Abstract

Large-scale storage of meat is a crucial component of many hunter-gatherer subsistence systems, and often entails the construction of specialized caches. However, our ability to reconstruct past storage behaviour is limited by the fact that caches are usually emptied by their builders, leaving little zooarchaeological evidence behind. This paper reports on the contents of three caches near Baker Lake, Nunavut, which are remarkable because their contents were never retrieved, leaving a large sample of bones derived from a minimum of 14 caribou. The observed element distributions are discussed in terms of meat utility indices, transport costs and ethnographically-documented patterns of caribou butchery.