GREAT BASIN NUMIC PREHISTORY

Linguistics, Archeology, and Environment

c. MELVIN AIKENS

University of Oregon, Eugene

and

YOUNGER T. WITHERSPOON

Bureau of Land Management, Portland

CONTENTS

The numic problem in a broader context. . . . . . . 9 Hypothesis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Problems and conclusions , .. . 16 References. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

FIGURES 1. Distribution of the Utaztekan languages 10 2. Distribution of the Numic languages....... 11 3. Distributions of desert, lacustrine, and

horticultural adaptations 12

All enduring problem of Desert West prehistory has Iwen that of understanding the far-flung distribution ;lIld unusual linguistic homogeneity of its historic Numic-speaking occupants. Numic, the most north­erly of several families belonging to the great l) taztekan stock of the western United States and Mexico, includes three closely related pairs of lan­guages spread over a vast area: Western N umic (Mono-Paviotso) in the western Great Basin, Cen­I ral Numic (Panamint-Shoshoni) in the central Basin and western Plains, and Eastern Numic (Kawaiisu-Ute), which extended across the eastern Basin, Colorado Plateau, and central Rocky Moun­lains into the western Plains. Linguistic diversity across the whole of this enormous area is remarkably low, which has been interpreted to indicate that the Numic speakers achieved this distribution only in relatively recent times; estimates based on lexico­~tatistical glottochronology suggest that the ancestral Numic speech community which gave rise to the Ihree paired daughter groups expanded and split apart about 1,000 to 1,500 years ago (Goss 1965; Hale 1958-59; Lamb 1958).

When the Numic distribution is viewed on a map, it appears that its component languages have fanned out from a point in the extreme southwestern corner of the Great Basin (Figures 1, 2). Further, the closest linguistic relatives of Numic, the Tubatula­balic and Takic languages, occur nearby. They lie immediately west of the Sierra Nevada from where the Western, Central, and Eastern Numic languages converge in the area of Death Valley. This general region thus appears as a center of linguistic diversity and, according to the principles of historical linguistics, as the probable homeland of the Numic peoples. From here they apparently expanded fast and far within the last millennium.

The archeological problems of interest in the present paper stem from this interpretation. If the Numic speakers began a major expansion through­out the Great Basin and beyond around 10 centuries ago from a tiny homeland in the extreme southwest of their historically known range, to what people should the archeological record of the preceding millennia in this enormous area be referred? What

became of these unidentified predecessors? And what permitted the Numic peoples to take over such a vast area in such a short period of time? Previous discussions of archeology and language in the Desert West have illuminated many aspects of Numic prehistory, but a satisfactory resolution of these questions has not yet been achieved (Bettinger and Baumhoff 1982; Fowler 1972; Goss 1965, 1968, 1977; Gunnerson 1962; Hopkins 1965; Lamb 1958; Madsen 1975; Miller 1966; Simms 1983; Taylor 1961).

It is particularly appropriate, we feel, to ad­dress the Numic problem in a volume honoring Professor Jesse D. Jennings, since his own highly insightful (and inciteful) concept of a Great Basin Desert Culture relied heavily on comparisons be­tween the archeological record and the lifeway of ethnographically known N umic peoples Gennings 1957). We hope that he likes our solutions; in any event, we are confident that he will, as he always has, approve of an effort to forward scientific under­standing, wherever it leads.

THE NUMIC PROBLEM IN BROADER CONTEXT

A recent paper by Bettinger and Baumhoff (1982) analyzes the Numic expansion as a problem in internal cultural dynamics, seeing it as motivated by inherent competitive advantages of the Numic socioeconomic system itself. This is an essential perspective, but we construe it rather differently than they do. We believe as well that a broader pur­view, that takes in non- N umic cultures of the Great Basin and adjacent regions, and attends to en­vironmental change as an important driving force, is necessary to a full appreciation of the factors in­volved. The Numic folk did not exist in isolation, and surrounding societies were as important to their fortunes as a people as were the mountains and desert valleys in which they lived. Linguistic, ar­cheological, and environmental evidence must all be considered in examining the Numic's broader con­text.

The contact-period linguistic map of western North America implies a varied history of expansion

AIKENS AND WITHERSPOON10

UTAZTEKAN LANGUAGES

1 N

Pacific Ocean

Kilometers ~.I.?_°---rl4_?LO__6.l.?"T~_8_qL:°_--.Statute Miles 0 200 400 660

SOURCES KROEBER 1934 RAND McNALLY INTERNATIONAL ATLAS 1969

Gulf of Mexico

__---l1 km

r.:!:\ ~

800 mi

KEY

lj1ttt~~ WESTERN NUMIC

ggggg CENTRAL NUMIC

t:::: :l SOUTHERN NUMIC

(:f~:J TUBATULABALIC

t":::j TAKIC

mmm HOPIC

r====:1 SOUTHERN t::::::::j UTAZTEKAN

Denise M. Mason 1984

Figure 1. Distribution of the Utaztekan languages in western North America.

