The Desert Culture of the Western Great Basin: A Lifeway of Seasonal Transhumance

Abstract

The practice of seasonal transhumance was a central feature of the Desert culture of the western Great Basin. Ethnographic studies have provided us with considerable knowledge of the land-use and seasonal rounds of protohistoric groups such as the Kuzedika Paiute of Mono Lake, California. Archaeology carries ethnography backward in time, indicating that Paiute sites were formerly utilized by a long succession of predecessors, most of whom were generalized Desert culture gatherers who hunted on the side.An analysis of projectile points from the Sierra piedmont indicates that Desert culture peoples ranged very high and were upland hunters at certain seasons. On the other hand, the earliest people were valley and grassland hunters. Recent discoveries of both Clovis and Folsom artifacts in the stream valleys of Nevada and California point to a pre-Desert culture way of life, with an emphasis on big meat rather than on seeds, roots, insects, and rodents. The transition from this early hunting of large, grassland herbivores to later general collecting and to seasonal transhumance appears to represent an unbroken evolution. These changes are shown by intergrading point types which constitute part of the data in this study.