Uncertainty and risk-based decision-making: Hunter-gatherer adaptation to spatiotemporal heterogeneity

Hunter-gatherer land use and diet decision-making is tightly coupled with temporal (i.e., seasonal) and spatial (i.e., landscape) resource variability. This spatiotemporal variation, driven by climatic and hydrological processes poses considerable uncertainties and risks for hunter-gatherer economic success. In this dissertation, I use these contextual and behavioral variables to explore hunter gatherer social responses to resource uncertainty and risk in the Saginaw Bay Drainage of Michigan.;Hunter-gatherer economic decision-making is often framed as responses to nutritional requirements, exploitation efficiency, and as a normative response to environmental conditions (resource constraints and abundance). This project explores decision-making through an alternate basis; of economic security explored through behavioral strategies intended cope and buffer against spatiotemporal risk and uncertainty. To this end, I model cultural and resource landscapes and simulate hunter gatherer economic choices in order to understand the role that uncertainty and risk plays on land use and diet. Further, these models are compared against archaeological material culture (i.e., site locales and features, fauna and flora). Cumulatively, these models are used to better understand economic decision-making during the Late Archaic (5000-2500 B.P.), Early Woodland (2500-2100 B.P.) and Middle Woodland (2100-1500 B.P.).;First, the resulting landscape models indicate considerable large-scale wetland environments that fluctuate seasonally and on a long term basis. Both, the Late Archaic and Middle Woodland periods are heavily wetland influenced, with considerable regional and localized effects. Next, the behavioral model suggests that economic choices intended to address uncertainty and risk are strategies aimed at tackling boundary conditions (i.e., worse case scenarios) and are likely baseline criteria for economic decision-making. Highly effective strategies include a combination of high and low risk resource exploitation with seasonally adjustable diet breadth (large ungulates and diverse plant foods concurrently through a gendered division of labor).;Last, comparative analysis with archaeological materials indicates that hunter-gatherers employ an ever-increasing complex resource and land use strategies over time intended to adapt to both, long term and short term seasonal and spatially variable resource distributions. These behavioral responses results in changes in hunter-gatherer economy including resource and land use diversification, specialization of mobility patterns, expanding exchange networks, and pooling strategies. Further, the research outcomes highlights the benefits of systematic, long-term and regional studies that results in implications for the archaeology that highlight the resilience, and longevity of the hunter-gatherer economy.