Footprints Across the Black Rock: Temporal Variability in Prehistoric Foraging Territories and Toolstone Procurement Strategies in the Western Great Basin

Abstract

Mobility is a common theme in Paleoindian research throughout North America including in the Great Basin. One recent model based on results from the X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis of Paleoindian artifacts holds that early groups occupied geographically discrete foraging territories throughout the Great Basin during the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene, ca. 11,500–7500 radiocarbon years ago (14C B.P.), that covered between 46,000 and 107,000 km2. While this model is innovative, its implications regarding Paleoindian mobility are difficult to reconcile with our knowledge of foraging populations. In this article, I evaluate the model using XRF data for 260 Paleoindian projectile points from northwest Nevada. The results fail to support the hypothesis that a single, expansive foraging territory once covered the western Great Basin. However, when compared to a sample of 1,085 projectile points from later periods (ca. 700014C B.P. to the historic era), data from the Paleoindian sample indicate that the foraging territories of early groups differed from those of later groups living in the same region. I suggest that these dissimilarities reflect differences in how groups moved across the landscape and procured lithic raw materials.