GREAT BASIN NUMIC PREHISTORY 11

rnigration by a series of aboriginal groups oue/in and Voegelin 1966). Coastal Alaska and

Aleutian Islands were the homeland of the -Ieutian speakers. Interior Alaska and western

H\da were occupied by Athapaskan and other mbcrs of the Na-Dene phylum of languages, and

-.lh of them, Salishan peoples dominated the )Iumbia-Fraser Plateau. Still farther south, Penu­

An speakers occupied the Middle Columbia and __ nttk(~ River drainages, and extended beyond into MOuth-central California. Another large block oc­(1ul'l'(~d yet farther to the south in Mexico. Scattered 1(1'( HI ps of Hokan speakers occurred throughout U p­111'1' California, and Hokan speakers formed a large irnlid block in Baja California and along the lower (:lliorado River in western Arizona. Other Hokan hlllKuages were scattered in both northern and Mil II 1hern Mexico. The interior Great Basin province Itlld central Rocky Mountains, stretching from cen­t t'lll Oregon to southern California, and extending C'llslward across Nevada, Utah, southern Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, was populated by Numic I'(~presentatives of the Utaztekan stock; another KTOUp of Utaztekans occupied southern Arizona and west Mexico (Figure 1). On the western Plains, Npcakers of Siouan and Algonquian tongues were dominant. Finally, additional groups of N a-Dene­all representing the Athapaskan family-occurred as small blocks in northwestern Oregon, southwestern Oregon, and northern California, while a large body of Athapaskan speakers-the Apache-Navajo-oc­cupied eastern Arizona, New Mexico, and south­west Texas.

According to the lexicostatistical method of glottochronology, divergence times between related languages within these various groupings range from about 600 years at the low end of the scale, to about 7,000 years at the high end. A postulated genetic relationship between the Penutian and Utaztekan groups implies an age of 10,000 years or so for the breakup of an ancestral Macro-Penutian speech community somewhere in western North America. High antiquity is also suggested by the great divergences within Hokan, the far-flung and broken distribution of the Hokan languages, and the possibility that the Hokan languages may be geneti­cally linked to the Siouan languages of the Plains and eastern United States. The postulated Hokan­Siouan macrophylum implies another extremely old ancestral speech community. Within Utaztekan itself, the grouping of central interest to the present discussion, lexicostatistic divergence times between various related languages range from about 1,000 to 5,000 years (Sapir 1929; Swadesh 1954, 1956).

Of immediate interest in terms of sociocultural

context is the fact that the Numic range is enclosed on the north and west by a near-continuous body of Penutian-speaking peoples, among whom are inter­spersed several groups of Hokan speakers. On the south, Great Basin Numic is closed off from its more southerly Utaztekan cousins by a solid block of Hokan speakers. That these enclosing groups are ancient inhabitants of their respective regions is in­dicated by the scattered and broken Hokan distribu­tion, and by lexicostatistical divergence times on the order of 3,500 to 5,500 years ago between neighbor-

Figure 2. Distribution of the Numic languages.

ing related languages, both Hokan and Penutian (Kroeber 1955; Shipley 1978).

East of the region occupied by Numic speakers, Siouan and Algonquian peoples came to dominance during historic times, but there is persuasive evidence of an Athapaskan presence along the eastern edge of the northern and central Rocky Mountains at the time of earliest White contact (Gunnerson and Gunnerson 1971; Perry 1980; Schlesier 1972; Wright 1978). This distribution, ethnohistorically documented, probably has con­siderable prehistoric time depth. A glottochrono­logical date of about 1,300 years has been calculated for the split between northern and southern Athapaskan groups (Hoijer 1956), and it has been suggested (Perry 1980) that this date probably marks the time when an ancient chain of Athapaskan speakers continuously distributed along the northern and central Rocky Mountains finally pulled apart, severing communications between the southerly Navajo-Apache and their northern relatives. (The

AIKENS AND WITHERSPOON12

late Numic expansion out of the Great Basin and onto the western Plains may actually relate to this rupture.) A prehistoric Athapaskan presence in the Rockies may be as old as 5,000 years or so, accord­ing to one archeological assessment that perceives an unbroken cultural continuity extending back from late prehistoric (but pre-Numic) times, to the Alti­thermal period (Wright 1978).

