Alpine Adaptive and Paleoenvironmental Change at Alta Toquima (central Nevada)

Summary

Why did some Great Basin foraging families spend their summers atop the very highest place in their world? Julian Steward briefly considered this question in the 1930s, but the issue resurfaced with the chance discovery of Alta Toquima, a 31-pithouse residential site at 11,000 feet. More than 150 14C determinations from Alta Toquima and nearby Gatecliff Shelter permit fine-tuned comparisons of cultural and paleoclimatic change spanning the last 7000 years. The Alta Toquima residences track both short- and long-term xeric signals (meaning that people lived in alpine houses mostly in times of drought). Conversely, Gatecliff Shelter tracks short-term mesic pulses when Monitor Valley foragers stayed at lower elevations during wetter intervals.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Extreme Alpine Foraging: Explaining High Altitude Residences in the Great Basin   •
• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage