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Aboriginal occupation at high altitude: alpine villages in the White Mountains of

eastern California
Article in American Anthropologist · January 1991
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ROBERT L. BETTINGER
University of California, Davis
Aboriginal Occupation at High Altitude:

Alpine Villages in the White Mountains
of Eastern California
Villages with well-built dwellings and extensive chipped- and ground-stone assemblages found
between 3,130 m and 3,854 min the White Mountains, California, and Toquima Range, Ne-
vada, indicate intensive seasonal use if both ranges by groups engaged in alpine plant and animal
procurement. Lichenometric measurements, radiocarbon assays, and time-sensitive artifacts show
that the White Mountain alpine villages postdate A.D. 600, and are temporally distinct from
older hunting blinds and sparse lithic scatters in that range that suggest a less-intensive form of
alpine land use centered on hunting; a similar, and roughly contemporaneous, adaptive succession
is indicated in the Toquima Range. These changes probably reflect adaptive responses to popu-
lation growth and may be connected with the spread ofNumic-speaking peoples.
M UCH OF GREAT BASIN ANTHROPOLOGY operates through a paradigm that recog-

nizes no clear boundary between ethnography and prehistory but uses each to in-
form the other while reducing the explanation of both to a family of materialist principles
articulated initially by Julian Steward. The effectiveness of the paradigm is undeniable:
those who have taken the time to work out its implications for particular cases have gen-
erally met success-often at the expense of individuals working from other paradigms. It
is understandable, then, that after a half-century of this, Great Basin anthropologists tend
to assume that they know the range of adaptive responses of which aboriginal Great Basin
peoples were capable and the circumstances under which they were invoked, and that,
because of this, they can predict the sorts of archeological manifestations likely to be en-
countered in any environmental setting. Recent archeological research in central Nevada
and eastern California, however, demonstrates that this is simply not so. It reveals a com-
plex history ofhigh-altitude land use that included intervals of intensive occupation dur-
ing which small, seasonally occupied alpine villages were established by groups that en-
gaged in the procurement of a broad spectrum of animals and plants.
Alpine villages, and the intensive land use they imply, are conspicuously at odds with
ethnographic models of Great Basin human ecology, in which valley and foothill plants
dominate subsistence, and the alpine zone occupies a place of marginal importance be-
cause it is useful only for hunting (Steward 1938:14). Such intensive activity is equally at
odds with conclusions previously drawn from limited studies of Great Basin alpine ar-
cheology; they piece together a record of casual, unchanging aboriginal use consistent
with the kind one would expect of any marginal environment where resources are too few
and too sparse to sustain alternative adaptive patterns or intensification (e.g., Simpson
1977; Bettinger 1975). In short, alpine villages bear witness that something is wrong with
traditional assumptions about Great Basin human ecology. Fitting alpine villages into
local prehistories, and understanding how their appearance in different places might be
connected, are the first steps that must be taken to address these issues.
ROBERT L. BETTINGER is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.
656
Bettinger] ABORIGINAL HIGH-ALTITUDE VILLAGES 657
Alpine Villages in the Great Basin

Between 1981 and 1989, surveys and excavations conducted in two of the highest
mountain ranges in the Great Basin, the White Mountains of eastern California (4,343
m) and Toquima Range of central Nevada (3,642 m; Figure 1), led to the discovery of
more than a dozen sites between 3,150 m and 3,854 m that show evidence of unexpectedly
intensive occupation. Many of these sites are large; all are located at or above the modern
tree line, usually in the stunted alpine tundra biotic community (Figure 2; Cronquist et al.
1972: 135-140). Circular, multiple-course stone footings representing the remains of well-
built, timber(or pole)-and-thatch dwellings (houses) are definitively characteristic of
these alpine sites (Figure 3). Equally definitive are their diverse inventories of plant and
animal procurement and processing tools, and abundant tools and debris indicating the
repair and production of these and other kinds of tools and equipment. Together these
elements suggest that these sites were used as warm-season occupation base-camps or
villages, for periods of at least one month and possibly more than two, by nuclear families
and perhaps more comprehensive multifamily social units, such as bands.
