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Re-Thinking Great Basin Foragers: Prestige Hunting and Costly Signaling during the Middle Archaic Period

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Kelly R. McGuire  and
William R. Hildebrandt
Kelly R. McGuire
Affiliation:
Far Western Anthropological Research Group, 2727 Del Rio Place, Suite A, Davis, California ([email protected])
William R. Hildebrandt
Affiliation:
Far Western Anthropological Research Group, 2727 Del Rio Place, Suite A, Davis, California ([email protected])
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Abstract

Over the last several decades, there has been an increasingly robust body of ethnographic research indicating that the sharing of meat is strongly linked to the fitness pursuits of individuals, where successful male hunters achieve various forms of prestige that ultimately lead to greater reproductive success. We argue that the effects of prestige hunting and other similar displays can be traced archaeologically in subsistence, settlement, and material culture profiles, and in the gender division of labor of even the simplest foraging societies—in this case Great Basin Middle Archaic (4500-1000 B.P.) hunter-gatherers. In contrast with optimal faraging and other efficiency models that attempt to account for such behaviors, we apply costly signaling theory to explain when foraging currencies shifted from calories to prestige among Great Basin foragers. The application of such an approach has the ability to integrate a series of disparate, subsistence- and non-subsistence-related observations regarding Great Basin lifeways and, in so doing, revise our traditional understanding of prehistoric culture change in this region.

Résumé

Résumé

Durante las últimas décadas, se ha generado una gran cantidad de investigación etnográfica indicando de manera contundente que el hecho de compartir de la came está fuertemente ligado a la búsqueda de mayor aptitud de los individuos, donde los cazadores masculinos exitosos logran diferentes formas de prestigio, las cuales llevan finalmente a un mayor éxito reproductivo. Proponemos que los efectos de cazar para la obtención de prestigio y otras manifestaciones similares pueden ser rastreados arqueológicamente en los perfiles de subsistencia, asentamiento y cultura material así como en la división del trabajo por género que se encuentra hasta en las sociedades recolectoras más sencillas, como es la de cazadores-recolectores del Arcaico Medio (4500—1000A.P.) en la Cuenca Grande. En contraste con la recolección óptima y otros modelos de eficiencia que intentan explicar tales comportamientos, aplicamos la teoría de señalamiento de costo para explicar cuando las divisas de la recolección cambiaron de calorías a prestigio entre los recolectores de la Cuenca Grande. La aplicación de este enfoque tiene la capacidad de integrar una serie de observaciones dispares relacionadas con la subsistencia, y otras que no lo están, respecto a los modos de vida en la Cuenca Grande, y así revisar nuestra interpretación tradicional sobre el cambio cultural prehistórico en esta región.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 70 , Issue 4 , October 2005 , pp. 695 - 712
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for American Archaeology 2005

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