Caves and spatial constraint: The prehistoric implications

The purposes of this chapter are to introduce "spatial constraint theory" to archaeology and to suggest that it is relevant to understanding prehistoric adaptations to caves and rockshelters. In the 1960s when I was first introduced to archaeology and anthropology, I read works of the Kulturkreislehre School (Kluckhohn 1936) as historical documents. Being of a mathematical bent, I was fascinated also by some of the work of Graebner (1911) and its archaeological counterparts. I sat in on a seminars by visiting professors Robert MacArthur (1984; MacArthur and Connell 1966; MacArthur and Wilson 1967) and George Gaylord Simpson (1965, 1967) at the University of Arizona in the late 1960s. I read E. C. Pielou (1969, 1977, 1991), and was greatly influenced by Peter Haggett's and Richard Chorley's articles and books on locational analysis and spatial modeling (Haggett 1965; Haggett and Chorley 1970; Chorley 1973; Chorley and Haggett 1968, 1970). The quantitative geographers and ecologists were also important in shaping my thinking about the location of both cultural and natural sites. Many years later (the spring and summer of 1996) I had a chance to spend several months with Peter Haggett at the Institute for Advanced Study in Bristol where he was the director. My interests in such topics were reawakened.