Plant Use at Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Nevada

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Bonneville Estates Rockshelter is a stratified multicomponent site located on the former highstand of Pleistocene Lake Bonneville in the eastern Great Basin. It contains well-dated and well-preserved record of human occupation through the last 13,000 years. Here I report on dietary plant remains retrieved from nearly 140 dated archaeological features (predominantly hearths and pits) spanning the period of occupation. Seeds, roots, and other tissues represent several major taxa including: cacti (various species); amaranth family (including saltbush, goosefoot, and iodinebush); ricegrass and other grass seeds; bulrush; pinyon pine; and other lesser contributors. The Bonneville Estates Rockshelter plant record provides evidence for the long-term, increasing use of key plant taxa by the shelter’s occupants from the terminal Pleistocene through the Holocene, and documents the changing use of diverse habitats through time in response to fluctuating environmental conditions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35887.0