NORTH AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGIST, Vol.

21(3) 217-231, 2000

STRATEGY AND TACTIC IN THE ANALYSIS OF

ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS

MARK Q. SUTTON
California State University, Bakersfield

ABSTRACT
Archaeologists studying past cultural systems commonly employ the concept
of strategy to characterize both general and specific aspects of those systems.
It is herein argued that a “strategy” is a plan; a general concept or blueprint
conceived to achieve a goal. The fulfillment of a strategy requires that
specific, lower-order, actions be taken. These actions are tactics—small-scale
activities that generate a material record. It is the patterned remains of tactical
behavior that form, and are recovered from, the archaeological record, with
higher-order strategies being inferred from some understanding of tactics. In
practice, however, many researchers interchange the concepts of strategy and
tactic, equating plans with actions and vice versa. This tends to homogenize
the reconstruction of strategies and masks the diversity, variability, and
adaptive nature of the tactical inventory within the larger cultural system.
Thus, the degree and scale of initial archaeological analysis should be at the
level of tactic, rather than of strategy, an approach that would broaden the
archaeological perspective in modeling and understanding past systems.

INTRODUCTION
Archaeologists employ the concept of “strategy” to classify and discuss a large
variety of past behaviors. The use of the concept seems to have been originally
intended to portray broad adaptational organizations, such as hunter-gatherer or
agriculturalist, but has since been applied to any number of both large and
small-scale activities, including mobility patterns, lithic reduction techniques,
settlement patterns, and seed processing, to name but a few. The widespread use of
strategy as an analytical concept for both general and specific behaviors masks

217
Ó 2000, Baywood Publishing Co., Inc.
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diversity and variability within specific behaviors by equating them with more
general ones.
A strategy is a plan, usually developed at a number of levels with particular
goals or objectives in mind. Plans do not leave tangible remains in the archaeo-
logical record, except as written documents. Only tactics—actions undertaken to
implement plans or strategies—result in the formation of a material record. It is
argued herein that strategies are general behaviors or plans, and constitute a
separate and higher-order analytical unit from the more specific, lower-order
behaviors that involve actions. These actions, or tactics, derive from strategies
but are separate from them.
This distinction is much more than a semantic issue. Once a strategy is defined,
it tends to carry with it significant sociopolitical connotations, such as political
complexity, subsistence type, and mobility. If the concepts of strategy and tactic
are interchanged or confused, then even small-scale activities could be seen as
being reflective of major components in an archaeological culture. There is no
question that archaeologists must understand and interpret both levels of behavior,
but it is equally as important not to confuse them.

STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

Strategies
“Strategy” is a term commonly used (and very much overused), but rarely
defined, in reference to hunter-gatherer systems. Cordell and Plog (1979:409)
operationally defined strategies as “the modifications of behavior and material
items that prehistoric peoples made in attempting to cope with one another
and with the natural environment,” further noting that “the majority of these
strategies were probably quite short lived.” Davidson (1983:80) defined strategies
as “the combined patterning of tactical methods over a wider area and a longer
period.”
In its most common usage, however, a strategy is really a plan, an approach
referring to long-range goals. The basic adaptational approach of a group, such as
hunting and gathering, is a large-scale plan and so a strategy, but is not commonly
defined as such. Generally, strategies are the plans made to accomplish the various
general objectives of the primary adaptation. Plans at any level are passive
concepts; no real physical action is required to formulate a plan, although con-
siderable information, experience, and judgment are necessary to make good ones,
keeping in mind that there is no guarantee a plan will work.
To most anthropologists, strategy has at least two meanings. First is the strategy/
plan that existed in the minds of the people being studied, essentially an emic
construct. This definition of strategy is something of a mental template, the way
things should have been if all went according to plan. Contingency plans are
components of strategies, even if never implemented or manifested in the
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS / 219

archaeological record, although preparation for contingency plans would be

present in the record. The second meaning is etic, a definition generated by the
archaeologist interpreting the material record. There is no guarantee that the
two will be the same.

