Earth Oven Facilities of the Sheep Range in Southern Nevada

Summary

Since 2012, nearly 200 earth oven facilities have been recorded within the Sheep Range on the Desert National Wildlife Refuge in southern Nevada. The identification of these features was aided by the use of Google Earth due to a chemical reaction that occurs in the local limestone when exposed to extended periods of heat. Also known as roasting pits, the widespread use of these features in southern Nevada has not been previously addressed, resulting in a dearth of knowledge regarding their prehistoric role in the region. Roasting pits mark the focused exploitation of previously underutilized resources, such as desert succulents like agave and yucca, which require long baking periods to be rendered edible. A substantial increase in the use of similar features has been noted elsewhere within the American Southwest from 4,000 - 2,000 B.C., and has also been attributed to increasing population densities. This presentation highlights my interpretations of the earth oven facilities of the Sheep Range.

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

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage