PREFACE

At the regional/integrative level, research is concerned with explaining the settlement patterns observed atthe area/generalization level, and with explaining changes in those patterns through time. Because theprimary adaptation to the region during the prehistoric and protohistoric periods is hunting and gathering,studies of hunter-gatherer mobility strategies provide a logical explanatory framework on which to basethat research.Fundamentally, mobility strategies are concerned with positioning consumers with respect to thedistribution of food resources in the environment (Binford 1980). It is also the primary through which theabundance and future availability of food resources is monitored, and the primary risk minimizationstrategy for avoiding local food shortages (Binford 1983:204–208). As illustrated by the discussion in theprevious section, mobility strategies are therefore integrally linked to the subsistence strategies employedby hunter-gatherers. As also discussed in the previous section, the primary factors limiting mobilityoptions are population packing, the distribution of critical resources (e.g., water), and the use of storage toeven out temporal incongruities in resource availability.Binford (1980) has characterized hunter-gatherer mobility strategies as a continuum between foragers andcollectors, the primary dimensions of which are residential and logistical mobility. Foragers, bydefinition, predominantly employ residential mobility. That is, the entire group moves their camp amonga series of resource patches, moving the consumers to the resources. At each location, group membersspend the day foraging, and return to the camp each night to process and consume the food they collect.The residence is moved to a new resource patch whenever the subsistence resource return falls belowsome perceived minimum. Logistical mobility among foragers is therefore limited largely to daily foraysto and from the camp and to occasional long-distance hunting trips. At the opposite end of thecontinuum, collectors limit their residential mobility to seasonal moves among a few selected locations.Instead of moving the consumers to the food resources, task groups are dispatched to procure specificresources, which are then transported to the residence for consumption. As resource patches may be somedistance from the residence, preliminary processing of the collected resources is often done in the field toreduce the weight of material that must be transported. For our purposes here, Binford’s continuum canbe extended beyond collectors, whose mobility strategy involves few residential moves, to sedentary orsemi-sedentary groups like agriculturalists whose mobility strategies are characterized by little or noresidential mobility and who rely exclusively on logistical mobility to move wild resources to theconsumers.Archaeologically, foraging and collecting are expected to have distinctive signatures. For foragers,resource procurement locations will be largely invisible or evident only as a discontinuous scatter ofisolated occurrences. Except for lithic procurement areas and perhaps a few hunting camps, the greatmajority of sites will be residential camps. Because roughly the same range of activities would beperformed at each camp, this mobility strategy should be reflected by a relatively high assemblagediversity and low inter-site variability (Vierra and Doleman 1994). Differences among the siteassemblages should be largely a function of assemblage size. In contrast, most of the sites produced bycollectors should be specialized resource procurement and processing loci (i.e., field camps and stations).The artifact diversity at these sites should be low, evidencing a relatively narrow range of activities.Because different resources were collected at different locations, however, the inter-site assemblagevariability should be relatively high. Collector basecamps are expected to have the same generalcharacteristics as forager residential camps, although they will typically have larger assemblage owing tothe longer duration of the occupation and possibly larger group size.4-49