Alyssa Crittenden

ALYSSA CRITTENDEN, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, Nevada, received a grant in April 2019 to aid research on ‘Changing Diet in a Changing Landscape: Diet Composition and Food and Water Insecurity among the Hadza of Tanzania.’ Despite widespread interest in the diet composition of foragers, few detailed data are available on the process of sedenterization. The Hadza of Tanzania are currently experiencing large scale ecological and nutritional changes. Here, baseline data on these changes are documented from two residential groups: 1) a bush camp located 100km from a market town; and 2) a village camp located within 1km from a market town. Diet composition and degree of food and water insecurity were measured for a sample of 69 adults. Preliminary results suggest that all individuals experienced food and water insecurity. Those residing in the village reported a diet of mainly domesticated foods from donated and purchased sources, while those in the bush reported a mixed-subsistence diet including both wild foraged foods and domesticated foods from donated and purchased sources. Individuals in the bush exhibited the greatest degree of water insecurity and reported sharing their watering holes on a daily basis with neighboring pastoralist groups and livestock, over 650 animals. Those in the village who walked to town each night to sleep at the base of a water tank exhibited the least amount of water insecurity. The village had three sources of drinking water, all potable, while the bush had four sources of drinking water, none of them potable. In both locations, storage of water in drinking containers reduced water quality. These data offer the first empirical data on the shifting nutritional and ecological landscape of the Hadza.