Ethnoarchaeology of residential mobility among savanna foragers and archaeological site formation

Summary

Ethnoarchaeological observations of residential mobility provide crucial links between subsistence activities, landscape use, social behaviors, and archaeological visibility of occupations. Pumé foragers of the Venezuela llanos move their camps up to six times a year. They occupy separate wet and dry season main camps that are the hubs of central place foraging for different seasonal resources. Pumé hunter-gatherers also make temporary camps for fishing, raw material acquisition, and to cultivate small amounts of manioc that complement foraging for wild tubers. Shifting between wet and dry season camps follows changing groundwater levels, and movement to a main seasonal camp can involve up to three temporary moves determined by water availability. Architectural differences between each of the main seasonal camps are dramatic, and social re-organization occurs during each camp occupation event. Wet season camps are re-used up to three sequential years, but dry season camps shift every year. Observations based on 30 months of ethnoarchaeological research among mobile Pumé foragers in a hyperseasonal savanna provide a longitudinal view of residential dynamics. These are examined in relation to characteristics of the archaeological record to develop methods for integrating distinct kinds of residential sites representing diverse hunting and gathering seasonal activities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Spatial Coverage