ABSTRACT
Going as far back as the 4th century BC to the writings of Aristotle, and later revived by the antiquarians of the enlightenment, we find elements of subsistence placed in conflict with one another (cf. Bradley 1978, p.29). Cultures became pigeonholed into seemingly opposing subsistence groups in many of these and later works, for example, as either pastoralists and cultivators or hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists. Inherent in these categorisations are assumptions concerning the degree of sedentism, so that pastoralists and hunter-gatherers are considered to be mobile, whereas cultivators and agriculturalists are thought to be sedentary.
