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>Can I presume that  they were =
>primarily gatherers, water and child carriers, preparers of skins etc?  =

Hi Persephone. Glad to see a post from you.

I think a good strategy is to imagine what they might have done
activity-wise. For instance, assuming you are correct in that women were
primarily gatherers, I would think:

Carrying: Any heavy or awkward object for distance would be good. If using
weights, the farmers walk is great for this. Just carry a couple of
dumbells for any time or distance you choose. Vary it by carrying up and
down hills, or doing one side at a time. Variations include carrying a
barbell, either overhead or supported at shoulder height. (I do farmers
walks at almost every workout). You can also carry sandbags, or a backpack,
or even rocks (carefully).

Gatherers would do lots of bending, stooping, and squatting: So I would
think any variations of those would would good, whether with weights
(dumbells maybe) or without. Deadlifts are, in my opinion, a must.

Reaching up to pick fruit: Calf raises and presses. Stretching overhead

Lots of h-g women are known to carry loads on their heads. Might look kinda
funny, but it would duplicate the activity precisely. Maybe a basket or
container filled with rocks?

Would a group of gatheres perhaps post a lookout up in a tree to look for
predators? Chins (or pulldowns if you can't manage chins), dips and
one-legged squats would approximate this (or - you could just climb a
tree!)

And sprinting (to get away from that leopard).

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Just remember to keep it variable and somewhat chaotic. Recovery from
exercise is important, but I think it is somewhat overrated. So, if you
work the same muscle group a couple days in a row, in the long run, I think
it matters little.

If you are ultimately wishing to increase your strength, I believe
micro-loading (add very small increments of weight) is the best approach.
Even on a daily basis. I once read about an experiment with a bird, a
seagull I believe. The bird was captured, tagged, and a small weight was
attached to one of it's wings. Some time later the bird was recaptured. The
muscles with in the wing with the weight attached were almost twice the
size of the wing without the weight - even though the bird, in theory,
should not have recovered it's muscle sufficiently to have that kind of
growth.

Another example would be elite cyclists. Even though they work their leg
muscles pretty much daily, some of them have quads that are as large as
bodybuilders. The key, I believe, is microloading. Working a "little bit"
harder each day.

Some sandbag lifters add a handfull of sand to their bags before each
workout. Seems like a pretty simple approach to me.

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