Thus it seems reasonable to postulate that the Numic borderlands were occupied, for the last 5,000 years or so, by Penutian- and Hokan-speaking peoples to the north, west, and south, and by Athapaskans to the east. Within the interior Great Basin area thus circumscribed, Numic speakers are the only ethnohistorically known occupants.

The historic Numic occupation in the western and eastern Great Basin and adjacent Colorado Plateau is archeologically underlain by the Love­lock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi cul­tures respectively, which all carne to an end within a few hundred years of A.D. 1000, and which were clearly not Numic manifestations (Figures 2, 3). A Numic connection has been argued for Fre­mont and Virgin Branch Anasazi (Gunnerson 1962; Taylor 1957), but convincingly refuted by the obser­vation that there are simply no trait-specific con-

SOURCE: ".J. NYSTROM & co. I

Figure 3. Distribution of desert, lacustrine, and horticul­tural adaptations in the Great Basin at about A.D. 500-1000.

tinuities between Fremont, Virgin, and the historic N umic cultures in pottery, basketry, architecture, rock art, or other complex elements, such as would be expected if the two were historically related (Adovasio 1980; Adovasio, Andrews and Fowler

1982; Butler 1983; Euler 1964; Schroeder 1963). Similarly, there is a striking disjunction between tht~

material objects of the Lovelock culture and ethno­graphic Numic culture of the same region. This is most notable in basketry types and in the fact that Numic peoples made pottery and Lovelock peopl<­did not, but it is evident in architectural and artistic elements as well (Adovasio, this volume; GrosscuJI 1960; Heizer and Napton 1970; Loud and Harring-­ton 1929).

The character of these non-Numic archeolog-­ical manifestations is important to the argumenl being built up here, because of the significant socio economic contrasts between the prehistoric cultures and the culture of the historic Numics who replaced them. A brief descriptive sketch will supply tIll" needed information.

The Lovelock culture was an adaptation to wei lands resources found around the numerous lakes and marshes of the western Great Basin fringe-tlw Humboldt-Carson Sink, Pyramid Lake, Winne mucca Lake, and Honey Lake, to name the musl prominent. It is dated between about 2700 B.C. alld A.D. 550 at Lovelock Cave, where the cultural COlli plex is most fully attested (Heizer and Napton 1970; Loud and Harrington 1929), but a single radioca' bon date on a piece of the highly distinctive Lovelock wicker basketry suggests that it may have persis,,"" as late as A.D. 1350 at Kramer Cave, near Will nemucca Lake (Hattori 1982).

A relatively sedentary pattern of settlemenl i:i indicated by the discovery of semisubterran(';111 pithouses at the Humboldt Lakebed site bcli ,w

Lovelock Cave, at site NV-PE-67 near the town "I

Lovelock, Nevada, and at sites near Honey Lak .. , California (Cowan and Clewlow 1968; Heizer ;111" Napton 1970; Riddell 1960). From human COPI" lites preserved at Lovelock Cave carne compellill!-, evidence of a rich subsistence based on lake-m;II'il, resources; meal remains included tui chub, cui sucker, Taho sucker, Lahontan speckled (1;.,.

freshwater molluscs, duck, coot, bulrush, call:r", and tule, as well as saltgrass, Great Basin wild I),' , and other species common to the edges of wei Lilli I habitats. Projectile points, milling stones, 'W"', fishhooks, and waterbird decoys made of 1111.

bundles covered with feathered duck skins were p.111 of the associated cultural inventory (Heizer ;",.1 Napton 1970; Napton 1969).

Other evidence of sedentary occupation dUIIII,' this general period, and of thriving lakeshore :;. I

tlements, is also known farther north, extendin~ ","I beyond the Lovelock culture area as currently. I. fined. Archeological survey at Lake Abert, in SOli II,

III

I

GREAT BASIN NUMIC PREHISTORY 13

("(Itral Oregon, has identified over 30 sites along the Like's eastern shore, some 20 of them with apparent housepit depressions. Excavations to date have been limited, but tests have verified the presence of pit­house floors and occupational debris including traces 1,1" freshwater mussels and fish bones. Radiocarbon ,btes span the period from 1500 B.C. to A.D. 1200, ;lIld projectile point cross-dating suggests a broader lime range-perhaps 2500 B.C. to A.D. 1500. The Ilianifestation, dubbed the Chewaucanian culture (Pettigrew 1980), clearly represents a northern ex­Icnsion, or cognate, of the lakeshore-adapted Love­lock culture.

