7000 Years Ago

From studying a number of sites in Owens Valley and the western Great Basin, a number of inferences have been drawn about the lifestyle and culture of Early-period hunter-gatherers. Chief among these inferences are that in the Early period, Natives had a "very large and loosely defined annual round that covered the whole of the Inyo-Mono and its outliers, extending from the southern edge of the Mojave Desert north as far as the Mono Basin, and from the Sierra Nevada east to Death Valley (Bettinger 1999:46). Further, that they were quite nomadic, moving often and sometimes on short notice, to take advantage of plants and animals becoming available, responding to immediate food needs. To fit this highly mobile lifestyle, general-purpose stone tools were favored - ones that could serve many different functions, work in many different environments, and under different circumstances. Tools were also made in ways that minimized the risk of them breaking. And in keeping with this conservative strategy, Natives curated their tools, keeping and re-using them for a long time. Previous studies have also shown that a worn-out tool was often discarded in a place far removed from the debitage (chipping debris from making stone tools) generated during manufacture; and that the multi-purpose, durable tools are made from a wide range of raw materials, or different tool stone.

To learn more about this distant time in the past from studying an Early site, inquiry reasonably focuses on three questions. First, is the tool assemblage in the site more like those classified as Lake Mohave assemblages or more like Pinto assemblages? Lake Mohave and Pinto are two related Early period traditions, - neither of which is particularly well understood; Lake Mohave sites generally pre-date 7000 BP, while Pinto assemblages post-date 7000 BP. Second, what does the assemblage at the site suggest about which plants and animals were available and used at Owens Lake at the time the site was occupied? Third, how does the material from this site "fit" the above inferences about Early adaptations?

The first step toward answering these questions is to understand how the site formed, and to establish its age.

How an Early Site Formed - By examining backhoe trench profiles, arroyo cuts, soil characteristics, surface topography, and such, a geomorphologist (one who studies the configuration and evolution of landforms) can determine how a site formed. At our Early site, for example, a trench was dug in order to study the sediment profile. The geomorphologist identified a paleosol (ancient soil) buried over one meter below today's ground surface. A sample of that soil was sent to a radiocarbon dating laboratory and dated to 7544 cal BP (calendar years before the present; 6570 ± 90 14C BP). Other radiocarbon samples from the same paleosol exposed elsewhere in the trench yielded slightly earlier dates: one of 8565 cal BP (7780 ± 90 14C BP) and another of 7830 cal BP (7010 ± 100 14C BP). Together, the three dates indicate a fairly narrow range of time when the local landform was stable and soil formed. Further, the paleosol provided a basal stratigraphic marker for the archaeological deposit. Considering the most recent of the three dates, the archaeological material in the sediment overlaying the paleosol must be younger than 7544 cal BP. Thus, this Early site was not occupied prior to about 7,500 years ago.

Regionally on alluvial fans, organic-rich soils form on terraces inset into small channels of active streams. These are most common as small wetland or grassy areas that form wedges or narrow floodplain terraces in drainage channels. The buried soil at this one Early site likely formed under similar conditions.

To consider if local, on-site landform conditions pertain to a larger area, the geomorphologist inspected a major modern arroyo some two kilometers away, but in a similar landform context. He identified a buried paleosol in that arroyo also, and obtained a sample from it. The similar, once-stable terrace there with a developing soil produced a slightly older date of 9445 cal BP (8390 ± 90 14C BP). It appears that this arroyo or drainage was near its modern position about 9,500 years ago, with a floodplain soil forming at about that time. This, as well as other environmental information, indicates that at that time, there was a relatively deep but receding lake covering the southern end of Owens Valley. Sometime within the next thousand years, a major shift occurred that caused a new channel to form in the area where the Early site is located. This "new" channel developed its own narrow floodplain terrace, and a seasonal wetland formed along the margin of this stream.

When Native people were occupying this Early site, around 7,500 years ago or sometime thereafter, they were living next to a stream, which had a seasonal wetland.

Determining the Age of an Early Site - There are certain types of stone tools that are unique to early Holocene sites; these include Great Basin Stemmed and Pinto projectile points, as well as dome-shaped flake tools with extensively shaped, steep perimeters. Great Basin Stemmed points are generally thought to have persisted no later than 7,000 BP, while evidence indicates Pinto points were used up until 5000, maybe even 3,500 years ago. Determining which if any of these kinds of Early tools are present in an Early site may provide better, more exacting evidence of when the site was occupied.