Villages are readily distinguished from the simple rock hunting blinds and sparse lithic
scatters commonly encountered in the alpine zone throughout the Great Basin (Figure 4;
e.g., Thomas 1982:96). These smaller, more familiar sites generally lack both plant pro-
ALTA
/TOQUIMA
•
.
WHITE - ·::: .
MOUNTAINS :::.
-o
N
0 200
km
Figure 1
Map locating the White Mountains, eastern California, and the site of Alta Toquima, To-
quima Range, central Nevada.
658 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST [93, 1991
Figure 2
Alpine tundra community in the central White Mountains. The alpine village of Halftrack
is located just left of the small hill directly below Paiute Mountain (3,830 m), which dom-
inates skyline.
cessing tools and domestic structures and match conventional expectations regarding ab-
original alpine land use. It is likely that they represent the activities of individual hunters
or hunting parties in pursuit oflarge game, most probably bighorn mountain sheep (Ovis
canadensis nelsoni), which use the alpine zone from early spring to mid-fall and are its most
common ungulates (Wehausen 1983:Fig. 5). The Toquima and White Mountain villages
are often closely juxtaposed to these smaller sites. Hunting blinds often occur within the
boundaries of villages, or close enough to indicate that village and blind could not have
been used at the same time because mountain sheep avoid locations of intense human
activity. However, projectile points and other kinds of evidence show that hunting was a
major activity associated with village occupation, so it is quite possible that at least some
alpine hunting blinds were used by villagers.
The Alpine Zone as a Village Location

The bulk of mainstream contemporary hunter-gatherer research proceeds on the as-
sumption that adaptive systems are the result of rational choices made between alterna-
tives that differ in terms of the efficiency with which they return energy or other nutri-
tionally important currencies (cf. Bettinger 1980, 1987). Given such an assumption, pro-
longed aboriginal alpine habitation by families heavily involved in plant procurement is
unexpected because usable alpine resources, particularly alpine plants, are both costly
and scarce. Low temperatures during short growing seasons and low concentrations of
C0 2 severely limit the productivity of alpine plants relative to lowland plants (cf. La-
Marche et al. 1984). 1 Grass and forb seed size, production, and crop reliability, for in-
stance, all decline directly with elevation (Spira 1986:58). Ethnographic patterns of plant
use among the Owens Valley Paiute (Steward 1933:242-246), whose traditional territory
Bettinger] ABORIGINAL HIGH~ALTITUDE VILLAGES 659
Figure 3
Partially excavated dwelling at the alpine village of Rancho Deluxe. Dark black cultural
midden is capped by about 15 em of lighter-colored sterile material deposited following
abandonment of the structure.
included the west slope of the White Mountains, reflect these realities. Of the plants iden-
tified as having been consumed as food by that group, less than half of 38 genera and less
than one-quarter of35 species (and only one of the ten most important) grow above 3,050
m. Stands of nut-bearing pinon pine (P. monophylla) and limber pine (P. jlexilis}, sources
of traditional winter food, would have been accessible to alpine villagers willing to ne-
gotiate arduous treks to lower elevations, but both crops arrived too late to sustain sum-
mertime alpine villages. The limited availability of these conventional plant staples
would have been partly compensated for, by the tendency of alpine plants to reproduce
vegetatively by means of roots and rhizomes (Spira 1986:58), at least some of which are
edible (e.g., Lewisia pygmaea), albeit difficult to extract from characteristically rocky and
root-matted alpine soils.
Faunal remains from villages indicate that mountain sheep and marmots (Marmotajla-
viventris) were at least as important as plants (Grayson 1991). This intensive use is ex-
pected because these mammals are the largest and most attractive resources available in
the alpine zone. 2 It is difficult to imagine that there is a simple functional connection
between the procurement of either taxon and the establishment of alpine villages, how-
ever. Marmot procurement neither warrants nor requires the presence of villages. Large-
scale mountain sheep procurement might support an entire village (as discussed below),
but to establish one for just that purpose would seem counterproductive because sheep
are especially shy on their summer range, where alpine villages and foraging activities
associated with them surely would have made them much more difficult to hunt (e.g.,
Wehausen 1983:9, 75-76).
