摘要：For at least the past 8000 years, small-scale farmers in semi-arid environments have had tomitigate shortfalls in crop production due to variation in precipitation and stream flow. To reduce theirvulnerability to a shortfall in their food supply, small-scale farmers developed short-term strategies,including storage and community-scale sharing, to mitigate inter-annual variation in crop production, andlong-term strategies, such as migration, to mitigate the effects of sustained droughts. We use thearchaeological and paleoclimatic records from A.D. 900-1600 in two regions of the American Southwestto explore the nature of variation in the availability of water for crops, and the strategies that enhanced theresilience of prehistoric agricultural production to climatic variation. Drawing on information concerningcontemporary small-scale farming in semi-arid environments, we then suggest that the risk coping andmitigation strategies that have endured for millennia are relevant to enhancing the resilience of contemporaryfarmers' livelihoods to environmental and economic perturbations