Far to the east, on the opposite edge of the (;reat Basin, a largely sedentary village way of life was established on the basis of a mixed horticultural ;md hunting-gathering economy. This was the Fre­lIIont culture, well dated between about A.D. 500 and 1300 by many radiocarbon determinations (Jennings 1978; Marwitt and Fry 1973). Settlements included semisubterranean pithouses and above­g-round structures, often found together in the same sites. Hundreds of villages are known, and a very considerable population is clearly represented. The culture was not homogeneous over its entire range, as shown by marked regional variation in pottery, architecture, figurines, rock art, and other in­dicators, but common themes relate the several variants. Subsistence patterns also appear to have varied according to the natural setting, with some regions more heavily based on maize-beans-squash horticulture, others more oriented to hunting and gathering. Indeed, it has been suggested that some Fremont settlements may have been principally based on lake-marsh resources in a way quite com­parable to the lacustrine settlements of the Lovelock culture (Madsen 1980; Madsen and Lindsay 1977).

The Anasazi cultures of the Southwest are so widely known as to require very little characteriza­tion here. The Virgin Anasazi of southern Utah and northern Arizona were the most westerly group, ex­tending well into southern Nevada. The Mesa Verde people occupied southwestern Colorado, and the Kayenta dwelt in northeastern Arizona. Each of these groups was committed to a sedentary village­farming way of life, used painted pottery, built both subterranean and aboveground masonry structures. Each dated back to Basketmaker times, around the beginning of the Christian era, and all three peoples abandoned their settlements and farmlands during the stressful arid interval of the twelfth and thir­teenth centuries, withdrawing into other regions where a horticultural way of life was still possible (Lipe 1983).

Neither the Lovelock nor the Fremont cultures truly exemplified the Great Basin desert foraging pattern, and certainly the Anasazi did not. All repre­sent instead groups with their closest economic ana­logues outside the region.

A strong Californian connection for the Love­lock culture is indicated by numerous trait-specific similarities with the Windmiller culture of central California: spire-lopped Olivella shell beads, Am­phissa shell beads, and abalone shell beads are clearly Californian imports; ground and polished charm­stones, slate rods, and bone spatulas are of Wind­miller types, perhaps manufactured locally. The coiled basketry trays and remarkable stuffed water­bird decoys of the Lovelock culture also have historic analogues among the Costanoan and Patwin peoples of the San Francisco Bay-Delta region (Beardsley 1954; Heizer and Krieger 1956; Napton 1969; Ragir 1972). Note too that wetlands adaptations were cen­tral to the lifeways of these Californian groups (see also Aikens n.d.).

Based on these observations linking Lovelock with the Californian region, on the lack of convinc­ing evidence for continuity between the Lovelock and Numic cultures, and on the predominance of Penutian speakers in central California and the Sierra, Hattori (1982) has proposed that the bearers of Lovelock culture were probably Penutian-speak­ers like the Californians of the Windmiller and later horizons. Similarly, it has been suggested that the prehistoric Chewaucanian waterside villages at Lake Abert in Oregon may represent Penutian-speaking Klamaths-ethnographically adapted to waterside settings in the Cascade foothills west of Lake Abert -rather than the desert-adapted Numic-speaking Paiute who claimed the region in historic times (Pet­tigrew 1980). Archeological and ecological consider­ations are further bolstered by Paiute oral tradition. A Northern Paiute folktale describes their extermi­nation of a people who had occupied the country before them (Hopkins 1883), and a Surprise Valley Paiute tradition relates that the Klamath formerly occupied much of the northern Great Basin in Oregon until the Paiutes drove them out (Kelly 1932).

The horticultural complex of the Fremont was clearly derivative from the Southwest, as shown by its black-on-white pottery, architectural styles, and maize-beans-squash horticulture. The more north­erly and easterly variants of Fremont also demon­strated general similarities to Plains cultures in grayware ceramic traits and the use of leather moc­casins, the latter a northern element quite in contrast with the longstanding use of woven fiber

AIKENS AND WITHERSPOON14

sandals in the Great Basin and Southwest (Aikens 1967, 1972; Marwitt 1970, with references; Worm­ington 1955).

