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Pit Cooking And Intensification Of Subsistence In The American Southwest And Pacific Northwest, Pei-Lin Yu

Pei-Lin Yu

Pit cooking leaves durable, measurable remains and is relevant to the study of resource intensification. This thesis examines pit cooking as a means to explore and quantify the initial conditions for two different modes of intensification: incipient Southwestern food production and semi-sedentized foraging in the inland Pacific Northwest.
First, analytical tools for variability in pit ovens, and a model statement about the role of pit cooking in intensification, were drawn from an ethnographic frame of reference governing pit oven function, physical variation, and contexts of use. Using those tools, hypothetical statements were developed for the relationship between pit oven cooking, …