Tactics

Tactics are the active methods used to execute or accomplish the goals of a
strategy. In recent years, there has been an increasing use of “tactics” as a concept.
Davidson (1983:80) defined tactics as the “short-term methods of exploitation
at a particular location.” Binford (1982:11) used the term in describing forager/
collector use of landscapes (mobility and positioning patterning), noting that
“. . . point-to-point mobility is more characteristic of logistically organized
tactics,” while “. . . forager strategies emphasize tactics aimed at learning about
the distribution of resources in a region. Foragers employ coverage tactics,
while collector site patterning derives from positioning tactics relative to a prior
knowledge.” Making a distinction between strategy and tactics, Gamble (1986:44,
Table 2.5) classified “strategic and tactical decisions” into three levels: 1) goals;
2) strategy options and constraints; and 3) tactics available.
In examining the late prehistoric Numic cultural pattern in the Great Basin,
Bettinger (1994:47-48) briefly discussed tactics in much the same way as it is
defined in this article, arguing that “procurement and storage” techniques and “the
distinctive technologies associated with these, should be among the most reliable
signatures of the Numic strategy. ” In this sense, Bettinger (1994) defined the
actual activities conducted by Numic populations—those that resulted in archaeo-
logical remains—as tactics. The Numic “strategy” was characterized as a higher
scale concept, defined by the signatures of the tactics used.
However, it is often the case that the term tactics is used as simply a synonym for
strategy. For example, Binford (1978:487) used the term “particular strategies” to
define tactics and “overall adaptations” to describe what most archaeologists have
called strategy. Stiner (1994:passim) used the term tactics, but also used “strategy”
to mean a similar thing (e.g., Stiner, 1994:296). Stiner (1994:312) also distin-
guished between “hunting” and “scavenging” strategies, at one point designating
them “classes of tactics,” and subsequently referring to them as “two general
strategy classes” (Stiner, 1994:384-385). She did, however, make an important
point:
tactics can be combined in a multitude of ways. It is the patterns of tactical
combination used to cope with spatial and temporal characteristics of food
supplies that describe an important dimension of foraging niche in predatory
species (Stiner, 1994:237).

All cultures, on both the individual and institutional levels, utilize a large variety
of tactics. Cultures possess and retain an inventory or corpus of tactics, some of
220 / SUTTON

which are used often (even daily), some of which are used infrequently, and some
of which are not used but are still retained in the inventory as part of the retention
of knowledge, flexibility, and resilience, what Binford (1989:19) called “tactical
depth.” Resilience, seen as the depth of the tactical inventory, is an important
analytical concept. Resilience may be related to diversity in the environment
(Denevan, 1983:403) and would form an important mechanism to minimize risk
(also see Winterhalder et al., 1999). As Binford (1972:132) noted, “People draw
on a repertoire of cultural background and experience to meet changing or variable
conditions of their environment . . . We would therefore expect variability in the
archaeological record to reflect these different situations.”
In addition, the execution of a strategy may require that some preparatory tactics
be employed, such as the procurement of supplies and the manufacture of tools,
that can be detected in the archaeological record. Such remains would reflect what
Binford (1989:19) called “planning depth”; the resources (time, energy, materials)
expended and arrangements made in planning for an anticipated action. If that
specific action was never carried out, at least some of the effort expended (e.g.,
toolmaking) may be utilized for some other task.
Many different tactics would be embedded within a strategy, with the tactics
used being dependent on conditions at the time. Thus, the tactics within the
inventory would be used accordingly as short-term conditions changed (cf. the
multidimensional approach of Chatters [1987]). Such changing conditions might
be regular (e.g., seasonal), and specific tactics might easily be planned.
However, unanticipated, short-term changes might necessitate tactical innovation.
The actual strategies would be modified only if conditions changed to a significant
degree, such as with a climatic change. Thus, a culture possessing a “limited”
set of tactics could be seen as reflecting either a generally stable environment
(economic and/or natural) or an narrow adaptation that did not generally require a
response to variability, while one possessing a wide array of tactics to adjust to
changing conditions could be seen reflecting either a less stable environmental
situation or a broad adaptation that required adjustments to even small fluctuations
in the environment.
All tactics begin as new and innovative, usually at the level of the small group or
individual, and are born of a particular circumstance or set of circumstances that
may be newly or rarely encountered. At some point, successful tactics will enter
the tactical inventory of a culture, to be used and modified as necessary and
likely increasing the adaptive ability (and fitness) of that culture (e.g., Denevan,
1983:400). Unsuccessful tactics will be dropped, but may be remembered for later
use if circumstances change. Nevertheless, the initial use of tactics that later prove
unsuccessful will result in some form of material remains. Such remains may
be unique, unusual, or nonnormative (Bennett, 1976:272) and perhaps seen as
“noise.” It is possible that they might be confused with the remains of some other,
successful tactic, perhaps even the same tactic utilized at a different time or in a
different system.
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS / 221

