Charcoal, Pollen, and Statistics: Spatio-Temporal Occupation of the Black Rock Desert Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Black Rock Desert Basin (HUC-6 160402) comprises the largest basin in northwest Nevada. Covering approximately three billion hectares, this basin contains the Quinn River drainage and the Black Rock and Smoke Creek playas. A radiocarbon database for the basin was assembled from the peer-reviewed and cultural resource management literature. Forty-nine sites have been excavated and yielded 237 radiocarbon dates. These dates are viewed as a demographic proxy. Palaeoclimate proxies from the study area include the Blue Lakes, Mud Meadows and Summit Lake pollen cores, and the Jackson Mountain tree ring widths. The radiocarbon record shows a low population density from 13 kBP through 5 kBP; growth decreases after the Mazama eruption, but slowly increases throughout the Middle Holocene. A pattern of population growth occurs from 5 to 1 kBP. During the Late Holocene Drought (ca. 2.5–1.9 kBP), sites south of 41° N are abandoned, while northward, there is an increase in occupation. The Late Antique Little Ice Age and the Medieval Climatic Anomaly are periods of population growth throughout the basin. The Little Ice Age is a period of cooler temperatures and increased moisture, the number of dated sites significantly decreases throughout the basin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• People, Climate, and Proxies in Holocene Western North America

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33075