An attempt was made some years ago by one of the present authors (Aikens 1966, 1967) to link the Fremont manifestation with Plains and South­western Athapaskan peoples, both to account for the complete disappearance of Fremont culture after about A.D. 1300, and to account for the where­abouts of the Athapaskan-speaking Navajo-Apache during the centuries between their split from their northern relatives and their late prehistoric appear­ance in New Mexico and Arizona. This suggestion met with little approval (Husted and Mallory 1967; Wedel 1967; cf. Schlesier 1972), but nevertheless remains, in our view, the most plausible accounting yet offered for Fremont ethnolinguistic affiliations. It may gain some strength from a case recently made for a longstanding Athapaskan presence in the northern and central Rocky Mountains (Perry 1980; Wright 1978), since much of Fremont territory in­cludes the Wasatch outlier of the Rockies, and Fre­mont ceramics have been traced as far east as the Colorado Front Range Games B. Benedict 1982, personal communication). Recent work document­ing a widespread and previously unrecognized Fre­mont presence in southern Idaho may also have a bearing on the Athapaskan question, and is in any case important to the present argument for showing that the historic Numic peoples of Idaho were preceded there also by others of quite distinct origins (Butler n.d., 1982, 1983). At any rate, an Atha­paskan affiliation for Fremont is mentioned here only as a possibility; its acceptance is not really crucial to the thesis being advanced at present, it be­ing at least clear that the Fremont people, whoever they were, were not the same as the Numic speakers who succeeded them in the area.

As for the linguistic affiliations of the Anasazi groups, it seems most likely that the Virgin and Kayenta peoples were related to the historic Hopi, who represent a monolanguage family of Utaztekan coordinate with Numic. The Mesa Verdean peoples have been linked with the speakers of Kiowa­Tanoan languages who historically occupied the upper reaches of the Rio Grande, in north-central New Mexico (Hale and Harris 1979 with references; Wendorf and Reed 1955).

The preceding pages evoke a scene in which a great deal, but not all, of the ethnohistorically known N umic territory is accounted for as the range of non-Numic peoples prior to the recent Numic ex­pansion. Between at least A.D. 500 and 1300 in the case of the Fremont and Anasazi, and perhaps 2700 B.C. and A.D. 1350 in the case of the Lovelock cul­

ture, there were no Numics in the eastern or western Great Basin, or in the Southwest.

But in the central Great Basin uplands, there is evidence of a cultural pattern that has remained stable for approximately the past 5,000 years, that cannot be clearly characterized as non-Numic in the way that Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi can. It, unlike them, has no clear outside affiliations and furthermore it persisted archeolog­ically without notable indications of rupture from ancient times right up to the period of White con­tact, when Numic speakers were found to be in sole possession of the region. In the Reese River Valley of central Nevada, a well-defined pattern of hunting­gathering activities associated with seasonal settle­ment shifts, identical to that of the historic Numic occupants, has been documented as extending from historic times as far back as 2500 B.C. (Thomas 1973, 1974). Thomas, who has studied this region from a variety of perspectives, is emphatic on the point that "there are no archaeological data from the central Great Basin which cannot be subsumed under Steward's general ethnographic [Numici model." He does not assert that this continuity or pattern demands an interpretation of continuoll~

possession by Numic ancestors throughout the period of record, but we feel that such a conclusioll offers inescapably the most reasonable and par simonious accounting of the situation.

Thomas further notes, with equal emphasi~,

that there is vanishingly little evidence in the cenlr;d Great Basin uplands for human occupation prior Ii' about 5000 B.C., and very little even as late as 1110 interval 2500-3500 B.C. Of some 2,500 projecli'" points collected in controlled sample surveys fnllil

the region, fewer than six specimens of tYllD predating 5000 B.C. were identified! The peri"d 2500-3500 B.C. gives evidence of only an "inili,.! and sparse occupation" and not until after 2',1111 B.C. does human activity become well attested, W, attach major significance to the correspondence I" tween this latter date and the linguistic estimak ,01

approximately 5,000 years ago for the time or 1110

Utaztekan breakup which led ultimately to ttl(' , " tablishment of the Numic family (Goss 1977; Il.d, 1958-59; Lamb 1958).

This completes our sketch of the context we '" " as crucial in accounting for both the homelalld III

which the Numic languages arose, and the lill' .c~

that led to the Numic speakers' great outward ,I

pansion in late prehistoric times. The follo\\ 11111

paragraphs identify a larger and more all. 10111

ancestral N umic homeland than that earlin 1'1" posed by various scholars, and offer environrllt 'III i ,I climatic reasons for the late prehistoric NUllli. q

GREAT BASIN NUMIC PREHISTORY 15

1';U1sion outward from it into surrounding regions. This reconstruction is followed in turn by a con­cluding section arguing problematical details of the Illlcrpretation, and reiterating the main points of our "lIltention.

HYPOTHESIS

The historically known Utaztekans, from Ore­I~()n deep into Mexico, were pre-eminently people of IIIC desert; the language map of North America Icaves this in absolutely no doubt. Linguistic "vidence suggests that Utaztekans have ranged the Iksert West from ancient times, for at least the last ~J,OOO years, and clearly they are by long experience ;uld tradition the best-fitted of all far western I>eople to cope with the exigencies of a hunting­~~athering desert life. The Numic peoples, who rep­n:sent one branch of this great Utaztekan stock, ex­('mplify a supremely flexible and successful adapta­'ion to the desert setting of the Great Basin (Steward 1(38).