Tactic acquisition, though not necessarily use, is cumulative (see the discussion
by Eder [1984:839-840]). The use of particular tactics are not necessarily reflec-
tive of particular strategies. The absence of evidence of certain tactics within an
archaeologically identified system cannot be used to define a particular system.
For example, agriculturalists continue to hunt wild game and to collect wild plants.
If a farmer went hunting, the resulting small, specialized camp could easily be
classified as belonging to either an agricultural or hunter-gatherer group (see
Gorecki, 1991:256). Thus, archaeologically, evidence of forager tactics would be
present in forager, collector, and agriculturalist systems; collector tactics would be
present in both collector and agriculturalist systems; and agricultural tactics would
be present only in agriculturalist systems.
Recognition of the cumulative nature of tactics may add some understanding
to the current “revisionist” debate regarding whether some hunter-gatherer groups
are “genuine” or just an amalgamation of hunting and gathering along with
practices borrowed from agricultural neighbors that may have influenced their
“mode of subsistence”; that is, a dual existence economy (see Bird-David, 1990,
1992; Headland and Reid, 1989; Kent, 1992; Lee, 1991; Solway and Lee [with
comments], 1990). On the other side of this argument is the fact that all agricultural
economies incorporate hunter-gatherer tactics and so can also be classified as
“dual existence.” This distinction may be one of the problems confounding an
understanding of the Archaic-Formative transition in the American Southwest
(e.g., Upham, 1984).
Finally, the distinction regarding strategy and tactics is not limited to hunter-
gatherers but applies to all cultures, including agriculturalists. If foraging (and/or
collecting) means obtaining wild foods from the landscape, then all cultures,
including industrialized ones, do some foraging (e.g., sport fishing, deer hunting,
picking wild berries on the weekend). While the use of such hunter-gatherer tactics
contributes only very minimally to subsistence in industrialized economies, the
issue becomes one of degree. In fact, one would be hard pressed to find any extant
culture that is totally isolated from hunter-gatherer tactics; it is just a matter of
distance. One could argue that there is now a hunter-gatherer/agriculturalist
continuum, as well as a forager/collector continuum.

HUNTER-GATHERER ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES:

THE FORAGER-COLLECTOR CONTINUUM
An illustration of the importance of distinguishing between strategies and
tactics is evident in the evolution and current use of the famous forager-collector
continuum. The systems of adaptation used by human cultures have been vari-
ously called adaptive systems, adaptive strategies, modes of subsistence, among
other terms. In response to discussions regarding hunter-gatherer variability,
Binford (1980) proposed a “continuum” of logistical and residential diversity with
“foragers” at one end and “collectors” at the other (also see Steward, 1968:326;
222 / SUTTON

