Toolstone Selection and Lithic Technology in Early Great Basin Prehistory

Beck, Charlotte; Jones, George

Although research concerning late Pleistocene/early Holocene populations in the Great Basin of western North America has been ongoing for many years, little is known concerning the adaptive strategies practiced by these people, whose culture is widely known as the Western Pluvial Lakes Tradition. Work has tended to focus on cultural and temporal similarities rather than on functional variability. In order to shift the focus of this research, questions concerning settlement location and distribution, technology, and artifact assemblage diversity, among others, must be addressed. This paper takes an initial step toward accomplishing this goal by focusing on lithic technology and differential material use during the late Pleistocene/early Holocene period. We find through a review of published sources and in our own work in eastern Nevada that the choice of material for certain tool categories during this early period was conditioned, at least in part, by the mechanical properties of the raw material while choice in other cases appears to have been related to local availability. Raw material procurement, however, is related to the larger issue of overall resource procurement and mobility; these relationships are discussed.

Toolstone Selection and Lithic Technology in Early Great Basin Prehistory

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