HumanResponsetoEnvironmentalChangeduringtheEarly-MiddleHoloceneintheGreatBasin: FrameofReferenceinComparativePerspective

ZEANAH, D.; ELSTON, R.; A. GIL; NEME, G.; JHONSON, A.

Orlado, Florida

Congreso; Society for American Archaeology 81 Annual Meeting; 2016

Society for American Archaeology

Introduction Occupants of the Great Basin 13- 6 kya cannot be understood by direct analogy with ethnographic Great Basin foragers because they lived in climatic circumstance and at population densities utterly unlike those of recent times. Archaeological evidence dating earlier than 8 kya suggests that hunter-gatherers were highly mobile with hunting oriented lithic technology and lacking milling equipment, but acquired a broad spectrum of faunal prey, and tended to camp near wetland environments. Debate about the adaptive implications of these traits often devolves to whether they are best characterized as Paleo-Indian, Paleoarchaic, or Prearchaic in comparison to subsequent Archaic (broad-spectrum foraging) adaptations. At the transition from Early to Middle Holocene, the Great Basin witnessed higher effective temperatures and reduced aquatic resource zones. Most archaeologists agree that the proliferation of milling equipment marks inception of the Archaic, but the relative importance of terrestrial fauna and aquatic resources, and the effects of climatic aridity on human occupation and mobility remain unclear(Grayson2011). Here we develop an environmental frame of reference (Binford 2001) to model regional Late Pleistocene through Middle Holocene subsistence and mobility based on climatic variables inferred from paleoenvironmental proxies. Our goal is to develop expectations about the range of hunter-gatherer adaptations feasible under climatic scenarios posed for the Late PleistoceneandEarly-toMiddle HoloceneGreat Basin.Weproceed in four steps: 1)extrapolatea geographic gridfrom aglobal climatic model tocapture climatic variability across theGreat Basin and compare with weather station records to assess how well the model captures current climate; 20 alter monthly precipitation and temperature to reflect climatic parameters of Bølling-Allerød, Younger Dryas, Early Holocene, and Middle Holocene climatic scenarios, and assess their accuracy against independent paleoenvironmental proxies; 3) predict huntergatherer subsistence and mobility under the current climate model and compare to 38 hunter-gatherers groups falling within the Great Basin using the Environmental Calculations program [ENVCALC2.1](BinfordandJohnson.2014);and4)generateexpectations abouthunter-gatherersubsistenceandmobility undereachofthefourpaleoclimatic models.