Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition and Clovis in the Mojave Desert

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper summarizes the spatial and temporal distribution, technology, and subsistence patterns of Clovis/fluted and Western Stemmed tradition sites and isolates in the southern Great Basin, particularly the Mojave Desert. Fluted and Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) points/sites occur throughout the Mojave Desert, though WST points (primarily the Lake Mohave and Silver Lake varieties) are more widely distributed and occur in greater numbers than fluted points. Many, but not all, of these points were found near shorelines of now dry lakes. After summarizing the distribution, technology, and subsistence trends at the regional-scale, I consider these same trends at the local-scale using my ongoing research around pluvial Lake Mojave (today’s Soda and Silver dry lakes) as a case study. Despite the limitations of a largely surface record, important insights are gained about the lifeways of Paleoindians in the Mojave Desert and, more generally, those in the Intermountain West.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25090