Eskimo Life By Lewis R. Binford Summary

When an elderly Eskimo man was asked how he would summarize his life in a few words he stated “Willow smoke and dogs’ tails; when we camp it is all willow smoke and when we move all you see is dogs’ tails wagging in front of you. Eskimo life is half of each.” This article by Lewis R. Binford focuses on the hunter-gatherer system of a mobile man pursing food, shelter and satisfaction. The author starts off the article by quoting the words of an Eskimo man who which Binford a life that has now largely vanished from man’s experience. The article also covers many important aspects of a hunter-gatherer society ranging from the topic of collectors, foragers, group sizes and how it affects mobility, the sites themselves, and finally he closes with his thoughts on inter assemblage variability. His key points include a heavily detailed view on collectors and foragers in a hunter-gatherer society. The author expertly lays out a vast amount of information on hunter-gatherers, while also applying the information he presented to his own arguments in the conclusion. …show more content…
Firstly, again with residential base, which he states on his article is also the hub of subsistence activities, the area where food procurement parties or foragers, generally start and end the process, as well as being the place where most of the manufacturing, processing, maintenance activities originate. To reiterate, Binford’s theory is that among forager residential mobility may vary considerably with both duration and spacing between sites, as well as size of the group itself. Another point that Binford states is that if there is a limited amount of resource patches, one patch will most likely be linked to several foraging groups, which means that the greater the redundancy, the higher chance of archaeological remains, and greater archaeological