Abstract
ABSTRACT We report the discovery of a large-scale artificial pronghorn (Antilocapra americana) trap located near Silver Zone Pass in the northern Goshute Valley, eastern Elko County, Nevada. Evidence comes from three closely related and closely spaced surface scatters of lithic artifacts called the Silver Zone Pass Complex. Two of the scatters represent a single kill zone, or corral, while the third represents an associated campsite. The assemblage of 282 bifacial points and fragments from the three scatters is characterized by short-stemmed Windust and Pinto forms, elsewhere dated to the early-mid Holocene, about 8500–7500 calendar years ago. With this discovery, we can firmly conclude that large-scale communal trapping of artiodactyls began in the eastern Great Basin 2000–3000 years earlier than previously thought, and is coincident with other significant changes in human technology, subsistence, and settlement documented for the Paleoindian-Archaic transition in the region.
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