ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the foundations of risk-based models and their consequences, and offers an alternative model that explores the implications of systematic burning and wild-resource production for Western Anasazi subsistence organization. If Western Anasazi populations indeed managed their habitats with controlled burning, then many puzzles of Southwestern prehistory, such as punctuated regional occupational sequences may have their origins in fruitful economic processes, rather than in the presumed risks associated with precarious carrying capacities. Pinyon-juniper woodland is a widespread vegetation community that, during prehistoric times, sustained the bulk of Western Anasazi occupation on the Colorado Plateaus. The concatenation of the potential biases has skewed the views of Western Anasazi economic behavior, especially with respect to assertions regarding the lack of human control over the availability and productivity of wild plants grown in anthropogenic environments. Economic models have incorporated information that is skewed in favor of consumption rather than production locales in Western Anasazi landscapes.
