# Intensive gathering

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This article is about the pre-agricultural practice of tending wild plants. For other uses, see [Gather (disambiguation)](/source/Gather_(disambiguation)).

**Intensive gathering** describes the tending-to of edible wild plants to assure their continuous availability at known, convenient locales. Intensive gathering methods include weeding, discouraging predators, pot-irrigation, and limited harvesting to ensure reproduction.[1] The same system of methods is involved in [cultivation](/source/Tillage), a process which additionally requires systematic soil preparation and planting to tending and harvesting. This human manipulation ultimately results in the [domestication](/source/Domestication) of involved plant life.

Intensive gathering results in a higher total yield but at a lower efficiency compared to a highly mobile [hunter-gatherer](/source/Hunter-gatherer) lifestyle. Thus, intensive gathering is a product of [sedentism](/source/Sedentism) and increased population density.[2] Intensive gathering of plant foods at the expense of hunting large game, which was becoming scarcer as population density increased, was common worldwide in the two millennia preceding [agriculture](/source/Agriculture).[3] Archeological evidence of intensive gathering includes marked increases in the frequency of particular or groups of [taxa](/source/Taxa) relative to prior periods or nearby regions within the same period[2] and bags of several thousand seeds.[4]

## Examples

The limited and poor-quality nut resources of [California's](/source/California) lower [Sacramento Valley](/source/Sacramento_Valley) motivated the peoples living there to practice intensive gathering of *[Brodiaeoideae](/source/Brodiaeoideae)* corms and small seeds, especially [goosefoot](/source/Goosefoot) seeds, by at least 2500 [BP](/source/Before_Present). Intensive gathering of small seeds was adopted elsewhere in central California in around 1,000 BP as population densities reached the higher capacities of more nut-rich areas. Small-seed production was increased by the invention of the [seed beater](/source/Seed_beater), by expanding the gathering season to include unripe seeds, by managed burning of stands, and by cultivation and ultimately domestication.[2]

During the early [Bronze Age](/source/Bronze_Age), in the [Samara](/source/Samara_(Volga)) river valley and possibly other parts of the south Russian steppes, pastoralism was practiced alongside intensive gathering, which was replaced by agriculture only in the [Iron Age](/source/Iron_Age).[5]

## See also

- [History of agriculture](/source/History_of_agriculture)
- [Neolithic Revolution](/source/Neolithic_Revolution)

## References

1. ["Athena Review 2,1: Early plant domestication in Mesoamerica"](https://www.athenapub.com/AR/nwdom1.htm)

1. Wohlgemuth, Eric (2016). ["Early Limits to the Central California Acorn Economy in the Lower Sacramento Valley"](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p23z22p#main). *Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology*. **36** (2): 181–192. Retrieved 10 June 2024.

1. James Scott. ["Four Domestications: Fire, Plants, Animals, and... Us"](https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/s/Scott_11.pdf). [Archived](https://web.archive.org/web/20210923064746/https://tannerlectures.utah.edu/_resources/documents/a-to-z/s/Scott_11.pdf) 2021-09-23 at the Wayback Machine.

1. Bogucki, Peter (2000). [*The Origins of Human Society*](https://books.google.com/books?id=rurXEAAAQBAJ&dq=%22intensive+gathering%22&pg=PA162). John Wiley & Sons. p. 162. ISBN 978-1-55786-349-2. Retrieved 10 June 2024.

1. Hartley, Charles W.; Popova, Laura M.; Smith, Adam T. (2008). *Social Orders and Social Landscapes*. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. ISBN 978-1847183590.

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Intensive gathering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_gathering) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intensive_gathering?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.