Food sharing is a topic that has been widely studied from an ethnographic viewpoint, with numerous examples of how individual hunter gatherer groups share food. However, the majority of theories that try to explain the reasons, motivations and causes of food sharing within hunter gatherer societies have not been considered archaeologically. The Magdalenian settlement site at Pincevent (level IV-20) in the Paris Basin, France is one of very few sites where food sharing has been identified archaeologically (Enloe 2003). Neither ethnographic analogy nor theoretical have been used to interpret the patterns of food sharing identified at Pincevent.

Therefore I intend to consider the theories relating to the food sharing practices of hunter gatherer groups. In particular those relating to Arctic and Sub-Arctic groups, as the climate and environment make their habitat similar to that of Late Upper Palaeolithic in France. A unifying feature of all of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic groups is that they all practice delayed return economies due to the seasonality of the climate, so any effects on the theories of food sharing from this type of economy and subsistence strategy will be taken into consideration. One of these groups, the Nunamiut will be used to provide a comparative analogy for the patterns food sharing at Pincevent. This will be used to provide further interpretations of the causes of food sharing and the organisation of the site at Pincevent.

As well as using the comparative analogy to study Pincevent, the theoretical models developed by Waguespack (2002) to study the spatial patterning of variance reduction and tolerated theft (or equal and unequal sharing) as food sharing practices will also be applied. Before I use these models to study the patterns at Pincevent I am going to look at the theory behind variance reduction and tolerated theft as reasons for food sharing, in order to provide a background for the interpretation of the Late Upper Palaeolithic settlement site at Pincevent, France.