In his compelling account of Great Basin Numic society, Steward attributed overriding im­portance to the comparative sparsity and cyclicity of desert food products, which fostered a corresponding sparsity and mobility in human populations. Espe­cially within the central Great Basin heartland to which Steward's ethnographic model best applies, low population density and high mobility gave the Numics security in a difficult environment where they were obliged to routinely exploit a very broad, diversified range of subsistence possibilities. As outlined in preceding paragraphs, this cultural pat­tern was extant in the central Great Basin at a time when the more numerous and sedentary Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi peoples oc­cupied the moister and richer Sierra-Cascades flanks to the west and Rocky Mountain outliers to the east. In contrast to the Numic folk, these non-Numic people habitually depended on a more special range of concentrated and productive subsistence possi­bilities. To the extent that the resources on which their prosperity was based could be had in requisite abundance only in particular settings, these people were vulnerable. Though more prosperous, they were less secure economically than the more broadly based folk of the central Great Basin.

We suggest that to people in this situation the pronounced low in effective moisture so well documented throughout the west during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (Euler et al. 1979 and references cited therein) was of crucial importance. Particularly along the richer eastern and western margins of the Great Basin, where the Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi peoples were

heavily invested in systems of intensive lacustrine exploitation or horticulture, a relative abundance of water was critical. For them, drought meant dis­aster. But their bad luck turned out to be good luck for their desert-adapted contemporaries in the cen­tral Great Basin.

Simply, it is hypothesized that Numic ancestors have occupied the central Great Basin since the time of the Utaztekan breakup about 5,000 years ago, and that the broader nineteenth-century range memorialized in our linguistic and ethnographic maps represents a very recent expansive phase. This was initiated when aridity reduced the lacustrine and horticultural food resource bases of Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi peoples in better lands to the west and east and brought about their withdrawal, leaving their lands open for Numic occupation (Figure 3).

While the Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi peoples were enjoying adequate moisture and the relative abundance it fostered, the Numic ancestors, always few and scattered in com­parison, had to remain content with their less favored ranges far out in the central Great Basin. But during the dry climatic interval of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the more numerous and sedentary "others" chose to withdraw from their drying territories rather than give up the relative wealth and comfort to which they had long been ac­customed. They could presumably have remained to survive where they were by shifting to a less abun­dant, more mobile lifeway analogous to that of the drylands-adapted Numic peoples, but the archeo­logical evidence is clear that they did not. The vacated territory was quickly occupied by the Numic peoples, who were long accustomed to shifting their ranges at opportunity. To them the old Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Anasazi lands re­mained, despite the drying trend, still comparatively well watered and at least as desirable as the Numics' inherently more arid Great Basin heartland.

Finally, we suggest that this is only the last in a series of expansions and contractions that began as people first entered the central Great Basin in signifi­cant numbers 5,000 years ago. The earlier ebbs and flows were no doubt also coordinated with and motivated by recurring fluctuations in effective moisture regimes. In a 1983 letter to the authors commenting on an earlier draft of this paper, Michael J. Moratto offered the following elaboration of this idea:

Imagine (as you already have) that the central Great Basin was the homeland ofUtaztekan peoples for many millennia. Because of short- and long­

16 AIKENS AND WITHERSPOON

term environmental changes of varying intensities, one would expect that the actual distribution of populations and the nature of economic activities within the core territory would have varied through time. When conditions were optimal in terms of Numic adaptation, Numic lands may have ex­tended-as you suggest-as far west as the Sierran scarp. When environmental conditions "deteri­orated," Numic populations and settlement pat­terns would have shifted accordingly-part of their "resilience." One aspect of these shifts would have been increased use of the montane environments when lowlands became untenable. As more ar­chaeology is done in the high Sierra, for example, we see increasing evidence of montane settlement by Great Basin peoples which seems to correlate with adverse climatic episodes (desiccation) in the western Great Basin. This model also has a linguistic corollary. As the N umic homeland was ex­tended, linguistic diversification would occur; as it contracted, a process of homogenization would take place. Thus, the very late glottochronological "dates" do not say much about how long the Numic folk have been in the Great Basin. They only measure the time since the most recent "bottle­neck" gave way to expansion. Also, the expansion­contraction (amoeba) model might account for the nature of the linguistic/cultural relationship be­tween Numic, Tubatulabalic, and Takic groups. Tubatulabal might be a residual group from an earlier episode of expansion.

