ABSTRACT
This chapter examines how social networks might have operated to reduce risk by providing a context for reciprocal exchanges among groups of hunter-gatherers or part-time agriculturists in prehistoric central New Mexico. For the prehistoric inhabitants at the Kite Site, social interactions with hunter-gatherers or part-agricultural groups near Corona and Ancho could have provided access to resources in order to reduced the risk of one kind of resource stress: that which may have occurred during years of below-average productivity. The chapter addresses how climatic variability affected prehistoric hunter-gatherers at one site in central New Mexico. Among hunter-gatherers, social relationships are maintained by regular interaction and exchange of goods and/or labor within the context of institutionalized reciprocity. Ideally, of course, investigation of climatic patterning in central New Mexico might include evaluation of all weather stations in comparison with all other weather stations.
