Using Predictive Modeling to Evaluate Changes in Great Basin Paleoindian Settlement Systems through Time

Summary

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

The Great Basin underwent considerable environmental change during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition, such as lower precipitation, increased temperatures, and the diminishment of lakes and wetlands. Archaeologists have long hypothesized that people responded by altering their settlement-subsistence strategies. Some models outlining these responses predict people should have added new habitats to their foraging itineraries; however, such models have been difficult to evaluate using empirical data because radiocarbon-dated sites are rare and, until recently, the ages of different Western Stemmed Tradition projectile point types have remained unclear. We test the hypothesis that early Holocene groups added new habitats through a predictive modeling technique known as ecological niche modeling. We develop two models—one for the Younger Dryas and one for the early Holocene—using recorded Paleoindian sites in Humboldt County, Nevada, and a set of environmental variables. Our results show that Younger Dryas sites mostly occur around lowland and upland lakes and within ecotones, while early Holocene sites mostly occur around valley bottoms, riparian corridors, and upland springs. They demonstrate that people added new habitats, presumably in response to disappearing wetlands. This shift may be best explained using the patch choice model.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37051.0