular seasons, making the age of animals found at a site indicative of the season in which they were slaughtered. Archaeologists often take the presence of animals that like to live near humans, such as mice and rats, to be indicative of long-term habitation.

Origins

Prior to the end of the Pleistocene Epoch, the vast majority, if not the entirety, of humanity lived in mobile hunter-gatherer groups. This changed beginning about 15,000 years ago when some groups began to settle in permanent village communities. In some places agriculture developed out of these sedentary foraging groups. Perhaps the best understood example of such a development is ancient Southwest Asia. According to archaeological evidence at Abu Hureyra in Syria, the people of the Natufian culture lived as sedentary hunter-gatherers in the rounded houses of the Abu Hureyra 1 phase (c. 11,500 bce–9500 bce) of the settlement, hunting gazelles and collecting cereal grains. After a period in which most of the site was abandoned, a new settlement was built on the spot. This phase (Abu Hureyra 2, c. 8500 bce–5500 bce) belongs to the region’s Neolithic period. During this time the inhabitants built rectangular dwellings, often with multiple rooms. They more intensively cultivated cereals and relied on a narrower number of food sources. Eventually, the people living at Abu Hureyra would largely trade hunting for herding sheep and goats.

Other regions saw sedentism emerge without the further development of agriculture. During the long Jōmon period in Japan, which some scholars argue began about 10,500 bce, people relied primarily on wild resources. Gathered nuts and vegetables, fish, and wild game formed the staples of the Jōmon diet, although they cultivated some plants and kept domesticated dogs. Agriculture did not become the primary means of subsistence in Japan until the following Yayoi period (c. 300 bce–c. 250 ce), when migrants brought mainland domesticates to the islands.

The causes of sedentism and the reasons for its spread are debated by scholars. While there is a wide variety of specific criteria that different researchers suggest, the main ideas about the rise of sedentism can be divided into a limited number of hypotheses:

1. Pull hypothesis: Abundant food resources in an area allowed groups of people to settle, freeing them from the need to move around a landscape.
2. Push hypothesis: Because of a lack of resources, people groups intensify their subsistence activities and spend progressively more time harvesting and processing food.
3. Population growth hypothesis: A rising regional population led to groups living in relatively close proximity to each other, which in turn made it more difficult to move without coming into conflict with neighboring communities.
4. Social competition hypothesis: People intensify their subsistence efforts in order to have resources for feasting, trade, or other displays of wealth.

Modern sedentarization

The modern world is dominated by large, agricultural, sedentary states. Many such states have enacted policies that promoted the sedentarization, or settling down, of previously nomadic populations. Anthropologist and political scientist James Scott saw the prevalence of sedentarization by states as an attempt to make the population “legible” (in Scott’s terms) in order to extract taxes and prevent uprising more readily. Whatever the motivation, examples of forced sedentarization are numerous. As part of the United States’ westward movement a number of mobile Indigenous peoples on the Great Plains were forced to settle on reservations outlined by the U.S. government. Soviet collectivization policies in the early 20th century resulted in many nomadic Central Asians being forced onto state-sponsored collective farms (see kolkhoz). Various Bedouin groups in the Middle East have been subject to sedentarization attempts in a number of countries, including Egypt, Israel, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia.

Access for the whole family!

Bundle Britannica Premium and Kids for the ultimate resource destination.

Subscribe