In a more general sense, alpine resources-plant and animal-seem outwardly inca-
pable of sustaining aboriginal villages simply because they occur in the alpine zone,
which is costly to visit and move about within. Human physiological responses to altitude
660 AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST (93, 1991
Figure4
Rudimentary stone hunting blind located just above the tree line in the White Mountains.
and harsh climatic conditions further hinder the efficient procurement of alpine resources
and in other ways make the alpine zone marginal for human occupation (e.g., Cudaback
1984; Frisancho 1975; Burton and Edholm 1955). 3 These guarantee lower returns on pro-
ductive effort in the alpine zone than in the lowlands, even holding resource availability
constant.
Alternative Explanations of Alpine Villages

There are at least two ways to interpret the archeological record of alpine land use in
the White Mountain and Toquima Range villages. First, it might be argued that in both
ranges the villages and the more common hunting blinds and small-tool scatters are part
of a single pattern that revolved around hunting. If mountain sheep were sufficiently
abundant, hunters might have lengthened alpine forays enough to require the use of base
camps, where they could rest between hunts, wait out storms, and cache game and ma-
terials needed to replace worn or broken gear. During these trips, nonhunters, perhaps
wives, could have provided essential base camp support, for example, meal preparation,
meat drying, clothes patching, with enough time left over for other activities, such as
plant procurement, child care, and net and basket production (for an ethnographic ex-
ample see Steward 1933:253). This would account for all the archeological elements that
characterize alpine villages. Further, if base camp location shifted from year to year, as
it surely did, that would explain the presence of villages and hunting blinds in the same
locations: the blinds would be used in years when a base camp was not present. The
absence of similar village base camps in other Great Basin mountain ranges that have
been examined could then be explained by arguing that, in those cases, access to the
highlands was easier so that base camps were not required, or that game populations
were too small to warrant them.
The alternative interpretation is that alpine villages reflect a pattern distinct from the
one represented by the more common hunting blinds and tool scatters. According to this
alternative, the hunting assemblages-lithic scatters and hunting blinds-would be con-
nected with a relatively nonintensive pattern ofland use restricted to the procurement of
only high-quality alpine resources, including mountain sheep, marmots, and perhaps one
or two other highland species. Against that, the villagers would represent a more inten-
sive pattern of resource use that intentionally targeted, in addition to mountain sheep
and marmots, a variety of lower-quality alpine resources including numerous small ro-
dents, roots, seeds, and berries. That would necessarily imply extended periods of alpine
residence, to take advantage of the wider range of resources, and greater numbers of in-
dividuals-a nuclear family at minimum-to carry out the diverse range of procurement
activities and daily chores needed to support such an expedition.
The two interpretations share certain features. Most notably, the prolonged hunting
forays that give rise to villages in the first hypothesis necessarily result in a more intensive
use of alpine plants and animals, which is the cause of village occupation in the second
hypothesis. Nevertheless, the two hypotheses are distinct in the following respect. In the
first hypothesis, villages arise to take better advantage of animal resources; the procure-
ment of such lower-quality resources as plants occurs incidentally as a dietary supple-
ment. In the second hypothesis, the procurement oflow-quality plant resources is in itself
an important motivation for the establishment of alpine villages. If at some point aborig-
inal families were motivated to use low-quality alpine resources they had previously ig-
nored, it would follow that the alpine resources for some reason had become cheaper to
exploit or that the cost of resources available elsewhere (that is, outside the alpine zone)
had become greater, justifying the use of relatively costly alpine resources. To accept this
second hypothesis, then, would shift attention to an explanation for these changes in cost.
An important further distinction between the hypotheses is more easily tested: in the
first hypothesis, hunting blinds and minor tool scatters should be contemporaneous with
villages; in the second hypothesis, villages should differ temporally from those hunting
assemblages. The detailed chronometric data needed to evaluate these alternative hy-
potheses are now available for the alpine villages in the White Mountains.
White Mountain Alpine Research

Between 1982 and 1989, twelve alpine village sites were excavated in a study area that
covers about 460 km 2 in the southern White Mountains. The spatial and functional re-
lationship between these villages and other kinds of alpine sites in the study area was
established early on, by systematic survey. Surfaces above 3,050 m and above the tree
line were sampled using transects 500 m wide, oriented east-west (perpendicular to the
crest of the range) and placed at 2.5-km intervals, and by more eclectic purposive surveys
of intervening locations.
Procedures
Each village was mapped by rod and transit and its surface assemblage recovered in
whole or part with reference to a grid system of 15- X -15-m quadrats. Selected categories
of milling equipment were counted (battered cobbles) or recorded by sketch and mea-
surement (millingstones) to reduce the costs of artifact transport in the field and to the
laboratory. Deposits within structures and middens outside structures were sampled at
all but one village. Both within and outside structures, sample units were distributed to
reflect dimensions of functional and depositional variability shown to be potentially im-
portant determinants of hunter-gatherer site structure by recent ethnoarcheological re-
search (e.g., Binford 1978) and previous archeological research to the west of the White
Mountains in Owens Valley (Bettinger 1989:96-106, 156-163, 310-320). 4 Small cultural
features such as hearths, and layers of midden and sediment that differed in compactness,
texture, or color, were removed separately, usually by section (e.g., by halves). The cul-
tural contents of these units and sections were kept separate for subsequent analysis and
cataloging. Deposits lacking obvious natural or cultural stratigraphy, and stratigraphi-
cally discrete layers and features more than 10 em thick, were excavated in arbitrary 10-
cm increments and their contents analyzed and cataloged separately. All materials re-
covered were returned to the Department of Anthropology, University of California,
Davis, where they were processed and cataloged under accession numbers "W" and 382
in the laboratory of the author.
The basic unit of observation regarding artifact association and distribution in the
White Mountain villages is the lot: an individually removed depositional unit (e.g., a
feature, layer, 10-cm increment, or section thereof) or separately collected surface area
(e.g., a 15- X -15-m quadrat). In all, there are 1,757 such lots in the White Mountain
village sample (Table 1): 173 ( 10%) are surface collections (surface lots); 533 (30%) are
from middens outside of, or stratigraphically inferior to, structures (midden lots); 475
(27%) are from middens inside structures that represent the occupation of those struc-
tures (structure lots); and 576 (33%) could not be reliably assigned to a specific archeo-
logical context.
Chronology
Several dating methods were used, but the framework of the White Mountain alpine
chronology is provided by a small number of artifact types whose antiquity has been es-
tablished by previous work in Owens Valley and the western Great Basin (Bettinger
1989), and is supported by 33 White Mountain radiocarbon assays that can be strati-
graphically associated with these artifact types (Table 2). These time markers permit
designation of four successive temporal segments or phases ofWhite Mountain land use.
From early to late, these are: Clyde phase, 2500 to 1200 B.C., identified by projectile points
of the Little Lake series; Cowhornphase, 1200 B.C. to A.D. 600, identified by Elko series
points; Baker phase, A.D. 600 to A.D. 1300, identified by Rose Spring and Eastgate series
points; and Klondike phase, A.D. 1300 to historic times (ca. A.D. 1850), identified by De-
sert Side-notched and Cottonwood projectile points and Owens Valley Brown Ware ce-
ramics. More fine-grained stratigraphic analysis of the White Mountain materials may
warrant revision of these dates, but probably by no more than a century or two.
Lots were assigned to phases on the basis of time markers and stratigraphic position.
Lots that contained time markers of a single phase, or that lacked time markers but were
stratigraphically equivalent to lots containing time markers of a single phase, were as-
signed to that phase. Lots containing time markers of two successive phases, and strati-
graphically equivalent lots without time markers, were assigned to a more inclusive co-
phase consisting of both phases jointly. For example, a lot containing a mixture of Little
Lake (Clyde phase) and Elko (Cowhorn phase) points would be assigned to the Clyde/
Table 1
Distribution of alpine village lots by phase and archeological context.
Phase/Co-phase Surface Midden Structure Unclear Total

Klondike 0 30 49 0 79
Baker/Klondike 16 16 270 21 323
Baker 0 II 13 10 34
Cow horn/Baker 0 88 3 0 91
Cow horn 0 83 0 0 83
Clyde/Cow horn 0 27 0 0 27
Clyde 0 3 0 0 3
Mixed 136 63 19 16 234
No data 21 212 121 490 844
Total 173 533 475 576 1,757
Table 2
Radiocarbon dates for White Mountain phases.
