Niche Construction of Predictable Landscapes: Redundant Caching in Ecological Niches on the Central Plains

Summary

Prehistoric groups were able to anticipate the use of redundantly visited landscapes by constructing niches with toolkits, called caches. The small size of caches and frequent absence of diagnostic tools limited the information available from studying individual caches. It was hypothesized that caches were examples of anticipated mobility to provision predictable ecological niches with tools for the presence or absence of resources in potential activity areas. Sixty-two caches from the Central Plains of Kansas and eastern Colorado were compared based on their location to identify patterns in cache distribution. The caches were mapped against the distance to rivers, lithic quarries, and regional ecoregions as predictable landscapes. At least fifty-six percent of caches were located near transitional zones between ecoregions. The median distance between caches and rivers was 0.67 km. Additionally; sixty-four percent of caches were greater than 18 kilometers from a lithic quarry. Past groups potentially anticipated their movement through transitional niches by caching, particularly near rivers and in landscapes where lithic materials were limited. While the functional role of caching may never be fully understood, this research compares caches against the externally available resources and may identify patterns in the intentional planning of cache distribution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage