Spirit Cave Resilience: How do We Explain 10,000 Year Continuities?
Author(s): David Thomas
Year: 2025
Summary
This is an abstract from the "2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
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Paleoindians <u>buried </u>Spirit Cave Man in a Nevada cave and archaeologists excavated these remains in 1940. The Fallon Paiute-Shoshone Tribe filed a NAGPRA claim requesting repatriation of the Spirit Cave ancestor they call The Storyteller. After a two-decade legal impasse, the tribe made the gut-wrenching decision “under duress” to permit DNA testing. When the results documented a 10,000-year genetic continuity “without complete population replacement,” the Storyteller was repatriated within a month. A parallel story characterized the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation agreement for the DNA testing that directly facilitated the repatriation and reburial of Kennewick Man/The Ancient One. While many tribes see DNA analysis as a scientific tool of colonialism, the agonizing —and successful—Colville and Paiute collaborations helped pave the way for similar alliances throughout the Americas. Such archaeological-Indigenous collaborations help reinforce and legitimize tribal objectives including establishing of long-term genetic continuities, validating tribal oral histories, furthering repatriation efforts, and underwriting legal claims for treaty rights—while ensuring Indigenous communities retain control of their genetic data. Applying resilience perspectives to Spirit Cave genetics also helps identify some moribund concepts and assumptions that have long effectively blinded Great Basin archaeology to this remarkable record of continuity.
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Cite this Record
Spirit Cave Resilience: How do We Explain 10,000 Year Continuities?. David Thomas. Presented at The 90th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. 2025 ( tDAR id: 509940)
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Abstract Id(s): 51133