Dave N. Schmitt

Upper Paleolithic Net-Hunting, Small Prey Exploitation and Women's Work Effort: A View From the Ethnographic and Ethnoarchaeological Record of the Congo Basin

Recent interest in Upper Paleolithic small prey acquisition focuses on the significance of fiber-based hunting technologies. Some researchers believe the advent of these technologies and presence of small faunas reflect efficient communal net-hunts driven by womens labor. We evaluate different small prey hunting techniques, using ethnographic data from foragers in the Congo Basin. These and other ethnographic data suggest that net-hunting is a high risk endeavor that often has high opportunity costs. We argue that the high costs associated with net-hunting have profound implications for human technological choice, and we evaluate the circumstances that would favor the use of different small prey hunting technologies in the Upper Paleolithic.

Late Pleistocene and early Holocene rivers and wetlands in the Bonneville basin of western North America

Abstract Field investigations at Dugway Proving Ground in western Utah have produced new data on the chronology and human occupation of late Pleistocene and early Holocene lakes, rivers, and wetlands in the Lake Bonneville basin. We have classified paleo-river channels of these ages as “gravel channels” and “sand channels.” Gravel channels are straight to curved, digitate, and have abrupt bulbous ends. They are composed of fine gravel and coarse sand, and are topographically inverted (i.e., they stand higher than the surrounding mudflats). Sand channels are younger and sand filled, with well-developed meander-scroll morphology that is truncated by deflated mudflat surfaces. Gravel channels were formed by a river that originated as overflow from the Sevier basin along the Old River Bed during the late regressive phases of Lake Bonneville (after 12,500 and prior to 11,000 14C yr B.P.). Dated samples from sand channels and associated fluvial overbank and wetland deposits range in age from 11,000 to 8800 14C yr B.P., and are probably related to continued Sevier-basin overflow and to groundwater discharge. Paleoarchaic foragers occupied numerous sites on gravel-channel landforms and adjacent to sand channels in the extensive early Holocene wetland habitats. Reworking of tools and limited toolstone diversity is consistent with theoretical models suggesting Paleoarchaic foragers in the Old River Bed delta were less mobile than elsewhere in the Great Basin.