Sedentism

In cultural anthropology, sedentism (sometimes called sedentariness; compare sedentarism[1]) is the practice
of living in one place for a long time. As of 2020, the majority of people belong to sedentary cultures. In
evolutionary anthropology and archaeology, sedentism takes on a slightly different sub-meaning, often
applying to the transition from nomadic society to a lifestyle that involves remaining in one place permanently.
Essentially, sedentism means living in groups permanently in one place.[2]

Contents
Initial requirements for permanent, non-agricultural settlements
Criteria for the recognition of sedentism in archaeological studies
Historical regions of sedentary settlements
Historical effects of increased sedentism
Forced sedentism
See also
References
External links

Initial requirements for permanent, non-agricultural settlements

For small-scale nomadic societies it can be difficult to adopt a sedentary lifestyle in a landscape without on-site
agricultural or livestock-breeding resources, since sedentism often requires sufficient year-round, easily
accessible local natural resources.

Non-agricultural sedentism requires good preservation and storage technologies, such as smoking, drying, and
fermentation, as well as good containers such as pottery, baskets, or special pits in which to securely store food
whilst making it available. It was only in locations where the resources of several major ecosystems
overlapped that the earliest non-agricultural sedentism occurred. For example, people settled where a river met
the sea, at lagoon environments along the coast, at river confluences, or where flat savanna met hills, and
mountains with rivers.

Criteria for the recognition of sedentism in archaeological studies

In archaeology a number of criteria must hold for the recognition of either semi or full sedentism.

According to Israeli archaeologist Ofer Bar-Yosef, they are as follows:[3][4]

1. Increasing presence of organisms that benefit from human sedentary activities, e.g.

House mice
Rats
Sparrows
2. Cementum increments on mammal teeth

Indications that hunting took place in both winter and summer

3. Energy expenditure

Leveling slopes
Building houses
Production of plaster
Transport of undressed stones
Digging of graves
Shaping of large mortars

Historical regions of sedentary settlements

The first sedentary sites were pre-agricultural, and they appeared
during the Upper Paleolithic in Moravia and on the East European
Plain between c. 25000–17000 BC.[5] A year-round sedentary site,
with its larger population, generates a substantial demand on locally
provided natural resources, a demand that may have triggered the
development of deliberate agriculture. In the Levant, the Natufian
culture was the first to become sedentary at around 12000 BC. The
Natufians were sedentary for more than 2000 years before they, at
some sites, started to cultivate plants around 10000 BC. Herd of horses on summer mountain
pasture in the Pyrenees
The Jōmon culture in Japan, which was primarily a coastal culture,
was sedentary from c. 12000 to 10000 BC, before the cultivation of
rice at some sites in northern Kyushu.[6][7] In northernmost Scandinavia, there are several early sedentary sites
without evidence of agriculture or cattle breeding. They appeared from c. 5300–4500 BC and are all located
optimally in the landscape for extraction of major ecosystem resources,[8] e.g. the Lillberget Stone Age village
site (c. 3900 BC), the Nyelv site (c. 5300 BC), and the Lake Inari site (c. 4500 BC).[9] In northern Sweden the
earliest indication of agriculture occurs at previously sedentary sites, and one example is the Bjurselet site used
during the period c. 2700–1700 BC, famous for its large caches of long distance traded flint axes from
Denmark and Scania (some 1300 km). The evidence of small-scale agriculture at that site can be seen from c.
2300 BC (burnt cereals of barley).

Historical effects of increased sedentism

Sedentism increased contacts and trade, and the first Middle East cereals and cattle in Europe, could have
spread through a stepping stone process, where the productive gift (cereals, cattle, sheep and goats) were
exchanged through a network of large pre-agricultural sedentary sites, rather than a wave of advance spread of
people with agricultural economy, and where the smaller sites found in between the bigger sedentary ones, did
not get any of the new products. Not all contemporary sites during a certain period (after the first sedentism
occurred at one site) were sedentary. Evaluation of habitational sites in northern Sweden indicates that less
than 10 percent of all the sites around 4000 BC, were sedentary. At the same time, only 0.5–1 percent of these
represented villages with more than 3–4 houses. This means that the old nomadic or migratory life style
continued in a parallel fashion for several thousand years, until somewhat more sites turned to sedentism, and
gradually switched over to agricultural sedentism.
 The shift to sedentism is coupled with the adoption of new
subsistence strategies, specifically from foraging (hunter-gatherer) to
agricultural and animal domestication. The development of
sedentism led to the rise of population aggregation and formation of
villages, cities, and other community types.

