The last complete cycle of glaciation is called the Wisconsin and it was at its height approximately 18,000 BP (years before present). The Wisconsin had definitely ended by 12,000 BP; and the intervening years have been dominated by a warming trend with consequent disappearance of glaciers and rise of ocean surfaces. As the oceans rose, they flooded land regions that had been above sea level and dry for perhaps 6-8 thousand years. One of these land regions, called Beringia, encompassed Alaska and Siberia and is usually called the "land bridge." The traditional explanation of human presence in the Americas suggests that humans occupying Siberia up to the beginning of the Wisconsin "migrated across" Beringia into Alaska and northern Canada. The expression "migration" is misleading, of course, since what we refer to is a long-term appropriation of new resources, carrying them eastward into a very large territory over a very long period of time. Just a simple calculation, taking one generation as about fifteen years and assuming that each new generation may have made a modest adjustment eastward of twenty-five miles, demonstrates that humans could have penetrated 10,000 miles into the Americas in only 6,000 years, half the length of time that the land mass was available. Such modest progress in migration easily explains the presence of humans in the Great Basin by 12,000 BP. Perhaps the explanation is too easy, however, since archaeologists continue to discover other evidence of humans throughout the Americas even pre-dating the beginning of the Wisconsin and, hence, easy access by land travel. Did the first humans reach America by boat? Did they arrive first in South America? There are many unanswered questions. (See Dixon, Quest for the Origins of the First Americans.)
The conservative tradition in the archaeology of the Americas is anchored in the definitive association of human remains and artifacts with late-pleistocene big game animals such as mammoths, bison, etc. now extinct. The paradigm sites in this association are Clovis (11,500-11,000 BP) and Folsom, New Mexico (11,000-10,000 BP). However, sites of similar antiquity are scattered throughout the arid Southwest and even extend into California. Aside from some debatable sites in the Bay Area and San Joaquin Valley, in California, there is a more substantial congregation of sites along the Pacific Coast in the vicinity of San Diego. These earliest indigenous people are called paleoindians. Interestingly, there are no accepted paleoindian sites within the Great Basin region. (Jennings, "Prehistory: Introduction", HNAI, 11, pp. 115-6)
Archaeologists discuss time depth in two different ways. There is, of course, the obvious attempt to date a specific site by various reliable means. But a site can also be described by the characteristic materials left there, assuming that describably different cultures, or traditions, existed as human habitation of wide regions developed. Thus, when we talk about "paleoindians", we are already using the latter mode of describing time depth, since we assume that paleoindians had a distinctive culture of big-game hunting that they had carried through the late pleistocene and, consequently, left a specific kind of site with specific kinds of materials. (Chartkoff and Chartkoff, 24-32)
What evidence might we use to fix an accurate date for a particular site? One of the first things that we discover is that all dating methods are relative to large ranges of information collected throughout very large regions. All of this information must be integrated in a consistent fashion so that each piece of information helps to support the whole scheme. Perhaps one of the first questions to be asked is where a site lies within the geological time of a region. But how do we know what the geological time of a region is? We may be lucky to find certain animal bones, shells, or fossils in associated strata; geologists use these materials to date strata through a broadly calibrated notion of when specific animals lived or when an ocean covered a region. Also, we may be lucky enough to find a layer of volcanic debris somewhere nearby and in a contiguous deposit so that, when the specific debris has been identified with a specific vulcanic eruption, understood from other studies, we can give a solid date to that stratum. Geology is clearly the best starting place. Getting closer to the site itself, we may discover materials, such as wood, bone, other plant debris, etc., that can be submitted to carbon-14 dating. Once again, carbon-14 dating is not an absolute method either; but it can be calibrated backward in time by linking it with other evidence. As the calibration of carbon-14 dating is confirmed, it becomes a powerful technique for dating a specific site on the basis of local materials. Finally, we might mention dendrochronology. In this technique, the rings of trees and shrubs are compared for the seasonal pattern of growth. Since the character of a given season may extend over a largish region, the rings tend to give an accurate weather spectrum for the period of the plant's life. If the lives of two plants overlapped in time, we can find where they overlapped in the ring spectrum. By overlapping plants backward in time, a comprehensive picture of a region can be developed. An excellent example of this is the extensive timeline developed for the bristlecone pines (very long-lived trees) in the White Mountains, east of Big Pine, California.
