Human Ecology of Foragers: A Study of the Kharia, Ujia and Birhor in Similipal Hills

Human Ecology of Foragers is a pioneering study on the foragers or so-called hunters and food-gatherers of Similipal Hills, Orissa (India). Though hunting and food-gathering ways of life have been considered the most archaic as well as successful adaptation man has ever achieved, in view of the rapidly changing world today, anthropologists apprehend that no such cultures will be left for future study. Such an apprehension has primarily initiated the necessity for the present study on the foragers. Keeping in view the factors of extinction of the foragers, secondary primitivization of the agricultural tribes and the acculturation of the primitive tribes, the study has thrown light on the life and cultures of the forest-based Hill Kharia (in the book as Kharia (Savara), Ujia (Savara) and Birhor in Similipal hills both diachronically and synchronically. The book is original in the context that it has been prepared out of two-years of field work in the Similipal Biosphere Reserve. Keeping empirically a critical ethnographic record of the techno-economic conditions of three peoples, the book has vividy discussed the cultural orientation of the peoples toward the forest ecosystem and their overall economic development achieved by self-made efforts as well as Government Welfare Programmes. The study has mainly reflected that such modern fragers are dependent more on the food-gathering activities than hunting. Besides the established facts that "hunting is a high risk and low return subsistence activity" and "vegetable foods are abundant in nature", mainly because of the present forest conservation policy of India, gathering of renewable resources has been the primary occupation of the Similipal foragers.