Doing Great Basin archaeology recently: Coping with variability

Abstract

Great Basin archaeologists spent the 1970s and most of the 1980s tearing down the Desert Culture hypothesis without presenting compelling means for dealing with the empirical variability that made it untenable. Recent research seeks to understand this variability by examining the effect of key variables in extreme environmental contexts, especially in wetlands and at high altitudes, and by developing and refining models of optimality that anticipate variability as the local expression of general evolutionary ecological principles. Research on intraregional and ethnic variability has lagged behind--the former because itis said to be costly, the latter because it is problematical in theory.

Evolutionary Foraging Models in Zooarchaeological Analysis: Recent Applications and Future Challenges

“…Replicative experiments with aboriginal technologies can fill the gaps left by ethnographic and historical sources (e.g., Egeland and Byerly 2005;Madrigal and Holt 2002;Madsen and Kirkman 1988;Madsen and Schmitt 1998;Simms 1987), but modern experiments generated by novices can significantly misrepresent the potential gains from specific resources (Bettinger 1991(Bettinger , 1993Bettinger and Baumhoff 1983;Grayson and Cannon 1999). Because return rates vary as a function of acquisition technology and context (see Bettinger and Baumhoff 1983), analysts may be unaware of all potential acquisition contexts and technologies available to prehistoric populations (Bettinger 1991) and are limited to those circumstances described in the ethnographic and historic records.…”

“…The problems with ethnographically and experimentally generated return rates are discussed elsewhere (see Bettinger 1991Bettinger , 1993Baumhoff 1982, 1983;Broughton and Grayson 1993;Grayson and Cannon 1999;Simms 1987;Zeanah and Simms 1999) and are only summarized here. One of the main problems is that the current range of published return rates are derived from a limited number of sources (e.g., Hawkes et al 1982;Hill and Hawkes 1983;Kelly 1995;Lindström 1996;Lupo 1998Lupo , 2006Lupo and Schmitt 1997bRaymond and Sobel 1990;Simms 1987;Smith 1991;Winterhalder 1981).…”

Plant Utility Indices: Two Great Basin Examples

“…This observation has been enigmatic to Great Basin archaeologists, mostly because large quantities of remains in archaeological sites indicate it was a food resource for prehistoric inhabitants. Some archaeologists have discounted the utility of experimental estimates, arguing that modern investigators are not likely to achieve aboriginal levels of efficiency in plant processing, and variation in the way resources were collected and processed results in substantial variation in return rates (Bettinger, 1993;Bettinger & Baumhoff, 1983). Our calculations also suggest that the caloric return rates associated with exploiting pickleweed are low, and large amounts of time are required to collect and process loads of pickleweed even to intermediate processing stages.…”

“…Harper & Alder, 1970: 218;Madsen, 1982: 216). Similarly, large quantities of pickleweed chaff and plant parts in cultural deposits, and seeds and plant parts in coprolites, have led researchers to hypothesize that pickleweed was an important component of prehistoric diets (Jennings, 1957(Jennings, : 64, 1978Harper & Alder, 1970;Fry, 1970Fry, , 1976Madsen, 1982: 214;Bettinger, 1993).…”

Temporal Scales and Archaeological Landscapes from the Eastern Desert of Australia and Intermontane North America

“…Archaeologists described past hunter-gatherer behavior using the concept of "strategies" similar in form to the analytical evolutionary stable strategies (ESS) of evolutionary ecology. They undertook studies that recognized mobility strategies (e.g., Amick, 1996;Bamforth and Becker, 2000;Smith and McNees, 1999), technological and land use strategies (e.g., Cowan, 1999), reproductive strategies (e.g., Bettinger, 1993), and subsistence strategies (e.g., Dering, 1999;Stafford, et al, 2000).…”