Thresholds to group mobility among hunter-gatherers: An archaeological example from southern New England

Social processes of production which articulate with hunter-gatherer mobility are systematically examined. Mobility is particularly crucial in the context of egalitarian social relations. Hunter-gatherers determine mobility and constitute space by manipulating production to create social relations. Production processes that are organized to promote economic interdependence, equity, and cooperative labor limit mobility and lead to situations in which autonomy is contested. A methodology is developed to make these social processes visible to the archaeologist. Data from the third millennium before the present from southern New England provide the context for exploring social processes of mobility. Viewed in this light, the archaeological record of the third millennium can be seen as the result of considerable tension in the social organization of production. By explicitly developing a set of social arguments and bringing them to bear on archaeological data, I expose variation similar to that predicted by models of resource distribution. These arguments recognize the richness, ambiguities and contradictions of the data that are an outcome and a part of human strategies of acting and interacting with material culture in the social arena. The social arguments developed here apply to and aid in understanding archaeological assemblages from other times or places