Of the eight classifiable projectile points recovered from our example site, five definitely were Great Basin Stemmed forms, two others may be of that type, and only one was clearly a Pinto. This suggests occupation in the early rather than the more recent end of the Early period.

The hydration rim values on obsidian tools and debitage also indicate how old they are, and by extension, the age of the deposit in which they occur. Staying with our one Early site example, the tools and debitage, nearly all of obsidian from the south end of the Coso Mountains (35 km to the south), produced similar rim readings. This indicates that they are of the same age and were discarded at the same time. The mean value of the rim readings is 10.1 microns, and they are tightly clustered (standard deviation of 1.4), telling us that they were deposited over a short period of time. Current arithmetic formulae that convert Coso obsidian hydration rim values to calendar age-estimates render dates on the order of 7,600 and 7,300 years ago.

Like many Early sites in Owens Valley, the one we are profiling contained four separate kinds of evidence indicative of the site's age: stratigraphy, radiocarbon dates, time-sensitive artifacts (projectile points), and obsidian hydration data. Stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates suggest that the site was used no earlier than around 8,500 cal BP, and more along the lines of 7,500 to 7,000 cal BP. The fact that Stemmed points greatly outnumber Pinto points indicates that the Early site is affiliated with the Lake Mohave tradition, which is generally considered to have ended at about 7,000 years ago.

The Use of Plant and Animal Resources - The small bits of trash and debris left behind by Natives living at a site, reveal much about the natural resources then available in the local environment, the ones Natives preferred or chose to exploit, and factors that may have influenced their choices (e.g., season of occupation, food taboos, hunting strategies, resource abundance, etc.). Careful excavation methods are used to recover disintegrated, fragmented, and often burned dietary faunal and plant remains. Specialists, with the aid of comparative collections, identify the fragments as accurately as possible. Depending on the particular condition of a bone fragment, a species-level identification may be possible, while in other instances the fragment may be identified only as coming from a "medium-sized mammal," or placed in some comparably broad category.

Careful excavation at one Early site yielded nearly 1,000 pieces of animal bone. The dietary fauna showed a striking reliance on aquatic species - sucker in particular, but also including waterfowl. This is consistent with the old-fashioned archaeological concept of the Lake Mohave complex: that in the earliest period, Natives were particularly adapted to or adept at wetland exploitation. Other animals also were represented, however, meaning that more than just wetland species were being consumed. These were mostly medium and large mammals - probably bighorn sheep, pronghorn antelope, and deer - which provide large amounts of meat and so were especially sought-after. Small game like rabbits, hares, and ground squirrels were not well represented in the dietary fauna, though no doubt they were available for exploitation.

Fish remains have only been recovered from a few Early sites in Owens Valley. In all cases, though, suckers completely dominate them. Other sites in the area that date to later periods have yielded noteworthy quantities of tui chub/minnows, and less impressive amounts of suckers. Environmental conditions that favor suckers differ from those that favor tui chub. The dominance of sucker in Early sites is compelling evidence that Owens Valley had a stable and extensive aquatic environment until at least 7,000 cal BP.

Early Flaked Stone Assemblages - Early period sites tend to yield modest assemblages of flaked stone, consisting of low quantities of debitage (chipping debris) and essentially of four kinds of tools: projectile points (Great Basin Stemmed or Pinto points); fragments of bifacially-worked tools (that is, flaked on both sides, perhaps for use as knives); nicely-shaped, multi-purpose formed flake tools; and lighter-weight, minimally used flake tools.

The assemblage from the Early site example generally fits the above description, but with two deviations: the assemblage was even more modest than usual, and many of the discarded tools were in still-functional condition. That so few artifacts were found, and most of them fairly complete and still useful, forms an impression of a single, brief episode of occupation. It seems unlikely, then, that that this one Early site was at a "magnet" location, nor inhabited repeatedly over a span of several thousand years.

It has been argued elsewhere that the wide variety of tool stone materials in Early assemblages reflects an expansive, far-reaching annual range. Any one group routinely traveling far would compile a toolkit of implements made from the various tool stones encountered. For the Early case-example site, nearly all of the debitage (95 percent) and most of the tools (about 80 percent) are made of obsidian, almost all from the Coso Mountains obsidian quarry zone. The source of the obsidian was determined through a special study ("X-ray fluorescence analysis" or "XRF") which identifies obsidians from different natural formations based on their unique chemical compositions; XRF studies were augmented by a less-exacting analysis using visual characteristics of the glass. Only four pieces of obsidian from more distant (northern) quarries were definitively identified in the assemblage. The assemblage also contained small amounts of various cryptocrystalline silicates (e.g., chert, flint, chalcedony, and the like), quartzitic, basaltic, and other fine-grained igneous stone - materials deriving from desert settings to the south and east.

