Sexual division of labor and central place foraging: a model for the Carson Desert of western Nevada

Abstract

Archaeological models of hunter-gatherer subsistence often imply that the influence of men’s or women’s foraging effort on settlement patterns varied over time, but fail to consider how central place foraging may reflect conflicting subsistence interests between men and women. For example, earlier studies of Carson Desert prehistory suggest a semi-sedentary, gathering strategy replaced a mobile, hunting-oriented strategy in response to diminishing densities of large game. This implies that the influence of men’s and women’s work effort on residential location and mobility changed, but assumes both genders foraged for the common good rather than striving for different goals. A new central place foraging model based on a human behavioral ecology perspective of sexual division of labor considers how men and women might reconcile conflicting foraging interests given likely resource abundance, return rates, and transport costs. Men’s hunting returns must be high enough to reliably provision children for a hunting-oriented settlement pattern to occur. Otherwise, men should logistically hunt out of bases positioned to facilitate women’s foraging. Therefore, a hunting-oriented strategy seems unlikely in the Late Holocene Carson Desert.