North America - Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
26-50 (147 Records)
Eagle Rock is a multi-component site with occupational horizons dating from 13,000 to 350 BP. This rock shelter is located in west central Colorado along the Gunnison River. Between 13,000 to 6,000 BP there is evidence of change in the lithic technology at the site. This is readily apparent in the artifact assemblage. There, however, seems to be some continuity in food-ways at the site. This presentation will briefly put forward what we have learned as a result of micro and macro botanical...
Early Holocene Leporid Processing at the LSP-1 Rockshelter, Oregon (2017)
Human occupation of the Little Steamboat Point-1 (LSP-1) rockshelter in southcentral Oregon began ~9,600 cal BP. Artifacts recovered from the pre-Mazama deposits include a faunal assemblage comprised primarily of leporid remains and a lithic assemblage dominated by informal flake tools. I designed and conducted an experiment using replicated obsidian flake tools to identify leporid processing strategies employed by Early Holocene occupants. I performed hide, carcass, and meat processing tasks...
The Elements of Bone: A Look into Fremont Diet at Wolf Village (2016)
Fremont diet is an aspect of Great Basin archaeology that has long fascinated Fremont scholars. Excavations which occurred at Wolf Village, a Fremont site in Goshen, Utah, have yielded a large amount of faunal remains which can help archaeologists to identify the types of animals used in Fremont diet. Excavations at the northern most knoll of the site uncovered a large bell-shaped pit filled with a high quantity of faunal remains. The high concentration of bone provided a significant amount of...
Environmental Limitations, Alpine Villages and Logistical Strategies in the Northern White Mountains (2015)
Recent investigations in the extremely remote and previously unsurveyed northern White Mountains have identified a pattern of alpine land use consistent with many other alpine regions in and around the Great Basin: one focused mainly on artiodactyl hunting. But sites similar to the alpine villages in the southern portion of the range were discovered at the subalpine-alpine ecotone. GIS analyses suggest the relative dearth of high elevation villages in the north is explained by environmental...
An examination of the Browns Bench ignimbrite from the perspective of an archaeologist (2017)
Archaeologists have chemically distinguished the vitreous stone of the Rogerson Formation of southern Idaho, northeast Nevada, and northwest Utah as the Browns Bench Toolstone Source. Recent geologic research into the Rogerson Formation reveals that the deposits are much more variable than archaeologists recognize. Multiple potential toolstone beds with unique properties are present within the formation. This material is referred to as ignimbrite by geologists though some of it has the visual...
Exploring Nevada rock art as a social landscape (2015)
Approximately 1,500 rock art sites that broadly span the Archaic have been identified in Nevada. Regional and temporal differences in site structure, rock art styles, landscape settings, and associated archaeological contexts are discernible in these data, offering insights into Great Basin culture history and the categorization of the environment as a social landscape by prehistoric populations. Traditional approaches to Nevada rock art have often emphasized interpretation at the expense of...
Feathered Fauna: A Look at Bird Usage Among the Fremont (2017)
Bird use among the Fremont is a topic that has been under studied in recent times by archaeologists. We seek to address this lack of current information regarding how birds were used by the Fremont. Although birds likely only played a secondary role in the subsistence economy when compared to large mammals, birds were clearly a supplemental food source. In addition to being a food source, wing and leg elements of large birds were sometimes modified and used as a bone resource for constructing...
Fire on the mountain: roasting pits in the Sheep Range on the Desert National Wildlife Refuge (2017)
Within the Sheep Range in southern Nevada, I identified more than 200 roasting pit features with Google Earth, and subsequently recorded 193 of them. A color change that turns local dolomite and limestone white following exposure to high temperatures during use in an earth oven allowed these features to standout in aerial imagery. Following documentation of these features, roasting pit distribution was analyzed according to midden size and vegetative community throughout the Range to identify...
