Modeling Modes of Hunter-Gatherer Food Storage

Abstract

Analyses of the capacity and rates of different acorn storage techniques employed by the Western Mono of California’s Sierra Nevada during the very late Holacene indicate hunter-gatherers store food in at least three main modes: central-place storage, dispersed caching, and dispersed bulk caching. The advantage of caching modes over central-place ones is that they entail faster storage rates and thus the chance to maximize storage capacity when seasonality and scheduling conflicts limit storing opportunities. They also result in predictable stores of acorn separate from winter population aggregations but oftentimes near seasonally occupied camps. Central-place storage thus appears most directly related to coping with single-year seasonal variability in environmental productivity and sedentary overwintering strategies; caching, and especially bulk caching, with multi-year environmental unpredictability, overwintering and seasonal residential moves. Storage thus appears to generally develop as a response to seasonality and unpredictable environmental productivity, but its various forms are conditioned mainly by how they articulate with different mobility types. Complex Mono storage behaviors, however, were associated with regionally low population densities and relatively uncomplicated social structures nonetheless characterized by chiefs who maintained their positions by throwing feasts of stored acorn. The connections between storage, population density, and sociocultural complexity thus appear less direct and predicated on specific sociopolitical circumstance. Recognizing different modes of hunter-gatherer storage is consequently critical to assessing the roles ecology, mobility, group size, and social distinctions play in the development of disparate storage behaviors.

Vegetable Storage Practices and the Reproduction of Household Autonomy in Early Village Contexts from Northwest Argentina

“…However, this could be a misleading and simplistic interpretation. If we acknowledge that storage should be thought as a diverse set of activities that vary in scale, intensity, and distribution and that are deployed in different manners based on a variety of factors (Morgan, 2012), we can assume that the social structures that allow storage practices could correlate with the variation of the scale and centralization of the practice (Wesson, 1999;Sanger, 2017).…”

“…As stated by Sanger (2017), large-scale centralized storage practices often facilitate the development of social complexity and inequality, while more moderate storage practices typically have a relatively minor impact as they provide for occasional dietary short falls yet are too dispersed or too small to be effective tools for elite control (Cannon & Yang, 2006;Kuijt, 2008;Morgan, 2012). Indeed, small-scale and dispersed catching of foods may actually reduce the threat of emergent elitism and, instead, allow increased levels of autonomy as families and individuals could provide for themselves with little need or desire for centralized authority (Morgan, 2012).…”

Holocene cold storage practices on the eastern Snake River Plain: A risk-mitigation strategy for lean times

“…4). Such behaviors can take several forms and include shifts in mobility, pooling and sharing resources, and storage (Goland, 1991;Grove, 2010;Kaplan et al, 1990;Morgan, 2009Morgan, , 2012. In contrast, since they are already unable to achieve the necessary foraging returns, risk-prone foragers will take a chance on far less predictable options, but with the potential for achieving foraging returns high enough to boost them over the minimum subsistence threshold.…”

“…2). Storage represents one solution to the problems posed by risk, the probability that a forager will experience a resource shortfall (Winterhalder et al, 1999, see also Morgan, 2012 for an exhaustive overview of hunter-gatherers and storage). Non-human foragers store food in times of unreliable, unpredictable and/or low environmental productivity (Brodin and Clark, 2007;Smith and Reichman, 1984;Vander Wall, 1990).…”

Pit Features: A View From Grand Island, Michigan

“…However, there is considerable variability in hunter-gatherer storage practices. Morgan (2012) makes the distinction between caching (low intensity, dispersed storage) and central place foraging (more intensive, bulk storage tied to a central habituation base), an important distinction to make especially when studying groups whose settlement flexibility and mobility remained important strategies.…”