Wagner, 1960:157). Binford’s (1980) continuum was originally intended as a

mechanism to describe the diversity among hunter-gatherers, but it now seems
used mostly as a dichotomous classification, despite the specific warning against
that use (Binford 1980:19).
As defined by Binford (1980), groups practicing a forager “strategy” generally
move people to the resources. They occupy a series of camps as they move about
the landscape from resource to resource on a daily basis, rarely storing food, and
having no permanent home. In sum, “foragers generally have high residential
mobility, low-bulk inputs [gathering small quantities of resources at any one time],
and regular daily food procurement” (Binford, 1980:9). Hunter-gatherers prac-
ticing a collector “strategy” employ specially organized task groups to exploit
specific resources, often in bulk, with storage being important (Binford, 1980:10).
Thus, collectors move resources to the people. Collectors generally maintain
permanent or semipermanent residences (being generally less mobile than
foragers), with many smaller activity locations used briefly by specific task groups
to obtain resources.
The forager-collector continuum is widely used by archaeologists. While most
acknowledge and employ the “continuum” as an analytical unit (e.g., Shott,
1989:295; Chatters, 1995:342), others nonetheless proceed to pigeonhole archaeo-
logical cultures into either a forager or collector strategy, viewing the two strate-
gies as relatively stable and uniform, likely “a result in part of a superorganic
bias . . . as well as a macroscale and systemic approach” (Denevan, 1983:400). The
assignment of a culture to one or the other strategy usually is based on few criteria
(Binford, 1994:556), such as having villages or traveling to resources. Such a
classification defeats the original purpose of the continuum; by dichotomizing
archaeological cultures, diversity is overlooked in favor of a classification into
one or the other “strategy.”

The Sociopolitical Baggage

Even if informal, the assignment of an archaeological culture as practicing a

forager or collector strategy carries with it considerable sociopolitical baggage,
such as presumptions of population, mobility, and storage. Cultures are assigned to
a strategy based on certain criteria and once assigned, it is assumed that they will
also exhibit the other (even though theoretical) sociopolitical criteria of that
strategy (e.g., if they have camps, they must also have a small population). Many
researchers view “foragers” as being band-level groups (e.g., Gregg, 1988:22;
Shott, 1989:283) and some (e.g., Gregg, 1988:22) view “collectors” as tribe- or
chiefdom-level groups. Further, there is a tendency to view foragers and collectors
as points not just on a continuum, but also as points on an unilinear evolutionary
scale, “thinking that can snare us into a schema that sees foragers, then collectors,
and then farmers and civilized folk as nodes on a scale of development from simple
to complex” (Chatters, 1987:337). There is a growing practice by anthropologists
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS / 223

to use the term forager to refer to hunter-gatherers in general (e.g., Kelly,

1995:xiv), a practice that itself might mask variation.
The intellectual construction of “normative” strategic categories takes on a life
of its own. Once the classification is made, the construct somehow becomes “fact,”
in that it is rarely questioned. Thus, variability, that is, the tactical inventory,
within the adaptive system of a culture tends to be overlooked, with “standard
generalizations” that “are empirically incorrect” being formed (e.g., Cordell and
Plog, 1979:405).
Endless argument and differences of opinion are certain to surround such
“identification” attempts. This means that the past will vary as a function
of the consensus or lack thereof in equating recognition criteria for a class to
surrogates in the archaeological record, with little understanding other than
opinion guiding such judgments (Binford, 1994:557).

If the typical archaeological approach to hunter-gatherer classification is based

on a macroscale view of culture, it is necessary to append a microscale view so that
variability, adaptive flexibility, and resilience are appreciated. This is especially
important in archaeology, where an understanding of long-term change is depen-
dent upon a detailed understanding of short-term events and processes. The focus
herein is on a hierarchical differentiation of the level and scale in analytical
thought, on higher-order planning concepts versus lower-order actions that result
in material remains; that is, on strategies versus tactics (also see Davidson, 1983).

