| Abstract: |
This paper investigates forager mobility organization in seasonal tropical environments and, speci?cally, how mobility strategies have affected subsistence and settlement organization. The proposed model, based on cross-cultural comparisons, suggests that two mobility organizational systems exist in seasonal tropical environments: residential mobility in the wet season and logistical mobility as an organizational response to the dry season. The model is evaluated against archaeological data from Lang Kamnan, a Late and post-Pleistocene cave site in western Thailand. Results of the analyses of archaeological and environmental data indicate Lang Kamnan was occupied sporadically from the Late Pleistocene to Holocene, and that residential mobility was employed by small groups of foragers using a generalized subsistence technology during the wet season. The site currently lacks evidence of dry season occupation, and thus it is not yet possible to argue for the use of a logistical mobility strategy in the dry season. The proposed mobility model provides an important approach for examining variability in Late and post-Pleistocene cultural systems in tropical environments, particularly in Southeast Asia where such variability continues to be viewed as the consequence of sequential occupation by different cultures such as Hoabinhian.
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