ABSTRACT
Marked sacred sites of hunter-gatherer band societies create places on the landscape to which people come, either in large aggregations from a wide, surrounding territory or as individuals and small groups moving widely over a large area. In both cases, although the ostensible reason for this movement is religious, ritual, or ceremonial obligation, significant embedded functions of the movement are to monitor environmental conditions either directly or through inter-personal communication. This gathering or refreshing of environmental knowledge goes beyond that accomplished in the normal course of foraging activities and social visitation. It goes beyond the spatial extent of these routine activities and it covers places seldom otherwise visited, ultimately resulting in the acquisition of knowledge over areas large enough to extend beyond the range of rare but catastrophic regional resource depression or failure. Although some of the ways in which adaptive behavioral responses are embedded in these and other ritual, ceremonial, and religious beliefs and activities are becoming known, a number of questions about such mechanisms remain to be investigated, and they are briefly outlined. In closing, examples are presented which show the potential utility of considering these information-storage mechanisms in archaeological interpretation.
