Prearchaic Adaptations in the Central Great Basin: Preliminary findings from a stratified open-air site in Grass Valley, Nevada

Early Holocene occupants of the Great Basin preferentially occupied highly productive habitats surrounding pluvial lakes. While growing evidence details in the adaptations of these Prearchaic foragers in the Eastern (e.g., Madsen et al. 2015) and Western Great Basin (e.g., Jenkins et al. 2012), our understanding of the Central Great Basin remains impoverished, largely due to the limited number of stratified archaeological sites containing well preserved material suitable for faunal analysis and radiocarbon dating.