ABSTRACT
In hunting-gathering bands, family organization was part of the process of production and reproduction, and that was all. The goals of family members, male and female, around which family activities were organized, consisted of the reproduction of enough offspring to secure their own livelihood and social continuity, and the production of enough subsistence goods to support themselves and these offspring. In most of Africa south of the Sahara, as in most of the world by the last few centuries, population density and productive technology had both advanced, by invention or diffusion, to the point where agricultural and pastoral subsistence techniques were practiced and associated with much higher population densities than would ever have been possible in most places on a hunting-gathering technological base. Thus both technology and demography are important for understanding the nature of African societies.
