Anth 3511 Professor Gibbon

The Great Basin and Western Interior

The Great Basin Environment.

A. A 400,000 sq mile desert between the Rocky Mountains and the Sierra Nevada with alternating high mountain ranges and deep valley basins. Altitudinal and

topographic variations in the occurrence of effective moisture gave rise to a series ofbiotically varied mi•croenvironments that the native peoples exploited by ranging among them in a regular annual cycle, except in the most favored areas.

A demanding environment, one of the most rigorous in native North America. B. Lowertemperatures, higher rainfall, and denser vegetation in higher elevations. Dramatic fluctuations ofprecipitation, and thus food resources, from year to year, Also changes caused by lake level shifts, treeline shifts, dune activity, earthquakes, and volcanoes. Resource distributionwas highly patchy and unpredictable, and surrounded by sparser environments.

C. Most extensive, productive distribution of resources in the foothill zone, with nut pines (e.g., pinon), sagebrush, mountain brush, mesquite beans, screwbean, some acorns, tubers, berries and other fruits, and deer and other game. Hot and inhospitable deserts below the foothills, but also highly productive lakes and marshes with diverse plants and animals. Forests and meadows at higher elevations with deer, pronghorns, and bighorn sheep.

D. Majortrends in the environment included early loss of Ice Age mammals, disappearance of great lakes (e.g., Lake Bonneville), marshes, and rivers, and increased aridity and heat. Rapid climatic fluctuations.

E. Human adaptations to this unpredictable, harsh environment were based on highly flexible and mobile tiroad-spectrum gathering-hunting strategies except in the most favored areas (large lakes and marshes). Group size, stability, and sedentism varied widely, depending on resource availability and technological adaptation. While 80% of the sites are in the foothill zone, the densest, most sedentary, and complex populations around the rich lowland marshes, where many of the most famous sites occur (e.g., Danger and Hogup caves in Utah, and Hidden and Lovelock caves in Nevada).

(1) The same basic material culture inventory persisted for thousands of years: wooden digging stick; manes and metates; chipped stone projectile points, knives, and scrapers; sophisticated baskets, skin bags, cloaks, and fiber sandals; nets, decoys, basket traps. Roasting pits and above ground storage bins.

(2) People managed their environment to increase its productivity (e.g., burning, damming, scattering wild seeds).

2. Conceptual Frameworks.

:k. Desert Archaic. A versatile, broad-spectrum foraging-hunting life-way in arid areas ofthe Far West.

B. Descriptive cultural historical and descriptive ecological approaches versus an explanatory evolutionary ecological approach (e.g., natural selection, optimal

foraging, ranked foods). Site-focused versus regional approaches (e.g., Reese River Valley, Monitor Valley, Surprise Valley).

C. Basic idea that people crowded around lowland lakes and marshes until population growth forced some people out to less favorable environments. Result development of a flexible, efficient seed and root processing, small game hunting way of life (i.e., optimal foraging principles at work).

3. The Desert Archaic (c. 7500 Be to modern times in some areas) A. Extinction of Ice Age megafauna, increasing aridity and heat, shrinking lakes and marshes, and localization of food resources led to emergence of the Desert Archaic c. 7500 BC in east and c. 5000 BC in west. Emerge historically as the Numic-speaking Shoshone and Paiute. A major adaptive shift characterized by: (1) Exploitation ofa far more diverse food base (from a Paleoindian hunting lifeway) and settlement pattern, with semi-permanent winter basecamps with storage facilities. Paleoindian concentration around great lakes (e.g. Great Salt Lake in Utah) gives way to a mobile life-way throughout a wide variety of environmental settings. Year-round hunting and foraging, with a growing focus on plant collecting.

(2) An intensification of these trends after 3000 BC, with pinon nuts becoming a major element of the diet after AD 500.

(3) In western Great Basin human coprolites from Lovelock and other caves used to reconstruct diet.

(4) Bow and arrow, and some pottery, aRer AD 500.

4. Fremont Culture (AD 400-1300) A. Sedentary horticultural communities in scattered farmsteads and small villages with some Southwest traits (pithouses, stone architecture, pottery, maize-beanssquash cultivation). Large internal variation with uncertain origins, ethnic affiliations, and demise (though the demise is associated with the onset of the Little Ice Age. Primarily in the eastern Great Basin (and the northern Southwest). B. Characteristics include:

(1) Maize-beans-squash cultivation with an important hunting-gathering component, which separates it from Southwest groups like the Anasazi. Some small-scale ditch irrigation.

(2) Settlements small, usually with only one or a few scattered houses. Numerous limited activity ("camp") sites probably associated with hunting-gathering. Pithouses and above ground storage facilities of adobe orjacal. No kivas or community compounds, but some pueblo-like masonry structures adjacent to the Southwest.

(3) Pottery similar to that of the Anasazi. Unfired clay figurines. (4) Manes and trough metates.

(5) Leather moccasins rather than fiber sandals of other Southwest traditions. (6) Coiled and twined baskets distinctive to this culture. (7) Horned and shield-bearing warriors in pictographs similar to those in northwest Plains.