ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we introduce the ecological concept of “landscape of fear” and how hunters developed communal hunting systems that manipulated animal behavior for the former’s benefit and to the animal’s detriment. Beyond the development of specific communal hunting technologies, hunter-gatherer, agricultural, and pastoral societies also developed social institutions that fostered the development of individual prestige as well as integrated communal hunting into the rituals, motifs, and ceremonies. Many of these institutions left structural remains in the archaeological record as well as iconographic depictions (petroglyphs and pictographs). Here, we highlight the social aspects of those systems found in Southwest and Central Asia and North America.