In North America, evidence for sedentism emerges around 4500

BC.

Forced sedentism
Beja nomads from Northeast Africa Forced sedentism or sedentarization occurs when a dominant
group restricts the movements of a nomadic group. Nomadic
populations have undergone such a process since the first cultivation
of land; the organization of modern society has imposed demands that have pushed aboriginal populations to
adopt a fixed habitat.

At the end of the 19th and throughout the 20th century many previously nomadic tribes turned to permanent
settlement. It was a process initiated by local governments, and it was mainly a global trend forced by the
changes in the attitude to the land and real property and also due to state policies that complicated border
crossing. Among these nations are Negev Bedouin in Jordan, Israel and Egypt,[10] Bashkirs, Kyrgyz,
Kazakhs, Evenks, Evens, Sakha in Soviet Russia, Tibetan nomads in China,[11] Babongo in Gabon, Baka in
Cameroon,[12] Innu in Canada, Gypsies in Romania and Czechoslovakia, etc. As a result of forced
sedentarization, many rich herdsmen in Siberia have been eliminated by deliberate overtaxation or
imprisonment, year-round mobility have been discouraged, many smaller sites and family herd camps have
been shut down, children have been separated from their parents and taken to board schools. This caused
severe social, cultural and psychological issues to Indigenous peoples of Siberia.[13][14]

See also
Nacirema people
Western culture
Indian reservation
Negev Bedouin
Nomad
Seasonal human migration
Timeline of agriculture and food technology
Transhumance

References
1. Gabaccia, Donna R. (2012). "17: Food, mobility, and world history". In Pilcher, Jeffrey M. (ed.).
The Oxford Handbook of Food History (https://books.google.com/books?id=Kb2o-eE0huMC).
Oxford Handbooks in History. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 308. ISBN 978-
0199729937. Retrieved 2017-01-09. "This assumption that civilized peoples were largely
immobile has sometimes been labeled as sendentarying or sedentarism."
2. Kris Hirst, Sedentism (http://archaeology.about.com/od/sterms/g/sedentism.htm)
3. Bar-Yosef, Ofer (1998). The Natufian Culture in the Levant, Threshold to the Origins of
Agriculture.
 4. "Sedentism and Pristine Agriculture" (https://web.archive.org/web/20091022083825/http://near
east-prehistory.com/html/sedentism.html). neareast-prehistory.com. Archived from the original
(http://neareast-prehistory.com/html/sedentism.html) on 22 October 2009.
5. Lieberman D.E., Seasonality and gazelle hunting at Hayonim Cave : new evidence for
"sedentism" during the Natufian (http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/paleo_
0153-9345_1991_num_17_1_4538), Paléorient, 1991, volume 17, issue 17/1, pp. 47–57
6. Jomon Fantasy: Resketching Japan's Prehistory (http://web-japan.org/trends00/honbun/tj99061
5.html). June 22, 1999.
7. "Ancient Jomon of Japan", Habu Junko, Cambridge Press, 2004 (https://books.google.com/boo
ks/about/Ancient_Jomon_of_Japan.html?id=vGnAbTyTynsC&redir_esc=y)
8. New Evidence on the Ertebølle Culture on Rugen (http://www.io-warnemuende.de/projects/sin
cos/archive/new_evidence.pdf) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20041112020256/http://
www.io-warnemuende.de/projects/sincos/archive/new_evidence.pdf) 2004-11-12 at the
Wayback Machine
9. Lillbergets Stone Age Village (http://www.swedishlapland.com/en/Destinations/Overkalix/To-d
o/Sights/Lillbergets-Stone-Age-Village) Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/2014040420314
1/http://www.swedishlapland.com/en/Destinations/Overkalix/To-do/Sights/Lillbergets-Stone-Ag
e-Village/) 2014-04-04 at the Wayback Machine
10. The Sedentarization of the Bedouin People (http://www.bedouinheritage.org/bhf/blog/masterpie
ces/bedouin-culture/the-sedentarization-of-the-bedouin-people) Archived (https://web.archive.o
rg/web/20120412093054/http://www.bedouinheritage.org/bhf/blog/masterpieces/bedouin-cultur
e/the-sedentarization-of-the-bedouin-people/) 2012-04-12 at the Wayback Machine
11. Sedentarization of Tibetan Nomads (http://www.case.edu/affil/tibet/tibetanNomads/documents/
Wuning.pdf)
12. Matsuura, Naoki (September 2009). "Visiting Patterns of Two Sedentarized Central African
Hunter-Gatherers : Comparison of the Babongo in Gabon and the Baka in Cameroon" (http://ja
mbo.africa.kyoto-u.ac.jp/kiroku/asm_normal/abstracts/pdf/30-3/Matsuura.pdf) (PDF). African
Study Monographs. 30 (3): 137–159.
13. Hele, K. (1994). "Native people and the socialist state: the native populations of Siberia and
their experience as part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (http://www3.brandonu.ca/cj
ns/14.2/hele.pdf) (PDF). Canadian Journal of Native Studies. 14 (2): 251–272.
14. Krupnik, I. (2000). "Reindeer pastoralism in modern Siberia: research and survival during the
time of crash". Polar Record. 19 (1): 49–56. Bibcode:2000PolRe..19...49K (https://ui.adsabs.har
vard.edu/abs/2000PolRe..19...49K). doi:10.1111/j.1751-8369.2000.tb00327.x (https://doi.org/1
0.1111%2Fj.1751-8369.2000.tb00327.x).

