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Show Archaic subsistence techniques focusing on the procurement of seeds and small animals ( including birds and fish) were employed. Mobile strategies were also in use where marsh systems were of limited size and productivity. Subsistence at sites like Danger Cave in the eastern Basin, Spirit Cave in the western Basin, and the Connley Caves in the northwestern basin suggests that an adaptive dichotomy, much like that found historically, was in place 9- 10,000 14C years ago. During the middle Holocene, marsh systems were substantially reduced, and, at some times in some places, eliminated by a combination of reduced annual precipitation and increased temperatures. While even the largest Great Basin lakes may have dried up, it is unlikely that major marsh systems were eliminated completely. For that to happen, major Basin rivers would have had to cease flowing into their terminal basins. However, they may have been reduced to the point where they could not support sedentary populations of any substantial size. Upland sites begin to appear in large numbers during this time, and the mobile strategy developed as the primary foraging approach used by most Great Basin hunter- gatherers during the middle Holocene. Most sites in the marshes of the Bonneville and Lahontan basins date to the Neoglacial and later when the size and productivity of these marsh systems were greatly enhanced. Smaller marsh systems in interior basin valleys ( e. g., the Ruby Marshes) may also have been large enough to serve as the focus of a limnosedentary foraging strategy during this period. A principal period of occupation dates to around a thousand years ago when lake levels were again relatively high. In the Bonneville Basin, sites are so numerous on beaches dating to this period that it has been informally referred to as the " Fremont" beach after the predominant cultural materials associated with it. Despite these favorable marsh conditions, however, there is also evidence of the extensive mobile use of upland areas throughout the Neoglacial and later. This simultaneous pursuit of both foraging strategies by large numbers of Great Basin peoples appears to be the result of population growth, with increasing pressure on marsh ecosystems making the limnomobile approach more attractive. This sequence is very generalized and not greatly different from that identified 50 years ago by Ernst Antevs. In many areas of the Great Basin, however, both environmental and cultural histories can be defined in much greater detail, and these chronologically more tightly controlled sequences do not match the rather broad categories he identified. The hot, dry mid- Holocene " Altithermal" of Antevs, for example is not nearly as prolonged as he conjectured and is broken up by a number of moister intervals. More importantly, the Altithermal is no longer " a blank page in the history of man in North America," and it is now evident that there was no regional abandonment of low elevation areas. Rather, during such intervals as the " Altithermal" there was merely a subtle shift in emphasis between two widely used patterns of foraging behavior, patterns which have been in use throughout the human history of the Great Basin. An equally important development during the last 50 years is the recognition of dramatic light switch- like changes in climatic regimes during the Pleistocene/ Holocene transition and many parts of the Holocene. Antevs and his co- workers defined climatic changes in terms of rather sweeping curves, suggesting these changes were gradual enough to enable Great Basin peoples to adapt to different conditions over the course of many generations. Now it is clear that a number of major environmental changes occurred within years or decades, certainly within the lifetime of a single individual, and prehistoric adaptive strategies must also have changed in an equally dramatic fashion. The most common thread between the work of Antevs and that of today is the recognition of a clear correlation between environment change and the behavior of Great Basin hunter- gatherers. There is, however, a significant difference in how this correlation was conceptualized then and how it is conceptualized now. Fifty years ago, Antevs and many of his co- workers believed in a |