Sample Radiocarbon
Site number age Calendar agea
Klondike Phase (n = 6)
Corral Camp North UCR-2281 < 150 B.P. (A.D. 1800-1955)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2290 210 ± 50 B.P. A.D. 1662 (A.D. 1528-1955)
Pressure Drop UCR-2291 290 ± 50 B.P. A.D. 1640 (A.D. 1450-1953)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2289 760 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 1263 (A.D. 1160-1383)
Klondike! Baker Co-phase (n = 15)
Crooked Forks UCR-2173 160 ± 60 B.P. (A.D. 1640-1950)
Crooked Forks UCR-2178 250 ± 60B.P. A.D. 1650 (A.D. 1490-1955)
Midway UCR-2283 260 ± 50 B.P. A.D. 1648 (A.D. 1490-1955)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2193 330 ± 80B.P. (A.D. 1494-1605)
Midway UCR-2287 300 ± 60B.P. (A.D. 1440-1955)
Site 12640 UCR-2189 340 ± 60 B.P. (A.D. 1430-1660)
Corral Camp South UCR-2352 360 ± 100 B.P. A.D. 1530 (A.D. 1333-1955)
Site 12640 UCR-2188 360 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 1490 (A.D. 1430-1650)
Site 12640 UCR-2359 400 ± 90 B.P. A.D. 1450 (A.D. 1329-1660)
Site 12640 UCR-2360 460 ± 50 B.P. A.D. 1435 (A.D. 1332-1493)
Crooked Forks UCR-2180 490 ± 100 B.P. A.D. 1426 (A.D. 1280-1640)
Crooked Forks UCR-2176 490 ± 70 B.P. A.D. 1426 (A.D. 1301-1615)
Corral Camp South UCR-2187 830 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 1215 (A.D. 1030-1280)
Shooting Star UCR-2288 870 ± 50 B.P. (A.D. 1020-1260)
Baker Phase (n = 3)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2192 350 ± 60 B.P. (A.D. 1430-1660)
Corral Camp South UCR-2278 1190 ± 70 B.P. (A.D. 640- 990)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2351 1510 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 544 (A.D. 410- 650)
Baker/Cowhorn Co-phase (n = 5)
Rancho Deluxe UCR-2348 870 ± 70 B.P. (A.D. 1000-1280)
Crooked Forks UCR-2179 1780 ± 60B.P. A.D. 234 (A.D. 70- 410)
Crooked Forks UCR-2363 1755 ± 100 B.P. (A.D. 29- 534)
Raven Camp UCR-2358 2530 ± 60 B.P. (820-410 B.C.)
Cowhorn Phase (n = 3)
Raven Camp UCR-2195 1240 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 774 (A.D. 660- 943)
Midway UCR-2356 2350 ± 100 B.P. 402 B.C. (790-175 B.C.)
Midway UCR-2354 2350 ± 120 B.P. 402 B.C. (800-124 B.C.)
Clyde/ Cow horn Co-phase (n = I)
Short Stop UCR-2362 1565 ± 100 B.P. (A.D. 240- 660)
acorrected for secular variation after Stuiver and Becker ( 1986). Listed are the 95% confidence
interval for each calendar date (in parentheses) and its mean. Means omitted for samples produc-
ing radiocarbon ages of less than 150 years or that correspond to more than one calendar year.
Samples UCR-2189, UCR-2180, UCR-2187, and UCR-2195 are Pinus sp. (pine) and UCR-2362 is
a mixture of Pinus sp. and Artemisia sp. (sagebrush). All others are Artemisia sp.
Cowhorn co-phase; such a lot would be assumed to date between 2500 B.C. and A.D.
600, the combined span of the Clyde and Cow horn phases. As shown in Table l, of the
1,757lots that make up the White Mountain village sample, 649 (37%) can be assigned
either to a phase or co-phase. Of the remainder, 234 ( 13%) lots contained time markers
diagnostic of three or more phases or two nonsuccessive phases (e.g., Clyde and Baker)
and are regarded as stratigraphically mixed and temporally nondiagnostic. Another 844
(48%) lots lacked both time markers and stratigraphic equivalents containing time mark-
ers. Lots represent depositional units of unequal size, so the distributions shown in Table
I do not measure the intensity of prehistoric occupation over time exactly; they do pro-
vide a rough measure of that intensity, however, both by time and functional context.
