The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations

Description

Animal-herding (pastoralism) is a subsistence strategy that is practised by populations of low-producing ecosystems worldwide. Increasingly, it is vanishing due to land pressure and ecological degradation, particularly in the developing world. While previous books have examined the social, cultural and economic dimensions of the pastoral way of life, there has been little systematic examination of the biology and health of pastoral groups. The Human Biology of Pastoral Populations fills this gap by drawing together our knowledge of the biology, population structure and ecology of herding populations. It investigates how pastoral populations adapt to limited and variable food availability, the implications of the herding way of life for reproductive patterns, population structure and genetic diversity and the impacts of ongoing social and ecological changes on the health and well-being of these populations. This volume will be of broad interest to scholars in anthropology, human biology, genetics and demography.

WILLIAM R. LEONARD is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Northwestern University, Illinois. He is a biological anthropologist whose research focusses heavily on aspects of physiology, nutrition and health. He has extensive fieldwork experience in Siberia and Latin America examining how human populations adapt to extreme environments. MICHAEL H. CRAWFORD is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. His research focuses on anthropological genetics particularly in populations in the Americas. He has also written The Origins of Native Americans (1998/ 2001), ISBNS 0521 592801 & 0521 004101, and edited Different Seasons: Biological Aging in Mennonites of Midwestern United States (2000).

From the hardback review: '... this volume of high quality papers will be of most interest and reward to the specialists in nomadic pastoral societies who already have a lot of factual knowledge about these societies.' The Agricultural History Review From the hardback review: '... this is the fullest coverage, to my knowledge, of the human biology of pastoralists ... this is a very interesting and unique overview of issues pertaining to human biology among pastoralists, and covers a wide range of themes and geographical areas ... it does add considerable breadth to our understanding of the dynamics of contemporary pastoralist populations.' Annals of Human Biology