PREFACE

The responses to risk most commonly discussed in theories of hunting and gathering are 1) diversifyingthe resource base to make it more stable and reliable, 2) sharing or exchange, and 3) storage. Optimalforaging theory indicates that diet diversification occurs in response to a perceived reduction in theavailability of high-ranked resources and not through a conscious decision to reduce risk. Bohrer’scontention that the Archaic inhabitants of Fresnal Shelter minimized risk by focusing on predictable plantresources, most of which are low-ranked, therefore seems inconsistent with the faunal assemblage at theshelter, which indicates that deer – a high-ranked resource – was the focus of subsistence activities(Wimberley and Eidenback 1981; Witter 1972).Winterhalder (1986) compared the cost-benefits of sharing versus diet diversification under varyingenvironmental conditions, which also has implications for the use of storage. His analysis suggests thatdiet diversification can provide a small reduction in the variation of the net rate of food intake but alsoreduces foraging efficiency. Sharing between two foragers with the same diet breath, in contrast, cansignificantly reduce the variation in the pooled net rate of food intake, with no reduction in the rate offoraging efficiency. However, Winterhalder also argues that the payoff for sharing will vary withenvironmental factors affecting intraforager variance (how much variation there is in the daily return rateof a single forager) and interforager correlation (whether the return rates for foragers in a groups tend tobe the same or different on any given day). A cross-tabulation of these two dichotomized variablesproduces four possible conditions. As summarized by Kelly (1995:169–171), if intraforager variance andinterforager correlation are both high, then there is little point in sharing since the foragers in the group allhave either a little or a lot. In this situation, short-term storage would be the most effective risk-reductionoptions for the individual households. If intraforager variance is high and interforager correlation is low,however, then sharing would be the best option possibly supplemented with some household storage. Ifthe intraforager variance is low and interforager correlation high, then assuming that the population is inbalance with the resource base, then there would be little need for either sharing or storage as thesubsistence risk would be minimal. Finally, if intraforager variance and interforager correlation is low,then some sharing or exchange of one class of items for another might occur if members of a group ordifferent groups specialized in the procurement of different resources.The basic issue of whether or not Archaic hunter-gatherers in southeastern New Mexico employed storageas part of their overall subsistence strategy implies a series of empirical questions that potentially can beanswered through excavation:• is there evidence of food storage facilities at Archaic sites?• what food resources were being stored?• is there evidence that the reliance on food storage changed over time?As the preceding discussion indicates, however, explaining why food storage was or was not practicedalso requires an understanding of how the abundance of subsistence resources in southeastern NewMexico varied over time.• what seasonal variation is there in the abundance of potential food resources?• is there a protracted period of low resource availability?• to what extent is the abundance of potential food resources affected by annual fluctuations inprecipitation and temperature?• to what extent can the future availability of a potential food resource be predicted?Although archaeological data can potentially tell us what resources were actually being exploited andsomething about gross long-term changes in the resource structure, much of the data needed to addressthese questions will necessarily come from studies of the modern environment and retrodictions based onthose analyses.4-29