Chronology of White Mountain Alpine Land Use

As noted earlier, contemporaneity between alpine villages and hunting-related tool
scatters and blinds also found in the alpine zone would suggest a single, and relatively
unchanging, pattern of alpine land use centered on animal procurement. Conversely, if
villages were occupied relatively recently, or over a span significantly shorter than is in-
dicated for sites that are clearly hunting-related, it would suggest that villages represent
an adaptive pattern distinct from them. Time markers, radiocarbon assays, and mea-
surements of lichens for which growth rates have been established provide the evidence
needed to decide between these alternatives.
Projectile Point Distributions
Because they occur in both village and nonvillage (i.e., hunting-related) locations,
time-sensitive projectile points offer a simple and relatively straightforward means of es-
tablishing the contemporaneity of villages and other kinds of archeological manifestations
found in the White Mountain alpine zone. 5 Table 3 indicates the combined number of
each kind of time marker collected from all village locations and the corresponding num-
ber of that kind collected from survey transects in off-village contexts, where it is inferred
that they represent items lost or discarded by hunters. It is clear that the ratio of time
markers deposited in village locations relative to those deposited elsewhere, in evidently
hunting-related contexts, increases through time, and a simple chi-square test shows that
these temporal differences are significant (see Table 3; x2 = 364.4, dj = 5, p < .001).
Table 3
Distribution of White Mountain time markers by locational context.
Locational context
Time marker Transect Village Total
Little Lake series points 3P 35 66
(47%) (53%)
Elko series points 42a 415 457
(9%) (91%)
Eastgate series points 4 149b 153
(3%) (97%)
Rose Springs series points 15 604a 619
(2%) (98%)
Cottonwood series points 5 384a 389
(1%) (99%)
Desert Side-notched points 2 653a 655
(< .01%) (>99%)
Total 99 2,240 2,339
Chi-square = 364.4, 4f = 5, p < .001

aTime marker significantly more common than expected by chance (p < 0.05).
bTime marker more common than expected by chance.
Analysis of residuals applied to these data indicates that Little Lake and Elko series pro-
jectile points are significantly less common in villages than would be expected by chance
and that Rose Spring, Cottonwood, and Desert Side-notched points are significantly
more common in villages than expected by chance. Eastgate series points are also more
common in villages than expected by chance, but not significantly so (i.e., p > .05).
These distributions imply that alpine village locations, hunting camps, and hunting
blinds were used in every phase, but that village locations were used much more inten-
sively and the hunting camps and blinds much less intensively, after A.D. 600, the begin-
ning of the Baker phase. That is, the village locations are chiefly late prehistoric; their
history of use is temporally distinct from the more ancient one collectively reflected by
small alpine tool scatters and stone features clearly related to hunting. This tends to con-
firm the hypothesis that villages represent a form of activity not related exclusively to
routine hunting or the support of hunters. Unfortunately, the village locations do produce
enough early time markers to admit the possibility that villages were a traditional part of
alpine hunting whose popularity simply increased after A.D. 600. We could be more cer-
tain about the connection between alpine villages and late-prehistoric adaptive change if
it could be shown that increasing intensity of alpine village location use after A.D. 600
was attended by a change in the way in which village locations were used, especially if
that change could be linked to prolonged use by family groups. Dwellings (houses) should
be particularly indicative of that kind of change because ethnographic evidence suggests
that houses are largely confined to family residential bases in the Great Basin (e.g., Stew-
ard 1941:232-233), and because previous archeological research closer to home, in Ow-
ens Valley, documents a strong correlation between the regional distribution of houses
and millingstones, suggesting their mutual confinement to family residential bases (Bet-
tinger 1979:466, Table 8). On this basis, we can presume that houses would be present
at alpine villages only in the event that families were using them as residential bases for
long periods.
Alpine House Chronology
Bettinger and Oglesby (1985) have previously argued from lichenometry that the cir-
cular house foundations associated with the White Mountain alpine villages are relatively
recent, dating between A.D. 660 and historic times. House deposits dated by time-sen-
sitive artifacts and radiocarbon assays support that conclusion. As shown in Table 1, of
335 structure lots that can be dated by time markers, all but 3 are assignable to either the
Baker or Klondike phases, or to the Baker-Klondike co-phase. Radiocarbon assays ap-
plicable to White Mountain alpine village houses suggest similarly recent occupation
(Table 4). Of36 such assays, 21 are considered reliable, 6 and of these, 20 correspond to
calendar dates more recent than A.D. 1020, clustering at three points: A.D. 1425-A.D.