PROBLEMS AND CONCLUSIONS

The above treatment has not fully discussed certain aspects of the conventional linguistic inter­pretation of Numic prehistory, for the sake of simpli­city in exposition. Some points could be seen as troublesome to the proffered interpretation, but we believe that they can be resolved without harm to our basic contentions. The idea that the Numic peoples originated from a tiny homeland in the vicinity of Death Valley is at bottom based on the diversity of the U taztekan languages to be found in the general California-Arizona-Sonora borderlands. In the initial statement of the linguistic hypothesis (Lamb 1958), the early proto-Numic speech com­munity was seen as remaining highly localized there for a long period following the Utaztekan breakup of about 5,000 years ago, and then-for unexplained reasons-beginning a very rapid expansion across the Great Basin about 1,000 to 1,500 years ago. This time perspective for the Numic spread relied on lex­icostatistical dates for internal divisions within Numic, it being implied that the divisions came about as the migrating speech community expanded into and beyond the Great Basin.

Our hypothesis differs only slightly. It grants

that there was a major expansion of the Numic range at about the time specified, but from a much larger homeland already in the Great Basin. The key difference is that we see Utaztekan (ancestral Numic) peoples as being present in the Great Basin from the time of the initial U taztekan breakup rather than only from the time of the much later Numic ex­pansion. Based on lexical clues in Californian languages to a very early, quite northerly proto­Utaztekan range (Nichols 1981), lexical clues in the Numic languages to a probable later occupation in the southern Sierra Nevada (Fowler 1972, 1980), and previously mentioned archeological indications Of cultural continuity in the central Great Basin, we propose that this Great Basin hpmeland extended from about north-central Nevada southward into the Owens Valley region.

Postulating an ancestral Numic homeland of this location and size also offers a more rational in­terpretation of the striking tripartite split between Western, Central, and Eastern Numic. A re-evalua­tion of the internal classification of the Numic lan­guages by Freeze and Iannucci (1979) suggests that the first division to appear in proto-Numic was be­tween western and eastern speech communities. After this, the western speech community persisted to become modern Western Numic, while the east­ern one split to create the present Central and Eastern (Central and Southern in Freeze's and Ian­nucci's terms) Numic languages. This succession of events is congruent with archeological evidence: as noted above, the Lovelock culture collapse that would have allowed Western Numic speakers to ex­pand into the old Lovelock range along the Sierran flanks may have slightly preceded the Fremont and Anasazi abandonments that would have allowed the more easterly Numics to expand and diverge into Central and Eastern Numic in the eastern Great Basin and northern Southwest.

This is in contrast to the vision-implied by the original linguistic proposal-of a mysterious sus­tained march by three separate legions of Western, Central, and Eastern Numic speakers. Already di­verged into separate languages in the extreme south, they would have moved abreast in three great par­allel columns out of their Death Valley homeland to­ward the north and east. To turn Miller's (1966:93) arresting characterization of this scene to the present purpose, "It is unlikely that the Basin saw such carefully planned migrations until the days of Brig­ham Young."

In a discussion of "Old California Uto-Az­tecan," Nichols (1981) cites evidence of ancient bor­rowings between Utaztekan and certain Californian languages to suggest that central California was the

GREAT BASIN

•• Iiginal Utaztekan homeland. His discussion relates ,,, lhe ancient Utaztekan breakup. Ours begins with ,III: appearance ofUtaztekans in the Great Basin as a I"sult of that breakup. The two hypotheses do not 'll"cessarily conflict, and may indeed be mutually ':1 I pportive. Nichols' reconstruction simply takes as ~',ivcn the Lamb (1958) model of late Numic expan­',1"11 from extreme southeastern California. Our .,1lcrnative model of long occupance of the Great Ihsin by Numic ancestors should allow a consider­..I)1e simplification of the number and course of p"pulation movements needed in Nichols' recon­'.II'liction to account for the ancient borrowings II Iested in U taztekan (including Numic) and Cali­l<Jl'flian languages.

Another aspect of the relevant literature still re­'iI'iring discussion is a recent analysis by Bettinger ,lIld Baumhoff(1982) which attributes the Numic ex­I ';j flsion to an ability on the part of the N umics to '"ll-compete postulated antecessors in the Great llasin. They offer a fascinating theoretical exposition "I how a people who were "processors" -labor­1IIIensive exploiters of a wide variety of plant and ,lIlimal food resources-would be able to expand "wir range in competition with a people who were "I ravellers" -that is, primarily far-ranging hunters .. I larger game. They identify the Numic peoples as l"ocessors, and contend that the Numics replaced, I,'ss than 1,000 years ago, preceding travelers who "wn occupied the Great Basin.

