Early Archaic (5000-1500 B.C.)
Throughout California and the Desert West, the climate during the Early Archaic was both warmer and dryer than today. Parts of the central Great Basin may even have been abandoned by Native peoples in favor of more well-watered mountains and valleys flanking the Sierra Nevada, including the Modoc Plateau. At Crooks Canyon and in the adjoining uplands, small hunting camps appear which often contain a distinctive dart point type known as Northern Side-notched. Large Early Archaic base camps are known to exist in nearby, well-watered valley bottoms, such as Surprise Valley and the Lower Klamath Basin. Because the distribution of Northern Side-notched projectile points is mostly limited to the Modoc Plateau, Northern Nevada, and portions of Oregon and Idaho, some archaeologists believe that they were made by peoples who migrated south from the Columbia River Plateau during this time.
Middle Archaic (1500 B.C.-A.D. 700)
In many respects, the Middle Archaic represented a "golden age" for prehistoric cultures not only on the Modoc Plateau, but throughout much of California. It is at this time that large habitation mounds rise on the fringes of San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Villages appear along the many rivers that bisect the Sierra Nevada foothills, and the High Sierra receive their first sustained visitation. Closer to home, in Secret Valley, large habitation middens, many containing cemeteries and buried house structures, first occur in the archaeological record. It is also at this time that extensive obsidian trade networks emerge on the Modoc Plateau and elsewhere in California. Many of the archaeological sites found on the Modoc Plateau dating to this time contain vast quantities of obsidian tools and flakes thought to be the remnants of these activities.
Late Archaic (A.D. 700-1350)
About a thousand years ago, the elaborate villages and residential sites characteristic of the Middle Archaic were mostly abandoned. Similarly, the obsidian trade networks collapsed. Some archaeologists have speculated that these changes were the result of a period of sustained drought that occurred throughout the western United States; others believe these changes resulted from ever-increasing populations and competition over scarce resources. Perhaps in response to these conditions, Native peoples who occupied Crooks Canyon and the Madeline Plains directed their food-gathering efforts at a few key root crops, such as yampa ("epos") and biscuitroot, which could be stored and then eaten during winter months or other lean periods. On the Madeline Plains, archaeological evidence for this focus on root crops during the Late Archaic is in the form of a profusion of millingstones and plant processing tools found at sites on the valley floor.
|