1450 (4 dates), A.D. 1490 (2 dates), A.D. 1640-A.D. 1665 (6 dates). The remaining sam-
ple returned a radiocarbon age equivalent to a calendar date of A.D. 220, but the tem-
poral gap between it and the others suggests it is an anomaly; possibly it represents the
use of a relic sagebrush limb for firewood.
In summary, lichen measurements, time-sensitive artifacts, and radiocarbon dates all
place the White Mountain alpine village houses after A.D. 600, substantially later in time
than the specialized hunting sites that also occur in the alpine zone. This temporal dis-
crepancy is consistent with the hypothesis that villages reflect a broadening of alpine land
use from hunting to mixed plant and animal procurement. Yet, just as alpine village
houses are not fully contemporaneous with off-village tool scatters and hunting blinds,
neither are these houses fully contemporaneous with the artifact assemblages found at
alpine village locations, which provide all the evidence pertaining to plant procurement
and other village-related activities (e.g., tool manufacture and repair) regarded as evi-
dence of intensified alpine resource use (see Table I). In specific, Clyde and Cow horn
phase points indicate that the artifact assemblages that occur in alpine village locations
accumulated over a span of time much longer than is indicated for the rock-foundation
Table4
Radiocarbon dates for White Mountain houses.
Sample Radiocarbon
Site/Unit number age Calendar agea
Crooked Forks
Structure 2 UCR-2173 160 ± 60 B.P. (A.D. 1640-1955)
Structure 3 UCR-2178 250 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 1650 (A.D. 1490-1955)
Structure 3 UCR-2179 1780 ± 60 B.P. A.D. 234 (A.D. 70- 410)
Raven Camp
Corral Camp South
Corral Camp North
Structure 3 UCR-2281 <!50 B.P. (A.D. 1800-1950)
Midway
Structure 8 UCR-2283 260 ± 50B.P. A.D. 1648 (A.D. 1490-1955)
Structure 5 UCR-2287 300 ± 60B.P. (A.D. 1440-1955)
Shooting Star
Rancho Deluxe
Structure 5 UCR-2290 210 ± 50B.P. A.D. 1662 (A.D. 1528-1955)
Pressure Drop
Site 12640
Structure I UCR-2360 460 ± 50 B.P. A.D. 1435 (A.D. 1332-1493)
Structure I UCR-2359 400 ± 90 B.P. A.D. 1450 (A.D. 1329-1660)
acorrected for secular variation after Stuiver and Becker ( 1986). Listed are the 95% confidence
interval for each calendar date (in parentheses) and its mean. Means omitted for samples produc-
ing radiocarbon ages of less than !50 years or that correspond to more than one calendar year.
Samples UCR-2180 and UCR-2189 are Pinus sp.; all others are Artemisia sp.
houses that occur in those same locations. It is thinkable, therefore, that Clyde and Cow-
horn phase occupants of these locations made houses of a sort that is difficult to detect
archeologically (without stone foundations, for example) yet undertook the complete
range of procurement and processing tasks that we have inferred took place at alpine
villages. That is, in all respects except house building, the early occupants of alpine vil-
lage locations might have behaved no differently than the late occupants. Because there
is this possibility, a convincing demonstration that alpine villages reflect a late-prehis-
toric adaptive shift requires that we reject the alternative null hypothesis that the com-
position of the artifact assemblages found at alpine village locations remained stable over
time. Once again, time-sensitive artifacts provide the temporal control necessary to test
that hypothesis.
