The Walker Lake Landscape: Combining Geophysical Studies to Clarify Regional Change and the Archaeological Record

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The high desert basin surrounding Walker Lake, Nevada, has been subject to multiple landscape shifts since the lake reached its Late Pleistocene highstand, 15,679 cal BP. Research has identified at least four lake transgression and regression events postdating 5000 BP, and after its nineteenth-century historic highstand, the lake has fallen roughly 50 m. These changes reveal a complex fluvial and lacustrine system that past human populations would have adjusted to and exploited in a variety of ways. At times people had the opportunity to make use of a large waterbody and swift river filled with cutthroat trout, while at others the local resources would have been limited by a shallow, saline lake fed by an intermittent stream. To better understand the variability of this landscape, this paper details new research identifying geophysical and geomorphic data found on the basin’s terrestrial landforms as well as underneath the modern lake. This research helps reveal the basin’s past landscapes. Combined with the presence of archaeological sites found across the Walker Lake basin, these data help to clarify past behavioral adaptions and suggest a strong potential for site preservation below the lake’s waters in buried, datable contexts.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Advances in Global Submerged Paleolandscapes Research   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32031