What evidence do we use to identify the date of a site by association with a culture, or tradition? In fact, what does it mean to claim that a certain site is a paleoindian site? This is really the point at which archaeology and anthropology come together. As researchers gain experience with certain kinds of sites, they begin to build a vision of how the people lived, based on the particular kinds of materials they left behind (or didn't leave behind). Combining these pictures with information about geology and climatology, researchers can speculate further. Thus, paleoindians are seen as nomadic big-game hunters. Their lives were intimately associated with desert playas (beaches), where grassland and late pleistocene lakes bordered each other and provided habitat for man and beast. Because their hunting practices focused on big game, they were forced to move with the game; however, they were also forced to move frequently in order to appropriate new resources needed for cooking and shelter. Because of their nomadic existence and focal economy, they carried few household objects, made a small number of tools with universal applicability, and rarely remained anywhere long enough to create piles of debris. Their camps are usually small, indicating occupation by a family group. The Clovis and Folsom points are characteristic of their hunting weapons. They may, indeed, have followed big game (especially the mammoth) northward into western Canada as the mammoths followed the shrinking glaciers into extinction. (Dixon, pp. 116-20)
The next obvious cultural phase is the archaic and there are strongly divergent views on how the archaic is to be broken up into subordinate traditions (early archaic, middle archaic, late archaic, etc) and at what time depth we might expect these transitions. What makes the appearance of the archaic a matter of agreement, however, is what archaeologists the milling-stone threshold. Milling stones are used to grind seeds and nuts into flours which can be baked into "breads" or boiled into "mush". Like hand tools and points, milling stones have a clear identity and permanence. Thus, the presence of milling stones means that people have begun to utilize plants; and this is seen as characteristic of the onset of archaic culture. Archaic peoples had ceased to be nomadic and had begun, as we will see later, a long period of adaptation to localities and their special microclimates. While they were rarely sedentary, they did camp in larger groups (extended families at least) and, later, built permanent winter residences. While archaic people were on the move, especially from spring through summer, they did revisit the same (or similar) areas year-after-year. They could accumulate household belongings and they left debris behind them. Also, with their economies expanding into diverse areas, they needed to and could afford to create tools that were specialized to quite specific tasks. Archaeologists find a greater variety of tools in archaic sites. (Chartkoff and Chartkoff, 74-96)
An important question is whether the archaic ever ended and, if it did, where and when. Great Basin archaeologists tend toward a relatively late beginning to the archaic period in the Basin, 10,000-8,000 BP, and also tend to suggest that people of the Great Basin were still pursuing archaic lifeways in the 19th Century when they were overwhelmed by the influx of Anglo Americans. But if there were post-archaic cultures in the Western United States, what characterized them and when did they appear?
According to Chartkoff and Chartkoff (1984, ch. 1), there is another threshold largely based on the development of staple foods. Instead of continuing to diversify, new economies tended toward a new kind of focal concentration, the staple foods. What enables these to become staples is a plentiful local supply (even if only seasonal) and development of a technology for harvesting, processing, preserving, and storing. This may involve new kinds of tools as well as vessels for storage. It may also involve a change in the debris left behind, with much greater emphasis on specific plants, animals, or sea life. A post-archaic culture, especially if the staple foods are in good supply, allows a people to become completely sedentary. Only a small level of diet diversity is maintained by hunting and gathering in outlying areas. Since sedentary life encourages population expansion, population centers can become large; and, as population increases, social, political, and artistic complexity develops.
The major threshold into post-archaic life across the world was, of course, the beginning of agriculture and animal husbandry. Incipient agriculture is dated around 10,500 BP in the so-called Fertile Crescent of the Middle East. In the Americas, agriculture began in Central America around 5500 BP and gradually spread outward. Agriculture based on maize (corn) reached the Southwest, with certainty, by 2500 BP. In the Great Basin, the Fremont Culture was an agricultural post-archaic culture, based on maize, beginning around 1600 BP. However, Fremont Culture disappeared around 700 BP, as did the Anasazis, further south, and for presumably the same reasons. Ultimately, the cultures of the Great Basin remained archaic, though there is some evidence for incipient agriculture in the Owens Valley. Examples of post-archaic traditions can be found in the other regions of the Western United States, but they are not based on an agricultural threshold. In California and the Northwest certain natural resources were so abundant that it was possible to develop them into staple foods. Sedentary life, social complexity, and the arts developed just as in agrcultural societies. Examples can be seen in the large Chumash village, at the site of present-day Santa Barbara, and in the Makah whaling village, at Ozette, Washington.
Given the fact that archaic cultures dominated the Great Basin over a period of at least 8000 years with few other thresholds after introduction of milling stones, there might seem to be little to go on in differentiating cultural traditions. But some differentiation is possible when one looks at projectile points more carefully. The earliest projectiles used were spears thrown with the atlatl, a weapon of great power and effectiveness; but these were later replaced by the arrow which was driven by a bow. Moving from the hand-held spear, or lance, to the atlatl required some increased sophistication in the creation of sharp tips. With the introduction of the arrow, this sophistication moved to an extreme. Projectile tips changed from relatively heavy and large blades to extremely fine and light arrow tips. Since these have been discovered in association with datable materials and since they differ significantly in appearance, it is possible to assemble a timeline based on projectile-point morphology so that the antiquity of a site can be estimated on the basis of projectile points discovered in association with it. Jennings presents the following illustration of point morphologies over time for the Great Basin region. (Jennings, HNAI, 11, p. 117) The Folsom and Clovis points (19 and 20) are in the paleoindian period but all the rest are archaic, including the desert side-notched that was commonly in use right up to the influx of Anglo Americans. The second figure by Jennings (Jennings, HNAI, 11, p. 118) shows the actual appearance of some representative tips.
