On Food Storage Among Hunter-Gatherers: Pacific Island Societies
Published Aug 1, 1985 · N. Pollock
Current Anthropology
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Abstract
Testart's "The Significance of Food Storage among HunterGatherers" (CA 23:523-37) is a useful reexamination of food storage as part of different forms of economies and as a basis of social inequalities, but it links storage too closely to production. Storage is only one aspect of delayed food consumption, and foods are set aside not necessarily out of a concern for future shortage but also for other reasons, such as taste. By taking this into account we broaden the set of links that Testart has made to establish storage as an aspect of intensification. Considerations of taste, I would add, contribute to intensification at the level of consumption rather than that of production; stored foods differ in taste from their fresh counterparts and thus introduce variety into the diet. They also provide alternative foods for exchange. Taste is an integral part of the acceptability of a foodstuff, whether for immediate or for delayed consumption. If the taste of the preserved product is not acceptable, then no society will waste its time processing that food. Thus the development of delayed consumption must have been a gradual process as societies tested the lasting qualities and the associated changes in flavour of the stored products over time. The notion of such a process provides another line of argument for continuity between so-called hunter-gatherer and agricultural societies. Most Pacific societies do not neatly fit into either of these categories, as they depend on gathering breadfruit in season, harvesting taro, yams, and sweet potatoes, and fishing (Massal and Barrau 1956). Their selection of one of these starch foods for storage (shortor long-term) is a matter of cultural preference for the taste of the preserved food (Pollock 1984a,c), as well as the existence of the necessary ecological and technical conditions to which Testart points. Pacific island peoples put aside foods for future use, although this may not be storage in Testart's terms. The most common practice pertained to breadfruit, which was fermented and placed in pits in the Marquesas (Linton 1939, Handy and Handy 1923), Societies (Morrison 1935, Henry 1930), Samoa (Kramer 1942 [1903-6], Pritchard 1968 [1861]), Tonga (West 1865), Fiji (Seemann 1973 [1860]), Cook Islands (Gill 1876), Marshalls (Kramer and Nevermann 1938), Kusaie/Kosrae (Sarfert 1919), Ponape (Bascom 1963-65), and Truk district (LeBar 1963) (see Steinkraus 1983 for a summary of traditional fermentation and Pollock 1984b for details of the processes in these societies). This widespread practice was not, however, always aimed at future use. In both the Marquesas and Truk, for example, the daily food was made of fresh breadfruit and fermented breadfruit, mixed to taste. The relative shortage of other starch foods in the Marquesas compared with other Pacific islands and the Marquesans' strong preference for breadfruit (see Handy and Handy 1923:151) are obviously important elements in the development of this process. Since breadfruit fermentation is likely to have developed before the introduction of citrus by Europeans (see Kirch 1979), the high acidity of the newly fermented breadfruit would have introduced a new taste. Thus the fermented food can be seen as a form of intensification on the level of consumption in its addition of a new flavour that varied what many Europeans have called a "bland" diet of root and tree starches. To consider fermentation a form of storage therefore presents only part of the picture. All the foodstuffs available to the people of the Pacific had to be properly prepared; none could be eaten raw. At least for the societies of Australasia, the development of adequate process-