The Seasonal Strategy

In this seminar, we have proposed to explore seasonal economic organization among non-sedentary human groups, both prehistoric and contemporary. The objective of the current discussion is to point up certain features of seasonal economy, which can provide foci for reconstructing prehistoric cultures and bases for the generation of hypotheses concerning the derivation and general implications of seasonality, which can be tested with archaeological data.

These hypotheses may be derived inductively from generalizations of available data or deductively from existing bodies of knowledge. I have noted elsewhere that in the deductive formulation of such models either for specific reconstruction or for general and specific explanation, it is essential to explore various sources, not only within anthropology, but from other conceptual systems, such as general systems theory or game theory.