ABSTRACT
Domestication is one of the major issues in archaeology in different parts of the world. Sometimes seen as progress and evolution, sometimes as a backward step, domestication is one of the topics in the western conceptualization of the nature-culture relationship. Domestication of nature as a goal of human social action implies the belief in a utilitarian rationality that leads towards intensified subsistence. Essentialist and reified views of social being underlie this notion of the rationality of subsistence. But also the concepts of domestication and subsistence are historically constructed and imply views of nature and the uses to which they can be put.
