ABSTRACT
One of the main influences on the archaeology of the 1980s was the work of Meillassoux and in particular his essay 'From reproduction to production' (Meillassoux 1972). In that paper he distinguished between the conception of time found among hunter gatherers and that shared by farmers. Hunter gatherers, he said, acquire their food through a series of short-term transactions. They do not invest in a particular area of land and their fortunes do not depend on the work of earlier generations. Farming, on the other hand, requires a different perception of space and time. It involves a long-term commitment to a specific territory, and its success may depend on the outcome of decisions that reach back into the past. That is why Meillassoux suggested that farmers have a stronger sense of genealogy than hunter gatherers do, and it also accounts for the importance that they attach to ancestry.