If this one site is typical of Early sites in southern Owens Valley, and nearly all obsidian in them comes from Coso, it would seem that Early groups in southern Owens Valley traveled over a range that extended mostly to the east and south, with this being at the northern or western end of lands traversed in their annual cycle.

Other Clues to Early Practices - Typical of Early sites, no millingstones were found at the example site, and the lack of such implements indicates seeds, nuts, or other vegetal materials were seldom pulverized or ground into meal or flour. This is a stark contrast with more recent subsistence practices. No features (such as storage pits, fire hearths, and the like), no caches (of tools, raw material, food, etc.), and no structures were discovered at this one Early site. As such, no direct evidence was found suggestive of long-term (multi-seasonal) occupation, or of planning for contingencies beyond those needing a near-term or immediate response. While the lack of intact features might well be attributed to churning or short-distance reworking of a deposit, for this one site at least, no fire-cracked rock or remnant of a hearth, (e.g., oxidized stain, charcoal-rich smear, fire-cracked rock scatter, etc.) was encountered. Since heated rocks figure importantly in cooking a variety of foods, most especially plant foods, the absence of fire-cracked rock is consistent with the almost total lack of milling equipment, and underscores dietary reliance on fish and meat. While simple sun-drying could be and may have been used to extend the "shelf-life" of fish and meat, fire, with or without heated rocks, would have expedited the task.

Summary - The kind of setting most frequently associated with Lake Mohave-complex sites is on or near shorelines of ancient lakes. The one Early site being considered is at an elevation 9 meters below the late Pleistocene high-stand shoreline in this valley. When Natives camped here, an ancient channel of a Sierran tributary stream flowed nearby, traveling east perhaps no more than 1 km before draining into the regressing pluvial Lake Owens, a prominent high-stand lake in the Lake Searles/Manley paleolake system.

Archaeological excavations have provided evidence that in the Early period, Native Americans practiced a highly mobile lifestyle, making brief use of this one site to forage on fish and large game available in the local area. This foraging pattern, and the kinds of tools found at Early sites like this one, are consistent with the overall picture of a Lake Mohave-complex adaptation. In age, however, this one particular Early site is uncommonly young for this complex. Determining that this adaptation was still in practice at ca. 7,000 BP is a noteworthy development in understanding the relationship between cultural practices in the Lake Mohave and subsequent period.

1000 Years Ago

The interval between 1,350 and 650 years ago is call the Haiwee archaeology period in Owens Valley. The archaeological signatures of the Haiwee period are very different from those of earlier and later periods. Adoption of the bow-and-arrow, in this area first used with Rose Spring projectile points, occurred during this period, and those points are easily distinguished from both earlier dart-points and later, smaller Desert series arrow points. Pottery was not in use during the Haiwee period, but had widespread use in Owens Valley later.

Environmental studies document that a long, extreme drought, known as the Medieval Climatic Anomaly, occurred during the latter half of the Haiwee period, from about 1000 to 600 BP. Any number of cultural mechanisms might reasonably have developed to cope with this drastic environmental change. Archaeologists, however, are not particularly knowledgeable about the nature and sequencing of cultural changes that took place during the Haiwee period.

In studying a Haiwee-period site, an important goal would be to determine as tightly as possible when the site was occupied. Was it occupied before, during, or after the long-term drought? If during the early part of the Haiwee period, does the site share traits with the preceding period? If during the later part of the Haiwee period, does the site share traits with the subsequent, more recent period? And since the archaeological record of 1000 years ago is far less indistinct than that of 7000 years ago, is it possible to gain better insights into the social dimensions of Natives living here then?

How a Late Site Formed - Late sites tend to be on or near the present ground surface. By comparison to older sites that have been exposed to natural forces for millennia, Late sites are far less likely to have been subject to burial, obliteration, erosion, or deflation.