SCALE OF ANALYSIS
While it may seem to some that the distinction between strategy and tactic is just
a semantic one, the real issue is the scale of initial systems analysis, and many
scales are possible (e.g., Schiffer, 1996:653-654). Many researchers utilize the
“strategy” or “adaptive system” as the starting point for analysis. However,
strategy is a high-order interpretation reflecting the general overall behavior of a
group. The analysis of a strategy is reliant on an understanding of data reflecting
lower-order behaviors, those of small groups or individuals, patterns of data that
are reflective of tactics. Thus, to reach the scale of strategy, one must first consider
tactics, even if informally.
Many of the data that anthropologists consider is at the level of the individual
(Bennett, 1976:271-272), with “strategic action” (defined as tactics in this article)
being “active, goal-achieving behavior . . . specific acts with a predictable degree
of success . . . selected by the individual in a decision-making process.” Eder
(1984:848) suggested that the individual was an important level of analysis for
some mobility studies. This approach makes sense, since tactics are products of
specific individual or small group behaviors and conscious decision-making,
while strategies rarely fall into that category. However, it seems that most archae-
ologists, perhaps in an attempt to work on the “big picture,” use the overall group
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or culture (e.g., band, tribe) as the analytical unit. This is, no doubt, partly due to
the difficulty in “seeing” the individual in the archaeological record.
Leonard (1989:496) also espoused the use of a smaller scale analytical unit, “the
scale of material culture, as opposed to the ‘local Anasazi adaptive system,’”
further comparing material culture to phenotype, and by implication, adaptive
system to genotype. Although Leonard (1989) was discussing scales of evolu-
tionary selection, it is useful to view tactic as phenotype, and strategy as genotype.
Genotypes cannot be adequately considered without an understanding of pheno-
type, nor can strategies be analyzed without a delineation of tactics. Archaeo-
logical analysis should begin at the level of action rather than that of plan. Even the
archaeological modeling of a plan (strategy) would require sufficient information
on actions (tactics).

DISCUSSION
Archaeologists recover and analyze the material signatures of short-term indi-
vidual or small group behaviors; that is, tactical behavior. Given sufficient infor-
mation on tactics, tactical diversity (resilience) and tactical use, models of strate-
gies can then be constructed. These models can then be tested as additional
information on tactical behavior is generated. As conditions change and tactics
evolve, so will strategies. In fact, the study of changing tactics over time, space,
and circumstance is the study of process (cf. Cordell and Plog, 1979:409), a
primary goal in archaeology.
However, it must be remembered that tactics cannot just be “added up” to
reconstruct a strategy. Tactics reflect (or refract [Shott, 1989:284]) behaviors
utilized under unique conditions. The material remains of tactics form the initial
patterns of the archaeological record, but they will not necessarily account for the
entire record, since the same tactics may be components of very different adaptive
systems or “differing states of a single system” (Binford, 1978:4).
A single group may have employed different suites of tactics at different times
(e.g., seasonally) or under diverse conditions (e.g., Binford, 1987:451; Bettinger,
1991:72), resulting in a diverse and complex archaeological pattern (Binford,
1980:19). For example, in a group that practiced fission-fusion, people may have
foraged—leaving a “forager” (e.g., band-level) archaeological signature-in one
part of the year and collected—leaving a “collector” (e.g., tribe-level) archaeo-
logical signature—in another (see Vierra and Doleman, 1994:76). It is also
possible that a group could shift back and forth between being mobile hunter-
gatherers and sedentary agriculturalists (see Madsen and Simms, 1998; Upham,
1984), thus mixing evidence of tactics and masking variability in adaptation
(cf. Binford, 1982:13-14, 18-19, Table 1) and leaving a very confused record
of “strategies.” Without precise temporal control (a rare situation), these two
apparently different archaeological signatures would probably be interpreted as
two separate systems, one presumably having replaced the other.
 ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS / 225

