ref: Before Farming 2011/1 article 4

OBITUARY

David Riches 1947–2011
by Alan Barnard

David Riches died on 26 October 2011, after a long illness. Many in hunter-gatherer studies will remember him as a dedicated scholar and tireless editor, while his former students and fellow social anthropologists at the Univer-sity of St Andrews speak of him as a popular lecturer and a wonderful colleague.

David studied at the University of Cambridge and the London School of Economics, then taught for six years at Queen’s University Belfast. Together with Ladislav Holy, in 1979, David co-founded the Department of Social Anthropology at St Andrews, where he taught until ill health forced his early retirement in 2005. From 1969 to 1972 he did twenty months of fieldwork with Inuit in northern Canada, particularly on social development, social change and alcohol abuse. By all accounts, the fieldwork was harsh and not very enjoyable. David later did a short periodof fieldwork in Nigeria, and twelve months of fieldwork in England, among the New Agers of Glastonbury. In the last case, his work reflected his earlier hunter-gatherer interests: it concentrated on the idea of peace and on egalitari-anism. Indeed, he compared two communities, one New Age and the other Inuit, along with other hunter-gather-ers, in his paper in Thomas Widlok and Wolde Gossa Tadesse Property and Equality, Volume 1. His other important hunter-gathererist papers include ones on hunters and animal rights activists, on hunter-gatherer structural transformations, on shamanism, and on the potlatch; ones touching on power, violence and giving; andone dealing with credit and gambling in a modern Inuit community.

David wrote two monographs, one (with Ruth Prince) on Glastonbury, and one on arctic and subarctic Canada.The latter, Northern Nomadic Hunter-Gatherers, was published in 1982. It was unique in its wide ethnographic coverage, its broad and inclusive theoretical treatment, and especially its ‘humanistic’ (as opposed to ‘scientific’) approach. Controversially, through this approach David challenged his more ecologically-minded colleagues to rethink their overly inductive methods. David also edited four collections, including the two-volume Tim Ingold, David Riches and James Woodburn, Hunters and Gatherers, published in 1988. Although the volumes bear threenames, it was in fact Riches who served as the main editor: Ingold served as secretary for the London 1986 conference (retrospectively known as CHAGS 4) and Woodburn as chair. These volumes remain the finest among such collections, and David both skilfully edited them and tactfully manoeuvred around the politically difficult decisions on which papers were to be included, and which papers (including more than one by members of the conference committee) were to be left out.

David is survived by his wife Elizabeth and by their son Adrian.

Alan Barnard
Professor of the Anthropology of Southern Africa
University of Edinburgh
31 October 2011

10th Conference on Hunting and Gathering Societies

Liverpool, 23-28 June 2013

The next CHaGS will be held at the University of Liverpool, England, in June 2013. This much-awaited conference is already creating a great deal of interest and the organisers have published the preliminary list of session themes and coordinators (see below).

Researchers wishing to suggest further session themes or wishing to contribute to the proposed sessions listed below should contact Professor Larry Barham and Dr Thomas Widlok by the end of July 2011. The organisers are particularly interested in inter-disciplinary themes. The final selection of themes will be decided by the organising committee and will be announced at the end of August. A call for papers will follow. The emphasis will be on enabling the widest possible participation and there will be fewer parallel sessions than at CHaGS 9.

The conference will be held in the University of Liverpool and accommodation will be available for delegates on campus in a new, environmentally friendly, purpose built block.

A website is under construction and we will post the details on the Before Farming news pages as and when they become available.

Preliminary themes & organisers

Violence & non-violence in hunter-gatherer societies
Kirk Endicott, Dartmouth College, USA

Ritual & dance
Jerome Lewis, University College London, UK

Population genetics
Paul Verdu, University of Michigan, USA

Energetics & mechanics of hunting & gathering
Nathaniel J Dominy, Dartmouth College, USA

Childhood, child culture & social learning
Barry Hewlett, Washington State University, USA

Maritime adaptations
Caroline Wickham-Jones, Aberdeen University, UK

Mobile Lives?
Thomas Widlok, Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands,
& University of Cologne, Germany

Hunter-gatherer analogy & the African archaeological record
Peter Mitchell, University of Oxford, UK

Evolutionary perspectives
Jim O’Connell, University of Utah, USA

Ethno-historical & eco-historical approaches to hunter-gatherer research
Kazunobu Ikeya, National Museum of Ethnology, Japan 

Southeast Asian hunter-gatherers
Khaled Hakami, University of Vienna, Austria

Language of perception among hunter-gatherers
Niclas Burenhult, University of Lund, Sweden
Asifa Majid, Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Nijmegen, Netherlands
 
The crafts of hunter-gatherers
Lye Tuck-Po, Universiti Sains Malaysia

Contemporary issues in Amazonian hunter-gatherer research
Laura Rival, University of Oxford, UK

Hunter-gatherers/former hunter-gatherers, the state and climate change
Sita Venkateswar, Massey University, New Zealand

Hunter-gatherer identity politics
Vishvajit Pandya, Dhirubhai.Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, Gujarat, India

Is there a hunter-gatherer mode of sociality?
Penny Spikins, University of York, UK

Cultural resilience
Jana Fortier, University of California San Diego, USA

Perspectives on Dravidian hunting & gathering
Peter Gardner, University of Missouri, USA

Relationships to the land: ontological resistance & entanglement
in the 21st century
Co-organisers: Françoise Dussart, University of Connecticut, USA and Sylvie Poirier Université Laval, Canada

CHaGS 10 Preliminary Organising Committee

Larry Barham
University of Liverpool, UK

Kirk Endicott
Dartmouth College, USA

Kazunobu Ikeya
National Museum of Ethnology, Japan 

Jerome Lewis
University College London, UK

Peter Mitchell
University of Oxford, UK

Gustavo Politis
Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina

Lye Tuck-Po
Universiti Sains Malaysia

Caroline Wickham-Jones
Aberdeen University, UK

Thomas Widlok
Radboud University, Nijmegen, Netherlands and University of Cologne, Germany

Before Farming is pleased to announce its support for this prestigious event, beginning with sponsorship of the new conference logo.

June 2011, Liverpool

© Western Academic & Specialist Press Ltd 2011