Affluent Foragers of the North American Plains

Description

This study takes a landscape archaeological look at the foragers of North America’s Black Hills. After situating the study in a theoretical context, the author considers the specific human subsistence resources in the western Black Hills and how these structure the effective environment, presenting a model of specific procurement systems for related sets of resources and suggesting the characteristics of technological organization necessary for the operation of such systems. In the subsequent analysis of the western Black Hills archaeological record, regional distributions are emphasized, while technological organization is inferred from the spatial structure of the archaeological assemblage. Finally, the author discusses the effects of western Black Hills ecosystems on the dynamics of prehistoric human foragers. Regional land use, social and subsistence strategies provide an alternative scenario of Northwest Plains cultural behaviour.