Traditionally, archaeologists look at a site (one point in space and time), outline
(most often incompletely) its traits (function, content, age, etc.), and assign it to a
particular strategy. Having been assigned to a strategy, the political, social, and
economic behaviors of the site inhabitants are then modeled. This is an impor-
tant point for archaeologists studying hunter-gatherer groups. In ethnographic
research, anthropologists can (in theory) observe, directly or indirectly, a greater
diversity of cultural responses, thereby gaining a better understanding of a
particular settlement/subsistence system as an integral, dynamic unit. In archaeo-
logical contexts, we observe (i.e., excavate or record) one static segment of a
system (an archaeological site) and use those data to infer the system as a whole.
An incorrect identification of a habitation site as a camp or village could result in
an incorrect classification of a system as either forager or collector. Once classified
as forager or collector, the interpretation of the entire settlement system of the
archaeological culture might proceed unabated.

An Example

All cultures will employ a general adaptation, such as hunting and gathering or
hunting and gathering coupled with part-time agriculture. Within this adaptation, a
number of strategies would be embedded, such as mobility, hunting, or gardening.
A range (perhaps even a wide range) of possible tactics (a tactical inventory) will
be used by each culture to accomplish its goals. Which tactic a culture (or
individual) employs will depend on a variety of factors, including season, avail-
able resources, social and/or religious requirements, convenience, the skill of
persons involved, weather, and many other conditions. A tactic will be chosen and
utilized, and a material record will result.
The sequence of planning and execution of strategies starts with the general
adaptation and moves from the top down through the system to the tactic being
used. Archaeologists studying past cultures begin their work with the material
record of a few tactics and, using inference, move quickly up through the system to
infer strategies. This is basically the opposite direction from which the record
formed. It is easy to take many wrong turns in the analytical journey back up
the system.
This can be illustrated using a hypothetical culture, Culture X, that employs a
hunter-gatherer adaptation. Let us say that Culture X also employs five basic
strategies within its adaptation; mobility, gathering, lithic reduction, hunting, and
trading for agricultural products. Each of these strategies contains two possible
tactics and individuals within the culture choose one or the other tactic, depending
on the conditions. Thus, moving from the top down to the bottom of the system is
the result of choices being made at the tactical level. These choices might reflect
a variety of circumstances, including environmental conditions, social and/or
political considerations, and some of these decisions might even be poor.
226 / SUTTON

In even the simple system outlined for Culture X, the various choices results in
thirty-two possible combinations, each of which would precipitate a different
archaeological signature. In Figure 1, the results of two of the possible thirty-two
tactical circumstances are detailed. The differences in the system are the result of
decisions made at the tactical rather than the strategic level, yet the archaeological
signatures are very different. It would be easy to view the record of Circumstance
A and infer a small, mobile, band-level forager group employing part-time agri-
culture. The same group, with the same strategies and the same tactical inventory
but a different set of decisions, would leave a very different signature (Circum-
stance B). This latter signature could be interpreted as reflecting a large, sedentary,
tribe-level collector group with no agriculture. That these two radical interpre-
tations could result from the same group under different conditions is the entire
point. We must be more careful.

