C

Cabinets and cupboards are extensions of early forms of food storage-caches and canisters-both designed to assure a supply of foods such as game, nuts, and plants abundant during only part of the year. The Havasupai, who resided near the Grand Canyon, sun-dried local desert fruit and berries. They puréed squawbush and desert thorn berries, dried the purée, and stored it in buckskin sacks. To protect precious supplies from rodents and human raiders, they created a storage system under canyon ledges away from the village. Out of sight at a level above possible flooding, they constructed storage cists, stone chambers cemented with clay. When they had filled the cache with one season’s harvest, they sealed the outer surface with mud.