By the hunter, for the gatherer: Art, social relations and subsistence change in the prehistoric Great Basin

Abstract

Abstract The western Great Basin witnessed a transition from generalized hunting and gathering to a strategy emphasizing seed gathering at c. AD 1200. This was matched by accelerated production of ritual art: rock engravings, depicting big game and hunters. To explain this paradox, seed gatherers creating hunters’ art, I examine directly relevant ethnography to show that the art concerns an application of a shaman's power: killing a mountain sheep was a metaphor for making rain. This was increasingly important with a seed‐oriented economy but, since subsistence is more than diet, involving things like the sexual division of labour, it has implications for social relations. An examination of these shows two systems of inequality: men over women, and shamans over non‐shaman males. The increase in male‐oriented ritual art with subsistence change can then be understood in terms of ideological efforts to maintain gender asymmetries, and the growing forms of incipient political organization present in this region.