582 hunting, fishing, and gathering: further reading Stone weight carved in the form of the head of an aquatic bird and thought to have been used in fi shing, from Orange County, Florida, dating to the Middle Woodland Period (about 400 b.c.e to c.e.) (© The Trustees of the British Museum) ests, grasslands, and river valleys The tribes of the American Northwest, for example, found abundant resources in the region’s forests and along the coastlines Salmon satisfied a large percentage of people’s nutritional needs In the grasslands of the North American Plains and the savannas of South America, large game animals, including prominently the bison in North America, provided not only meat but also hides for clothing, blankets, and shelters, as well as bones, hooves, and other remains that could be put to use In regions where vegetation was sparser, evidence suggests that early huntergatherers burned grasslands and woodlands This practice encouraged the growth of new, tender vegetation, which attracted game animals that could be hunted Hunting and gathering were done almost exclusively on foot Muscle power was the only form of power available The horse was not used for hunting in North and South America until much later The primary exception was among people who lived in aquatic environments along coastlines throughout the Americas and eventually on the islands of Central America These people relied more heavily on boats, rafts, and canoes to fish and hunt such animals as seals and whales in the far north These two subsistence patterns had relative advantages and disadvantages Aquatic foragers were able to secure larger amounts of food with relatively little physical effort, so their communities became much denser with people The disadvantage was that they tended to be dependent on a limited range of foods A sudden change in weather patterns or a disease that wiped out an important food species could leave them vulnerable to starvation In contrast, pedestrian foragers, because they moved about within a wide geographical region, relied on a much wider range of foods, making them less susceptible to climatic changes, changes in rainfall, and similar catastrophic events However, they had to exert much more physical effort than did aquatic foragers, sometimes burning more calories in the quest for food than they were able to acquire Put simply, aquatic foragers had more than pedestrian foragers had, but the food supply of pedestrian foragers tended to be more secure and reliable See also agriculture; art; ceramics and pottery; climate and geography; crafts; death and burial practices; food and diet; gender structures and roles; health and disease; literature; migration and population movements; natural disasters; religion and cosmology; settlement patterns; social organization; sports and recreation; trade and exchange; weaponry and armor FURTHER READING Jeannine Auboyer, Daily Life in Ancient India, from 200 b.c to 700 a.d., trans Simon Watson Taylor (New York: Macmillan, 1965) Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen, ed., Ancient Fishing and Fish Processing in the Black Sea Region, vol (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 2005) Robert Bettinger, Hunter-Gatherers: Archaeological and Evolutionary Theory (New York: Plenum Press, 1991) David L Bomgardner, The Story of the Roman Amphitheatre (London and New York: Routledge, 2000) Douglas J Brewer and Renée F Friedman, Fish and Fishing in Ancient Egypt (Warminster, U.K.: Aris and Phillips, 1989) Peter Garnsey, Famine and Food Supply in the Graeco-Roman World: Responses to Risk and Crisis (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1988) Patrick Houlihan, The Animal World of the Pharaohs (London: Thames and Hudson, 1996) Richard Lee, The !Kung San: Men, Women, and Work in a Foraging Society (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1979) Lisbeth Pedersen, Anders Fischer, and Bent Aaby, eds., The Danish Storebælt since the Ice Age: Man, Sea, and Forest (Copenhagen, Denmark: A/S Storebælt Fixed Link, 1997) Marek Zvelebil, Hunters in Transition (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1986)