Food Taboos, Diet, and Hunting Strategy: The Adaptation to Animals in Amazon Cultural Ecology [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

The issue of food prohibitions on such Amazonian game animals as deer is examined from an ecological perspective, in contrast to previous symbolic or structuralist views on this subject. Examined in conjunction with settlement pattern, technology, animal behavior, and habitat productivity, which together determine the food-extraction potential of a population, the avoidance of certain inherently edible species by characterizing them as inebible is seen as selective use of the environment to resolve the relative costs and benefits of alternative procurement options through a strategy of optimum yield. It is shown how the interaction of technoeconomic variables and the differential biotic potential of various species produces a particular set of cultural assumptions about the edibility of such animals and that such selectivity represents a cost-effective strategy of protein acquisition and not a merely metaphysical product.