Follow the Women: Ceramics and Post-Fremont Ethnogenesis (2017)
The Promontory Gray ceramic type is problematic within the narrative of proto-Apacheans at the Promontory Caves: progenitor populations of Subarctic Dene did not make or use pottery. A solution to this dilemma is readily evident in both oral traditions and genetic studies that show large-scale recruitment of women into founding proto-Apachean populations. Ceramics, normally an aspect of women’s craft production, likely arrived with the women who joined them. Early dates for the peak of...
Food and Family: Comparing Residential Structures at Two Fremont Sites in Utah Valley (2016)
Excavations conducted by Brigham Young University’s Field Schools from 2010-2015 have uncovered several examples of Fremont residential architecture at two sites around Utah Lake. At least five residential structures have been excavated at Wolf Village (42UT273), a site dating to A.D. 900-1208, while one residential pithouse was uncovered at the Hinckley Mounds site (42UT111). Recent research at these sites has focused on architecture and the use of space, particularly in regards to communal...
Forager Mobility, Landscape Learning, and the Colonization of the Americas (2015)
Among the many important contributions that Robert Kelly has made to the archaeological and anthropological literature are 1) an elegant theoretical model of forager residential movement, presented in his book The Foraging Spectrum, 2) a very influential argument about the Paleoindian colonization of the Americas, which he developed along with Lawrence Todd, and 3) insightful discussions of landscape learning by hunter-gatherers. Here, we explore these issues further by expanding Kelly’s...
Freemont Basketry: Redux! (2015)
Decades of research have indicated that the basketry of the Fremont formative "culture(s?)" of the Eastern Great Basin is unique to and highly diagnostic of that (those?) prehistoric population(s?). Additionally, it has been repeatedly stated that the basketry of the Fremont exhibits few to no technical connections to that produced by neighboring Ancestral Pueblo groups. Recent reanalysis of literally all of the basketry recovered during the multi-year Glen Canyon Project corroborates the...
Fremont abandonment practices: a case study of ventilation tunnels at Wolf Village (2017)
Ventilation tunnels were commonly used by the Fremont to circulate air within their subsurface buildings. However, there is evidence that ventilation tunnels at Wolf Village, a Fremont site south of Utah Lake, were used for more than circulating air. Our research will explore possible ritual abandonment practices of the Fremont by analyzing the six ventilation tunnels and their associated artifacts uncovered at Wolf Village. Evidence of ritual abandonment practices can include finding...
Fremont Farming at the Margins: Assessing Horticultural Potential in Jones Hole Canyon, Utah (2015)
Jones Hole Canyon, east of the Uinta Basin, experienced a population increase during the late Formative Period (between A.D. 1000 – 1300), roughly coincident with reductions in farming populations in the Uinta Basin. The subsistence economy of these Fremont-era occupants of Jones Hole remains unresolved: did they acquire food primarily through foraging like the canyon’s Archaic Period predecessors, or did they supplement foraged foods with horticultural products in a manner reminiscent of...
Fremont Figurines: In which we go from culture history to processualism to post processual (2016)
Anyone interested in the ‘Fremont’ knows of Fremont figurines; small figures that range from exquisitely crafted works of art to cruddy little lumps of clay with eyes. Despite years of interest, archaeologists still know relatively little about this phenomenon. But fear not intrepid Fremont enthusiast! After examining nearly every Fremont figurine described in the literature, hidden in museum basements, and even a few from super-secret private collections, I have ALL the answers! Come learn how...
Fremont worked bone gaming pieces: their life history using data from Wolf Village (2017)
We examine the life history of Fremont worked bone gaming pieces. Fremont gaming pieces have long been interpreted as instruments of gambling due to their similarity to items used historically in Native American gambling practices. During our research we analyzed all of the worked bone gaming pieces from Wolf Village and compared our results with ethnographic accounts of Native American gaming pieces. Our research focuses on two aspects of the Fremont gaming piece life histories which have been...
The Geoarchaeology of Late Prehistoric Irrigation in Central Utah (2015)
In 1928, Harvard archaeologist Noel Morss observed ancient irrigation systems in central Utah during fieldwork that first defined the Fremont culture. Instances of Fremont irrigation are known, but perceptions of the Fremont as a small-scale society of indigenous mixed foragers and farmers delayed empirical evaluation of Morss’s report. Fieldwork, beginning in 2010 and continuing, now identifies a complete irrigation system 4.5 miles long bringing water from 8,500’ to a 90-acre field at 7,100’...