Our example of a Late site is located in a dryland setting, about halfway up the broad alluvial fan, between the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains and Owens Lake's shoreline. Highway construction has since obliterated the site, but it once encompassed a small area with a concentrated midden. Since first occupied, decomposing granite from further upslope washed down, across the area, continually building or aggrading the fan. This sheetwash material mixed in with the trash and living debris discarded by residents, resulting in 40 to 50-cm thick deposit, rich in fire-cracked rock, dietary faunal remains, flaked stone tools and chipping debris, and ground stone. Burrowing animals, reptiles, bugs, and plant roots slowly but unceasingly churn topsoil, such that indications of past use are evident on the surface today.

Determining the Age of a Late Site - Rose Spring projectile points are a fairly common and reliable signature artifact of Haiwee period sites. Elko series points are associated with the preceding period, and Desert series points with the subsequent period. The relative frequency of these three kinds of projectile points can help determine if a site was occupied nearly exclusively during the Haiwee period, or if occupation began earlier and/or extended later.

Fully 95 percent of the classifiable projectile points recovered from the one site example were Rose Springs, signaling very little use of the site area either earlier or later than the Haiwee period.

Radiocarbon dates and obsidian hydration data potentially could refine the temporal placement of a site, and help establish when it was occupied relative to the excessively hot and dry (by comparison to today) drought period. Charcoal recovered radiocarbon dated to 1200 and 927 cal BP (990 ± 80 14C BP; 1270 ± 70 14C BP), and hydration rim values on obsidian tools and debitage from the one site had a bimodal distribution, clustering on either side of 4.6 - 4.7 microns. The earlier cluster has a mean value that calculates to about 1,220 cal BP, while the later one figures to something on the order of 750 cal BP.

All chronological data sets support occupation limited to the Haiwee period. Allowing for the standard deviations, radiocarbon dates provide a maximal age-range spanning from 1,300 to 725 cal BP, and suggest two separate occupational episodes. The distribution of hydration rim values also suggests two occupational episodes, with perhaps only a brief separation between them. The areally-restricted nature of the deposit, and the density and variety of artifacts within it, taken in combination with the chronological data, are interpreted as evidence that occupations were continual and of fairly long duration. The earliest period of occupation took place during the early half of the Haiwee period, centered around something on the order of 1,200 years ago, two centuries before the onset of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. The later occupation appears centered around 925 years ago, within the prolonged interval characterized by drought conditions.

The Use of Plant and Animal Resources - Careful excavation at one Haiwee period site yielded 9,000 pieces of faunal remains, and the pieces that could be identified, provide compelling evidence that Native Americans living here got most of their animal protein from bighorn sheep, supplemented with notable quantities of rabbits and hares, as well as grebes. Such a dietary faunal profile clearly indicates game was taken from the range of nearby habitats: bighorn sheep from the Sierra Nevada, rabbits and hares from the dryland or desert scrub environs surrounding the site, and grebes from Owens Lake. The embayments and lagoons formed where large Sierran tributary streams drain into the western edge of the lake, likely provided the most attractive waterfowl habitat.

Even though the deposit was a black, ashy midden at this one site, the recovery of charcoal and seeds (via water flotation) was meager. The surprising scarcity of charred seed suggests that the dark color of the deposit is largely a by-product of wood-fueled fires. The small quantities of burnt plant seeds that could be recovered document the exploitation of resources from the range of surrounding habitats, similar to the faunal remains. Seeds like purple sage (Salvia) and desert tomato (Lycium) reflect use of dryland habitat; rush and tule seed indicate use of wetland resources; and bits of acorn shell and pinyon hull reflect procurement of these seeds presumably from lower-elevation Sierran oak and pine groves.

In addition to revealing what Natives were eating, faunal profiles may also provide information about the season of occupation. Winter conditions in the Sierra Nevada drive bighorn sheep to lower elevations, such that those living in the valley bottom would have easiest access to bighorn during that season. In our Late site example, most artiodactyl bones (a collective term that refers to bighorn, pronghorn, and deer) were from adults, though a few fetal or neo-natal remains also were identified, establishing that site occupation also took place during late spring.

Large quantities of grebes in other Owens Valley Late sites have been interpreted as an indicator of spring-summer occupation, since this is when they congregate near the shore for breeding, and are most susceptible to mass capture. Modern information, however, indicates that grebe - eared grebe at least - are most numerous on Mono Lake in the fall (1.5 to 1.8 million), drawn there to feed on brine shrimp, before continuing on their winter migration route. This likely was the case for Owens Lake also in times past. Accordingly, grebes in this one Late site deposit might reasonably be taken to infer fall as well as spring-summer occupation. In sum, then, faunal remains may provide good indications of seasonal occupation.

