Includes bibliographical references (pages 127-139) and index.
Introduction : cultural responses to risk and uncertainity / P. Halstead and J. O'Shea -- The spirit of survival : cultural responses to resource variability in North Alaska / L. Minc and K. Smith -- Saving it for later : storage by prehistoric hunter-gatherers in Europe / P. Rowley-Conwy and M. Zvelebil -- The role of wild resources in small-scale agricultural systems : tales from the lakes and the plains / J. O'Shea -- The economy has a normal surplus : economic stability and social change among early farming communities of Thessaly, Greece / P. Halstead -- Changing responses to drought among the Wodaabe of Niger / K. Legge -- Of grandfathers and grand theories : the hierarchised ordering of responses to hazard in a Greek rural community / H. Forbes.
Risk and the polis : the evolution of institutionalised responses to food supply problems in the ancient Greek state / P. Garnsey and I. Morris -- Monitoring interannual variability : an example from the period of early state development in southwestern Iran / H. Wright, R. Redding and S. Pollock -- Public intervention in the food supply in pre-industrial Europe / W. Jongman and R. Dekker -- Conclusion : bad year economics / J. O'Shea and P. Halstead.