In addition to projectile-point morphology, there are two other thresholds can yield some differentiation in cultural traditions throughout the Basin. The first of these was a very important adaptation to pinyon nuts; in fact, the pinyon nut approached the status of a staple food. In conjunction with pinyon utilization, archaeologists find larger settlements of people, substantial seasonal encampments in pinyon pine forests, new tools, and new storage vessels. The second threshold was the transition from atlatl to bow and arrow, mentioned above. This transition seems to have been very uneven throughout the West, beginning in Alaska and Canada and spreading into the Southwest over several thousand years.
A site in Owens Valley, CA, investigated by Robert Bettinger, is an interesting example of the transition to pinyon nut utilization and its social impact. The site seems to have been occupied over two distinct periods, the first period well prior to pinyon utilization. Pinyon House, southeast of the contemporary town of Big Pine and several hundred feet into the foothills of the White Mountains, was probably first occupied by a succession of hunting parties from 5000 BP to 1700 BP. The evidence for this occupancy includes flakes and points in three locations and an "unspectacular" petroglyph (rock art, often considered to relate to hunting magic) in relationship to a game trail. The later occupation was much more substantial, leaving many more artifacts behind; it is thought to have been between 1700 BP and around 70 years ago. In this occupancy, more than a dozen structures were created and several new petroglyphs were made in a rocky outcropping on the southwest corner of the site. Artifacts include not only flakes and points but also carved wood implements, milling stones, fragments of ceramic vessels (Owens Valley Brown Ware) and ethnobotannic materials, mainly pinyon nuts and cones. All of this is clearly indicative of a late archaic pattern of life, more nearly sedentary, more socially complex, with pinyon nuts taking the position of a staple food source and the consequent specialization of a technology related to picking, processing, storing, and utilizing the nuts. (Bettinger, pp. 21-110)
The entire Eastern Sierra is dotted with archaeological sites, some of them of great antiquity. A particularly interesting area is the environment of Lake Tahoe and Truckee Meadows. The Truckee River rises south of the Lake, flows into the Lake and then out through the present site of Tahoe City. Continuing north and then east, the Truckee flows down to Truckee Meadows, at about 5,000 feet and through the present site of Reno. From there, the Truckee flows into Pyramid Lake, to the northeast. Aside from the pass cut by the Truckee there are two other smaller passes cut through to the eastern shoreline of Lake Tahoe. One of these, from the presentday site of Carson City, reaches the Lake's brink at Spooner Lake; the other, rising from South Truckee Meadows, passes up Ophir Creek to Tahoe Meadows. Evidence collected at Spooner Lake suggests occupancy as early as 7150 BP, in the so-called Clyde Phase. Much more extensive evidence is found for what is called the Martis Complex (4,000-1500 BP) and this includes residential centers (probably winter) near Steam Boat Hot Springs (in South Truckee Meadows) as well as numerous hunting and fishing sites in the uplands as well as seed processing sites in the pinyon ranges. The sites culminate in what is called the Kings Beach Complex, for the remaining 1500 years, merging into the presentday ethnic people, the Washoe. Kings Beach sites demonstrate considerable complexity and include the incorporation of the bow and arrow. (Elston, HNAI, 11, pp. 141-145 )
While much more widely scattered, sites of similar content are found all the way south along the Eastern Sierra. Sites in Long Valley Caldera and Upper Owens Valley have been dated from 5500-3500 BP with mostly minimally used upland hunting camps. Sites similar to the Martis Complex have been found along Mammoth Creek and Hot Creek, with new emphasis on seed utilization. Later sites in Owens Valley merge into the ethnic people, the Owens Valley Paiute. There are numerous sites along the Eastern Sierra where obsidian was quarried and traded out to other parts of the West for tool making. Archaeologists can often trace particular obsidian objects to the particular site from which they came. Notable are Glassflow Mountain, northeast of Mammoth Mountain, and Fish Springs quarry, south of Big Pine. Rock shelters with petroglyphs can be found readily along the gorge cut by Owens River, in the Inyo Mountains, and (especially) in the Coso Range, above China Lake. Late in the period of development of the Owens Valley Paiute, extensive irrigation ditches were created on many of the creeks flowing out of the Sierras. These seem to have been used to enhance crops of natural seed-producing grasses; that is, their presence does not quite imply agriculture. (Lawton, et al., 1993)
One of the most spectacular concentrations of petroglyphs in the Western United States is found in the Coso Range, at the southern border of Owens Valley with China Lake Basin. One can walk for miles through narrow desert canyons and view petroglyphs in unlikely profusion. It is, nevertheless, very difficult (if not impossible) to date petroglyphs so, in the absence of associated living sites, it is difficult to suggest when these were created. It is probably, given the association of rock art with hunting, and the lack of vegetation and animal populations in recent times, that occupation of these areas was fairly remote in time, perhaps even as early as the period when Owens Lake was feeding this area with runoff. However, the presence of bows and arrows in some petroglyphs make it clear that some occupation has been quite recent.
