Bell-shaped Pits in the American Southwest

Summary

Bell-shaped storage pits are a global phenomenon, and most (but not all) of these features were used for grain storage. Native Southwesterners’ use of bell-shaped pits began well back in pre-ceramic times. Both highly mobile hunter-gatherers and less mobile farmers dug and used them, and in a very general sense storage pit sizes track variation in settlement-subsistence patterns. Specifically, mobile hunter-gatherers dispersed small caches throughout their foraging ranges. This was a sort of divided-risk strategy in the face of odds that some stored food would not be revisited and recovered. Less mobile farmers, on the other hand, invested more heavily in fewer and larger storage pits, which they were prepared to defend. Part and parcel with these differences is variation in subsistence emphases on back-loaded versus front-loaded food resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15124