CONCLUSION

It is not high-order strategies that are recovered from the archaeological record,
but the remains of lower-order tactical actions. Strategies are mental constructs
(plans) of the way in which a certain group of actions (tactics) should be accom-
plished to achieve goals. The tactics themselves are what are executed, and so form
the pattern of materials observed in the archaeological record. A strategy is then
inferred from some archaeological knowledge of tactics.
The same is true of systems in general, both large and small. Systems are not
excavated at any one site, only components of systems. These components are then
pieced together to form a model of the system. Such a model is then tested against
additional data. Thus, a strategy assigned to an archaeological site or culture is just
a model, constructed from an analysis of the remains of tactics inferred at that site
or area. We must be more judicious in our assignment of “strategies” and pay
much closer attention to the tactics utilized by a group, particularly since any set
of tactics may overlap into a number of different strategies.
If the focus of analysis in hunter-gatherer settlement and subsistence studies
begins with tactical inventories (or adaptations) rather than strategies, perhaps we
can begin with fewer assumptions and so recognize and understand a greater
variety of responses and behaviors. Each culture employs a wide range of tactics,
many of which will overlap with other groups, and it is this diversity of response
that is central to their “cultural ecology.” Without understanding this diversity
in tactics, one cannot understand the adaptation of the culture or the culture
itself. Since strategies are so heavily burdened with assumptions, their use as
archaeological pigeonhole categories limits our understanding of past systems.
However, the identification of tactics, or suites of tactics, will not, in itself,
delineate the behavior or organization (“strategy”) of a past cultural system. This
is because
 CIRCUMSTANCE A
ADAPTIVE Hunting and Gathering
SYSTEM
STRATEGY Mobility Gathering Lithic Reduction Hunting Agriculture
TACTICAL Either Frequent or Rare Expoitation of Either Using Either Blade Hunting Either Either Trading
INVENTORY Residential Moves Acorns or Pine Nuts or Bifacial Cores Deer or Rabbits for Maize or Not
TACTIC Frequent Exploitation Use of Blade Deer Hunting Trade for
EMPLOYED Residential Moves of Acorns Cores Maize

ARCHAEOLOGICAL HUNTER-GATHERER SYSTEMS / 227

RESULTANT Small Camps Acorn Blade Manufacture Deer Maize Remains
ARCHAEOLOGICAL Remains Debris Remains
RECORD
CIRCUMSTANCE B
ADAPTIVE Hunting and Gathering
SYSTEM
STRATEGY Mobility Gathering Lithic Reduction Hunting Agriculture
TACTICAL Either Frequent or Rare Expoitation of Either Using Either Blade Hunting Either Either Trading
INVENTORY Residential Moves Acorns or Pine Nuts or Bifacial Cores Deer or Rabbits for Maize or Not
TACTIC Rare Residential Exploitation Use of Bifacial Rabbit Hunting No Trade
EMPLOYED Moves of Pine Nuts Cores
RESULTANT Large Camps Pine Nut Biface Manufacture Rabbit No Maize
ARCHAEOLOGICAL Remains Debris Remains Remains
RECORD

Figure 1. Greatly simplified adaptive system of a hypothetical hunting and gathering culture. Under both
Circumstances A and B, the strategies and tactical inventories are the same, but the actual tactics
employed differ between circumstances, resulting in different archaeological signatures.
228 / SUTTON

[o]rganization is not just behavior. It is the manner in which behaviors are

juxtapositioned and integrated with one another, and these generalizations
cannot be seen simply by the identification of discrete behaviors themselves,
nor by inventorying the different ones present at different sites (Binford,
1987:503).

While a hierarchy of primary strategies, secondary strategies, and tactics is

presented herein, it is not intended to be taken as a universal classification. Rather,
the conceptual use of tactics instead of strategies as a frame of reference in the
study of archaeological cultural systems is meant to stimulate archaeologists to
recognize and explore variability in the archaeological record, rather than lumping
large chunks of behavior into a single “strategy,” and in turn, allow for a more
thoughtful analysis of such systems.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I appreciate the comments and suggestions of Matt Des Lauriers, Jill Gardner,
Michael Jochim, Kent Lightfoot, Robert E. Parr, Michael B. Schiffer, Kristin D.
Sobolik, Robert M. Yohe II, and particularly Michael A. Glassow. However, they
each have insisted that I retain sole responsibility for the content and logic of
the article.

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WINTERHALDER, BRUCE, FLORA LU, and BRAM TUCKER

1999 Risk-Sensitive Adaptive Tactics: Models and Evidence from Subsistence
Studies in Biology and Anthropology, Journal of Archaeological Research,
7:4, pp. 301-348.

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