External links
The dictionary definition of sedentism at Wiktionary

Emily A. Schultz, Robert H. Lavenda. The Consequences of Domestication and Sedentism (htt
p://www.primitivism.com/sedentism.htm). From a college textbook - Anthropology: A
Perspective on the Human Condition Second Edition. pp 196–200
Keith Weber, Shannon Horst. 2011. Desertification and livestock grazing: The roles of
sedentarization, mobility and rest (http://www.pastoralismjournal.com/content/1/1/19)
David Western, Rosemary Grooma, Jeffrey Worden. 2009. The impact of subdivision and
sedentarization of pastoral lands on wildlife in an African savanna ecosystem (https://web.archi
ve.org/web/20170727192620/http://landportal.info/sites/default/files/the-impact-of-subdivision-a
nd-sedentarization-of-pastoral-lands-on-wildlife-in-an-african-savanna-ecosystem.pdf)
Shuji Sueyoshi, Ryutaro Ohtsuka. 2007. LONG-LASTING EFFECTS OF SEDENTARIZATION-
INDUCED INCREASE OF FERTILITY ON LABOR FORCE PROPORTION AND RURAL
 DEVELOPMENT IN AN ARAB SOCIEITY: A CASE STUDY IN SOUTH JORDAN (http://www.
humanergology.com/old/jhe2007p/02_Sueyoshi%20%20p13-20.pdf)
Fagan, Brian. 2005. Ancient North America. (https://books.google.com/books/about/Ancient_N
orth_America.html?id=JC2dQgAACAAJ&redir_esc=y) Thames & Hudson, Ltd.: London.
Halén, Ove. 1994. Sedentariness During the Stone Age of Northern Sweden (https://books.goo
gle.com/books/about/Sedentariness_during_the_stone_age_of_No.html?id=Z1oSAQAAIAAJ&
redir_esc=y) Almkvist & Wiksell, Stockholm.
Sofer, Olga. 1981 Sedentism During the Paleolithic
Habu, Junku. 2004 Ancient Jomon of Japan (https://books.google.com/books/about/Ancient_Jo
mon_of_Japan.html?id=vGnAbTyTynsC&redir_esc=y) Cambridge University Press
Lands of the Negev (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ei8yHjk_MbM) on YouTube, a short
film presented by Israel Land Administration describing the challenges Bedouins face in their
sedentarization in Israel's southern Negev region
Should Pastoralists be sedentarized? (https://web.archive.org/web/20140307234434/http://ww
w.drylands-group.org/Articles/2017.html), Drylands Coordination Group

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