Alpine archaeology of Alta Toquima and the Mt. Jefferson Tablelands (Nevada) : the archaeology of Monitor Valley, contribution 4.

Abstract

The Central Mountains Archaic began with the arrival of foraging populations in the Intermountain West about 6000 years ago. This migration coincided with the "extremely dramatic" winter-wet event of 4350 cal b.c. and the arrival of piñon pine forests in the central Great Basin. Human foragers likely played a significant role in the rapid spread of piñon across the central and northeastern Great Basin. Logistic hunters exploited local bighorn populations, sometimes serviced by hunting camps (the "man caves" such as Gatecliff Shelter, Triple T Shelter, and several others) and they staged communal pronghorn drives at lower elevations. As climate cooled and became more moist, logistic bighorn hunting gradually shifted downslope, then apparently faded away about 1000 cal b.c. Communal pronghorn driving persisted into the historic era in the central Great Basin. This volume, the first in the Alta Toquima trilogy, describes and analyzes more than 100 alpine hunting features on the Mt. Jefferson tablelands. High-elevation, logistical bighorn hunting virtually disappeared across the central Great Basin with the onset of the Late Holocene Dry Period (about 750-850 cal b.c.), giving way to an alpine residential pattern at Alta Toquima (26NY920) and elsewhere on Mt. Jefferson. Situated at almost exactly 11,000 ft (3352 m) above sea level, Alta Toquima was sited on the south summit of Mt. Jefferson (the third-highest spot in the state of Nevada), where at least 31 residential stone structures were emplaced along this steep, east-facing slope. When first recorded in 1978, Alta Toquima was the highest American Indian village site known in the Northern Hemisphere. This volume discusses the material culture, plant macrofossils, vertebrate fauna, and radiocarbon dating for Alta Toquima. Bayesian analysis of 95 14C dates documents an initial occupation of Alta Toquima at 1370-790 cal b.c., with the sporadic settlements persisting until immediately before European contact. These alpine residences are the most dramatic examples of the intensified provisioning strategies that began in the Central Mountains Archaic about 3000 years ago, broadening the diet breadth to include plant and animal resources previously considered too costly. The oldest summertime residence at Alta Toquima correlates with the onset of Late Holocene Dry Period (LHDP) aridity (~750 cal b.c.), and these houses were episodically occupied only during the driest intervals throughout the next 1500 dramatic years of abrupt climate change. During the intervening wetter stretches, Alta Toquima was abandoned in favor of subalpine basecamps. This sequenced intensification predated the arrival of bow technology in the central Great Basin by more than a millennium. Exactly the opposite sequencing took place a few miles to the north, when Gatecliff Shelter was abandoned during LHDP aridity--precisely when the first summertime settlements appeared at Alta Toquima. This pattern reversed again when lowland habitats became sufficiently well watered to again support summertime patches of seeds and geophytes (~150 cal b.c.-cal a.d. 100). Alta Toquima families responded by abandoning (temporarily) their alpine summertime camps to repurpose former "man caves" like Gatecliff and Triple T shelters into family settlements. The Monitor Valley sequence documents several syncopated lowland-alpine, wet-dry reversals, reflecting an adaptive diversity that spanned more than two millennia. The drought terminating cal a.d. 1150 devastated much of the western Great Basin and American Southwest, but its impact was less severe in central Nevada. Although subalpine sites were again abandoned during the drought buildup that peaked in the mid-12th century, summertime occupation of Alta Toquima became more commonplace, although it increased notably during the ~cal a.d. 1200-1400 aridity and persisted throughout the Little Ice Age.

Great Basin Survivance (USA): Challenges and Windfalls of the Neoglaciation / Late Holocene Dry Period (3100–1800 cal BP)

“…Bonneville Estates Rockshelter experienced an early NG/LHDP hiatus from 2815 to 2230 cal BP followed by a largely continuous pulse of occupation from 2100 to 1550 cal BP (Goebel et al 2021). Similar early NG/LHDP abandonments south of 40° N latitude are documented at Triple T and O'Malley shelters; Ruby, Danger, Camel's Back, Lovelock, Hidden, Gypsum, Firebrand, Newberry, and the Falcon Hill caves; Buzz Cut Dunes; and parts of the northern Mojave Desert (Thomas 2020, 2023).…”

“…Late Holocene paleoenvironmental chronologies suggest that the LHDP followed a persistent dipole pattern, with wet sites to the north and dry sites to the south (Mensing et al 2013, 2023). Correlative drought-related shifts in occupation patterns are evident in archaeological sites, including Gatecliff Shelter (Kennett et al 2014; Thomas 1983), Alta Toquima (Thomas 2020), Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (Goebel et al 2021), and O'Malley Rockshelter (Fowler et al 1973).…”

“…Some resilient communities refused to abandon their ancestral homeland, electing instead to weather the early NG/LHDP drought in place. A few miles from then-abandoned Gatecliff Shelter, Monitor Valley foragers pioneered ways to make the most of their drought-degraded landscape, establishing Alta Toquima as the first alpine residential site recorded in North America (Thomas 2020).…”

Obsidian projectile point conveyance patterns in the lower Humboldt Valley, Nevada

“…Consequently, one cannot apprehend the nature of the variable resource bases available to peoples of the Humboldt Sink and the lower Humboldt Valley in particular, absent consideration of the climatic contexts affecting the Humboldt River. These multidimensional influences on prehistoric human life have been acknowledged for decades (e.g., Antevs, 1948;Aschmann, 1958;Baumhoff and Heizer, 1965;Davis, 1982;Elston, 1982;Aikens, 1983), but recent climatic data (Nichols, 1989;Viau et al, 2002;Cook et al, 2010;Louderback et al, 2010;Lytle et al, 2012;Mensing et al, 2013;Millar et al, 2018;Thomas, 2020a) have provided much more precise detail on certain temporal intervals.…”

“…In this modest diversity exploration, classes are operationally defined as discrete projectile point types; richness refers to the numbers of obsidian sources represented within each class (point type); and evenness as a measure of the variability of obsidian-source use within each type-specific (class) category. As noted above diversity is a term with qualitative and quantitative meaning, and is often used interchangeably with the term richness in biological (e.g., Magurran, 1988Magurran, , 2004 and in archaeological literature (e.g., Jones et al, 1983;Beck and Jones, 1989;Jones et al, 1989;Rhode, 1988;Shott, 1989;Grayson and Cole, 1998;Eren et al 2016;Thomas, 2020b).…”