The environmental context of decision-making: Coping strategies among prehistoric cultivators in central New Mexico. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

This study investigates how cultural coping strategies are used to mitigate the risk that arises from variability in the natural environment. In this study, temporal and spatial patterning of resource variability within a region is considered from the point of view of small-scale cultivators at the Kite Site, a pithouse village site in central New Mexico that was occupied from about A.D. 900 to 1250. Modern climatic data collected since about A.D. 1900 is used to model the variability in the natural environment. A series of cluster analyses is used to identify persistent groupings of stations that experience dissimilar conditions; comparison of station conditions with those at the Kite Site are used to identify possible alternative resource areas, and thereby to predict the spatial scale over which cultural coping strategies would operate. Environmental variability that occurs intra-annually is considered to form background levels of random variation in productivity that would affect all communities in central New Mexico. Analysis of archaeological remains at the Kite Site shows that cultural strategies involving diet diversification, mobility, storage, and exchange (redistribution) at the household and inter-household level are potentially effective in buffering this level of variability. Regular use of these coping strategies is expected to constitute everyday life for prehistoric pithouse communities in this region. Frequently occurring but unpredictable stress engendered by years of below-average productivity in the area around the Kite Site may not always be effectively mitigated by local resources. Coping with this level of stress may involve maintaining access to resources in the Sierra Blanca region, about 40 or 50 km east-southeast of the site. Social ties between the Kite Site and sites in the Sierra Blanca region are demonstrated by evaluation of the similarity of ceramic assemblages. Contrasts with comparably distant sites in the Socorro region show that ceramic assemblage similarity is affected by factors other than geographic distance. The model proposed here suggests that regional interactions at this spatial scale could be of particular importance for coping with resource stress engendered by inter-annual variability in the natural environment.