Book Name- Stone Age Economics
Author-Marshall Sahlins
Publisher- Published by Aldine.Atherton,Inc. in 1972
Genre- Anthropology/ Non-Fiction
This book is perhaps the last book that I took to reading this year. It was quite insightful, well coming from Marshall Sahlins, I should expect every word to be thought about in different contexts before putting it out in front of the readers. The book is a combination of essays, related to the economy of the society during the stone age period. I always thought that people of the period were more into hunting and gathering , but I was shocked to find out that there was much more to it. The book inscribed itself in Anthropological controversy between ” formalist” and “substantivist” practices of economic theory. It is closer to substantivist taking a familiar structure.
The first essay is concerned with production: “The original affluent society”, second and third essays are the various domestic modes of production used by the people. Sahlins had honestly, done an extensive field work throughout various regions of Europe to get his questions answered. He mentions a lot of real life examples where he dealt with the case studies of Gift -exchange, barter system and few other economies of the time. His was one of the few such books which dealt with such details about the economy of pre-historic times. Opting the traditional method of Ethnoarchaeology, he was able to gain lots of information regarding the population of the area and most importantly about their ancestors.
Well, before I end it , let’s bid adieu to the year 2018 and welcome 2019 with open hearts. A bit cliche I guess and whether we welcome the year or not it definitely is coming in our lives. So why not try to utilize more of it. Happy New Year in advance dear readers.
Sapienz 