Risk Seeking and Risk Mitigation in the Argentine Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes " session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Using the Z-score model, we evaluate the costs and benefits of risk-seeking behaviors, and the means by which risks were mitigated, at El Indígeno, a massive high-altitude residential site in the south-central Andes. Our model suggests that though climatic amelioration during the site’s main period of occupation (1500–800 cal BP) may have played a subsidiary role in reducing some of the risks associated with long-term and intensive high-altitude occupations, the probability of increased social rewards likely played the principal role in encouraging long-term, seasonal site occupations. Some of the risks associated with these occupations were offset by transport of foodstuffs from lower elevations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Life Is Risky: Human Behavioral Ecological Approaches to Variable Outcomes

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32243