To envision the lake much as it is today - a white, dusty playa - throughout the latter half of the Haiwee period, would be overblown. Though certainly it was much reduced by the drought, the number of grebe recovered from Haiwee period sites in the area provide clear evidence that Owens Lake was adequate to at least support the needs of these water birds. Since different waterfowl prefer different environmental conditions, the specific array of waterfowl in a site may be a very good indication of water quality and conditions in the past. Grebes, as well as various kinds of duck and geese, are found in both younger and older sites in the area. At this one Late site, though, ducks and geese were nearly completely lacking. Since grebes tolerate brackish water far better than ducks and geese, this contrast in bird remains likely signifies that Owens Lake was more brackish when this one site was occupied than in the earlier and later periods. This inference has added support by the fact that fish remains were almost completely absent in the site's midden, though tui-chub and sucker are well-represented in earlier and later period sites in the area.

Late Artifact Assemblages - The range of tool types, their abundance, and their condition are all determined by the tasks performed at a site, activities that occupants were be preparing or gearing-up for, the age and gender composition of Natives occupying a site, and so forth. A hunting camp, for instance, would have a much different complement of tools than a milling camp, or from a village.

The flaked stone assemblage from the Late site example is dominated by hunting gear and chipping debris left over from the manufacture of that gear. For every Rose Spring projectile point found, three or four bifaces occurred that were mostly points that broke during manufacture, and two simple flake tools occurred. Formed flake tools and cores were far less common, and drills and core tools were rare. The debitage is consistent with the tool profile: three-quarters of the technologically diagnostic pieces are pressure flakes, the by-product of making the arrow-sized points.

If a wide range of tool stone materials typifies Early flaked stone assemblages, and that pattern is reflective of an expansive, far-reaching annual range, then what is the pattern typical of Late tool assemblages? For our case example, 99 percent of the flaked stone is obsidian, and nearly all of that obsidian (93 percent) is from one quarry zone, the south end of the Coso Mountains, 35 km to the south. This less-varied tool-stone profile, and the overwhelmingly dominant use of the most local tool stone is quite typical of Late sites. It suggests access to resources within a more circumscribed or smaller area than in the Early period, and more intensive use or exploitation of the range of resources available within that smaller area.

A substantial and varied milling assemblage is also a common characteristic of Late habitation sites. In our example, end/edge-ground cobbles, handstones, and millingstones occurred in nearly equal numbers. Wear patterns on the milling gear indicated moderate to heavy use. The ground cobbles were nearly all whole, while about two-thirds of the handstones and millingstones are broken fragments. These tools would have been used to grind or pulverize seeds, nuts, and other plants.

Small numbers of polished bone tools and beads (used for adornment and/or like currency) are also typical of Late habitation sites.

Other Clues to Late Practices - Projectile points, even those of the same type, vary somewhat in form. Members of a single group, who pass their tool-making skills and techniques from one generation to the next, will produce points that are nearly identical. Thus a site that was occupied continuously by many generations of closely related individuals should contain projectile points characteristic of that group. If, on the other hand, different groups lived at the site at different times, the point styles should be more varied, and reflect the variety of styles found across the region as a whole. Rose Spring points from the one Haiwee-period site were compared to a larger regional sample, and found to be less varied. While this pattern alone is not proof, it does suggest that Native Americans living at the site through the centuries remained closely affiliated.

Few prehistoric burials have been found throughout this region by archaeologists, usually discovered inadvertently. Most individuals died and were buried in or near the place where they lived. The presence of a burial may provide another indication that a site was a village.

Summary - During that part of the Late interval which corresponds to the Haiwee period, southern Owens Valley Indians were living in and coping with an environment drier than today and far drier than existed some 7000 years ago. Compelling evidence for this is found in the dietary fauna recovered from archaeological sites. The one Haiwee-period site profiled here contained a noteworthy amount of grebe remains, with only minimal evidence of other kinds of waterfowl, and a nearly complete lack of fish bone.

The structure and content of deposits at Late sedentary settlements differ from those of the short-term camps that typify the Early period. The fundamental differences that distinguish Early from Late cultural patterns, underscore the flexibility, resourcefulness, and adaptability of the Native Americans forebears in Owens Valley over many thousands of years.