Clearly, the approach of Bettinger and Baum­1,,,11' differs radically from ours. We feel that the ma­1"1 economic distinction they make between pro­,('ssors and travelers flatly contradicts Thomas' (1<)73, 1974) evidence for the presence in central Nevada, throughout the last 5,000 years, of a subsis­"'flce-settlement system identical to that of the ,'I hnographic Nurr.ics of the region. Additionally, we .I" not feel that Bettinger and Baumhoff's concept of I,rocessors replacing travelers speaks at all accur­,IIely to the circumstances under which the Numics "'placed the Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, ,I lid Anasazi peoples; none of these latter cultures I"motely fit their characterization of "travellers." If ,IllYthing, in such a comparison, the Numics ought I" be the travelers, and the Lovelock, Chewauca­Ilian, Fremont, and Anasazi folk the processors.

Evidence is now emerging of previously undis­'"vered high altitude occupation in late prehistoric 'i mes in the central Great Basin. Bettinger (personal lllmmunication, May 1982) sees this as supporting "IC traditional concept of a late N umic incursion, IHIt we also doubt this contention. The site of Alta 'I()quima (Thomas 1982) at an elevation above 10,000 feet on Mount Jefferson in central Nevada

NUMIC PREHISTORY 17

does indeed show a major contrast in the character of occupation before and after approximately A.D. 1000, with evidence of upland hunting before that date, and evidence of a settled village with house structures after it. But this need not be viewed as in­dicating the first arrival of N umic people in the region. It could as well represent only as adjustment by long-resident Numics through a simple range shift-their primordial method of adjusting to local scarcity-to the drying conditions of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which would have reduced the biotic productivity, especially of the lower-lying parts of their country.

Finally, there must be considered the appear­ance of coiled basketry at a very late date in the central Great Basin, since Adovasio (this volume) contends that the presence of coiling technique after about A.D. 1000 in Monitor Valley, central Ne­vada, and A.D. 850 at Dirty Shame Rockshelter, southeastern Oregon, marks the arrival of Numic speakers there. We feel that the two fragments of coiled basketry known from Monitor Valley are too few to bear the burden of such an interpretation, particularly when no evidenc'e of any kind of bas­ketry was recovered from any earlier period. The Monitor Valley record simply does not speak to the question of whether or not coiling was present there in earlier times.

At Dirty Shame Rockshelter, three pieces of coiled basketry appear after about A.D. 850, along with Desert-side-notched projectile points and cer­tain styles of Pinto points. It was suggested by one of us (Aikens, Cole, and Stuckenrath 1977), as well as by Adovasio, Andrews, and Carlisle (1977) that these new elements could represent the Numic ar­rival in the region, but in view of all the foregoing this must be reconsidered. In fact, Dirty Shame Rockshelter was reoccupied about 750 B.C. after a 3,200-year hiatus, and the assemblage from that time on was functionally homogeneous, showing that the lifeway established at the site upon its reoc­cupation did not change significantly thereafter until Dirty Shame was abandoned shortly before the time of White contact. We believe it most defensible to refer the entire post-750 B. C. occupation to the same Numic peoples who claimed the area in historic times, rather than arguing for a Numic incursion based on the very minor changes noted at about A.D. 850.

To conclude, we assess the virtues of this new view of Numic prehistory as follows:

1. It eliminates the mystery, fostered by pre­vious purely linguistic interpretations, of who the pre-Numic occupants of the Great Basin were. Simply, direct Numic ancestors have been in the

AIKENS AND WITHERSPOON18

Great Basin much longer than was previously al­lowed, and they had no significant immediate prede­cessors in their central homeland-at least none whose archeological trace has yet been identified.

2. It offers a plausible reason for the N umic ex­pansion, which previous accounts also left a mys­tery, in terms of environmental change and aban­donment of surrounding territory by other peoples.

3. It is parsimonious, in that it presumes no subtle balances, complex responses, or basic internal changes in the structure of the human societies in­volved; each is seen as adapted to the environment in a particular way, and persisting as long as-but no longer than-that adaptive pattern remained

viable. The Numic lifeway, inherently more flexible, was able to prevail and spread under conditions that the Lovelock, Chewaucanian, Fremont, and Ana­sazi systems could not survive. In the long run, it was the fittest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We thank Sven S. Liljeblad, Catherine S. Fowler, Robert L. Bettinger, Michael J. Moratto, Ray Freeze, Ruth Gruhn, and Steven R. Simms for their constructive discussions of Numic prehistory with us.

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