A Geospatial Analysis of Northern Side-notched points in the Northern Great Basin: A Case Study from the Burns District Bureau of Land Management (2016)
In the northern Great Basin region of eastern Oregon, little is understood about human settlement during the hot, dry middle Holocene. The only diagnostic piece of material culture which reliably dates to this period is the Northern Side-notched (NSN) projectile point, which was last studied extensively by John Fagan in 1974. The purpose of this study is to reconsider Fagan’s interpretations of Altithermal occupations in the northern Great Basin - specifically whether such sites are limited to...
Glimpses of Promontory Tradition Settlement Practices and Social Networks: The Ceramic and Faunal Assemblages from Site 10-Oa-275 (2017)
The West Fork Rock Creek site (10-Oa-275) is a late prehistoric-aged seasonal camp in southeastern Idaho containing 11 occupational surfaces dating between A.D. 750 and 1800. Several living floors and non living floor deposits contain both Promontory Gray and Great Salt Lake Gray ceramics, along with the butchered remains of bison and pronghorn. This paper explores associations between site occupants and Promontory groups to the south, especially those of the Promontory Peninsula, and considers...
Granite Creek Station: Site of Massacre and Memory (2015)
Granite Creek Station was one of several significant stopping places for emigrants, travelers, saddle trains, and stagecoaches passing through the Black Rock Desert region of Northern Nevada on their way to California in the mid-19th century. The site functioned as a campsite, trading post, ranch, stagecoach station, and military camp. As a site along the emigrant trail, it was the locus of extraordinary pain and suffering by travellers, described in their own words through diaries and letters....
Haskett Spear Points and the Plausibility of Megafaunal Hunting in the Great Basin (2015)
Recent Haskett projectile point finds from western Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert provide a compelling case for megafaunal hunting in the Great Basin, a region that stands out in North America for its lack of direct evidence. The Haskett style is likely the oldest representative of the Western Stemmed series of projectile points, and radiocarbon age estimates on black mat organics at the locality suggest a date range between ca. 12,000 and 13,000 cal BP. In this paper, an argument for megafaunal...
A hearth with a view, the spatial analysis of a Late Holocene hunter-gatherer house (2015)
Excavations of a house floor located in North America’s Great Basin resulted in hundreds of bone and stone artifacts. We present a spatial analysis of the recovered household artifacts. Identified raw materials provide evidence for connections to communities farther afield. Results indicate a diverse and complex suite of social goals. SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve...
High Altitude Residence in the Great Basin and the Rocky Mountains (2015)
It has been suggested that high elevations are highly demanding environments, poor in resources, and only heavily used to procure high ranked animal prey. In the Great Basin Steward’s work with the Shoshone and Piute showed that valley and foothill resources dominated subsistence patterns with high altitude resources playing only a minor role for hunting. In the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains however, there is evidence of high altitude residential sites in both the White Mountains of eastern...
High Elevation Archaeology of the Inyo Mountains in Relation to Adjacent Ranges (2015)
In the years since Bettinger's seminal studies in the White Mountains of eastern California, there have been projects completed at high elevations in two adjacent ranges, the Inyo Mountains to the south and the Sierra Nevada to the west of Owens Valley. These efforts have been of limited scope, but seem to show similarities as well as important differences in patterns of land use over time. Some extensive surface collections from the Inyo range have recently become available for examination,...
Household climate: Great Basin response to climate change reflected by intrasite zooarchaeology (2016)
Intrasite spatial analysis reveals zooarchaeological remains indicative of Great Basin hunter-gatherer household behaviors. Results indicate the presence and spatial distribution of activity types. Analytical techniques facilitated evaluation of ethnographic models to find the best match to the zooarchaeological situation. Households associated with disparate climatic regimes, while contextually equivalent, exhibit variable zooarchaeological signatures for subsistence, social, and spiritual...