Ebook Thinking outside the box: a new perspective on diet breadth and sexual division of labor in the Prearchaic Great Basin
The North American Great Basin (Fig. 1) is renowned for its rich ethnographic record documenting the ecological relationships of hunter-gatherers and the arid setting in which they lived. Informed by ethnographic analogy, over fty years of archaeological research has demonstrated the existence of similar, although variable, ‘Archaic’ lifeways through much of the Holocene (Jennings 1957, 1964; Willey and Phillips 1958).
More problematic is the pattern characterized by dramatically different technological organization and site distribution in the Great Basin during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (PHT), roughly between 11,200 and 8,000 BP. Understanding the nature of PHT adaptive strategies is an enduring problem in Great Basin prehistory (Beck and Jones 1997; Grayson 1993; Simms 1988; Willig and Aikens 1988). This task is complicated by PHT environments utterly unlike any of historical times, leaving Great Basin archaeologists without valid ethnographic analogs to assist interpretation of PHT material culture.
The significance of differences between PHT foragers and later hunter-gatherers divides archaeologists. Early assemblages contain an array of large projectile points and formal flaked tools resembling those of Great Plains and Southwestern Palaeoindians, but few ground stone tools, while middle to late Holocene assemblages contain smaller points, fewer formal flaked tools and abundant ground stone. These contrasts suggest PHT foragers emphasized hunting more than subsequent hunter-gatherers. However, lack of PHT megafauna hunting or butchering sites, or evidence that such animals survived in the Great Basin after 11,300 BP (Grayson 1993), obviates specialized big-game hunting similar to that in Palaeoindian models (Madsen 1982; Tuohy 1974). Moreover, direct subsistence evidence retrieved from coprolites (Eisalt 1997; Fry 1970, 1976; Napton 1997), and from a growing number of faunal assemblages (Beck and Jones 1997; Delacorte 1999; Pinson 1999), reveals a diet that included seeds, fish, and small animals.
Thus, many archaeologists see in the PHT the roots of later broad-spectrum hunting and gathering, using the terms Palaeoarchaic or Initial Archaic for PHT foragers (Beck and Jones 1997; Jones and Beck 1999; Pinson 1999), or eschewing categories altogether (Madsen 1999; Simms 1988). Nevertheless, while many aspects of technology and subsistence appearing in the PHT persist through the later Holocene, we, and others (Basgall 1988; Elston 1982, 1986a; Jennings 1986; Zeanah et al. 1995), emphasize the unique features of PHT archaeology with the term Prearchaic.
The problem concerns more than cultural-historical classi cation, going to the root of long-held notions about cultural ecology and Great Basin adaptive change. If Prearchaic adaptive strategies differ only in degree from ethnohistoric broad-spectrum adaptations, how can we explain the dramatically different technologies and settlement patterns manifested in the archaeological record? On the other hand, if we let the archaeology guide us to an inductive reconstruction of an extinct, specialized subsistence adaptation, how do we reconcile subsistence evidence that seems out of sync with the material culture?
The dilemma calls for a research strategy that lets us think ‘outside the box’ imposed by Great Basin cultural history and culture ecology. Some aspects of this research strategy concern purely methodological issues of locating buried PHT deposits in the Great Basin, developing chronologies, extracting subsistence data from surface assemblages and so forth (Beck and Jones 1997; Grayson 1993; Pinson 1999; Willig 1988). However, induction alone can succeed only in identifying ancient archaeological patterns unexplainable by reference to ethnography (O’Connell and Elston 1999). A theoretically based approach is required, one more informative of behavior than induction, and independent of ethnographic models. We are presently developing such an approach to be used in future archaeological tests.
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