Alpine Village Artifact Assemblages
Because the complete assemblage recorded for all 12 White Mountain alpine village
locations is too large to describe in detail here, discussion concentrates on a few categories
that are particularly well represented and whose use bears directly on the hypotheses
outlined above. These are: plant processing tools (millingstones and manos), multipur-
pose butchering and root-processing tools (battered cobbles), hunting equipment (pro-
jectile points), multipurpose cutting tools (bifaces), blank preforms used in the manufac-
ture of points and other implements (roughouts and point blanks), drilling and perforat-
ing tools (drills), scraping tools ( unifaces), cobbles used as sources of flakes (cores), un-
identifiable scraps of chipped-stone tools and points (pressure scrap), and bone tools
(functional worked bone). As shown in Table 5, the 12 White Mountain alpine villages
produced substantial quantities of plant-processing tools, toolmaking tools (e.g., drills
and unifaces), and manufacturing materials and debris (cores and pressure scrap), in
addition to the kinds of things one would expect to find where hunting is important (e.g.,
projectile points and bifaces). If these distinctive village assemblages represent a change
in alpine land use after A.D. 600, a simple comparison between pre-Baker (i.e., Clyde,
Clyde-Cowhorn, Cowhorn, and Cowhorn-Baker) and Baker/post-Baker (i.e., Baker-
Klondike and Klondike) assemblages should show it. The data are presented in Table 6.
It is clear that there are important differences between the early pre-Baker assemblages
and the late-Baker and post-Baker assemblages (see Table 6; x2 = 706.0, dj = 12, p <
.001 ). Analysis of residuals of Table 6 shows that the early assemblage contains signifi-
cantly greater than expected numbers of untypeable points, bifaces, and pressure scrap
(alpha level = 0.05); the late assemblage contains significantly greater than expected
numbers ofmillingstones, typeable points, roughouts, point blanks, drills, and unifaces.
The late assemblage also contains greater than expected numbers of manos, battered cob-
bles, cores, and functional worked bone, but in none of these cases are the differences
between the early and late assemblages statistically significant.
Summary
The chronometric data presented here suggest that White Mountain alpine villages
represent a late-prehistoric pattern functionally distinct from an earlier one that featured
nonintensive, short-term use centering on ungulate procurement. As I have noted
throughout, the more recent occupants of these sites built substantial houses for shelter,
which suggests relatively lengthy periods of occupation in the alpine zone. The earlier
occupants of these same locations spent less time on-site than in the surrounding coun-
tryside, and either built no shelters or such flimsy ones that no evidence of them now
remains. Hunting was an important activity both early and late, but the later occupants
spent substantially more time than their earlier counterparts procuring and processing
plants, as witnessed by their extensive and varied milling assemblages. The late occu-
pants undertook, in addition to food procurement, a broad range of tasks linked to the
manufacture and repair of various kinds of equipment as shown by the broad range of
tools they used and the materials they used to replace broken or worn gear. By contrast,
the early site occupants left behind relatively little debris, almost all of it attributable to
the butchering of animals or the makeshift repair of tools used in hunting. The compo-
sition of these early assemblages is comparable to that characterizing the smaller lithic
scatters that dot the alpine zone and are believed to be hunting-related. 7
In summary, the early components (Clyde and Cowhorn phases and Clyde/Cowhorn
and Cow horn/Baker co-phases) encountered at White Mountain alpine village locations
are not "village" occupations in a functional sense. They are "pre-village" components
that furnish evidence of only a limited range of activities quite similar to that inferred
gs
CX>
Table 5
Distribution of selected artifact categories at White Mountain alpine villages.
Corral Corral
Crooked Raven Camp Camp Shooting Rancho Pressure Site Short Half
Forks Enfield Camp South North Midway Star Deluxe Drop 12640 Stop Track
Millings tones 70 46 13 57 17 85 8 96 21 10 2 21 ::..
Manos 75 18 14 80 23 63 10 100 13 18 - - ~
~
Battered cobbles 594 109 45 68 52 96 17 366 53 138 I 2 [;2
:;;,;
Projectile points ::..
:;;,;
Typeable 928 72 58 138 145 432 55 296 49 116 26 7
Untypeable 815 50 278 156 159 1,275 61 830 46 258 85 6 5!
Bifaces 1,069 75 375 174 350 1,882 55 I, 178 26 331 74 16
"'.,g
0
0
Roughouts 125 27 16 34 107 233 10 104 10 168 15 7
Point blanks 499 36 5 49 47 236 31 181 38 142 2 2
"'C;;
'l
Drills 71 II 16 4 II 76 2 36 3 23 I
Unifaces 117 14 5 17 22 148 3 62 8 278 6
Pressure-flaked scrap 734 80 153 128 58 1,099 24 474 9 273 98 3
Cores 23 2 3 14 36 - 17 8 43 2
Functional worked bone 134 12 55 45 9 22 - 21 - - 7
<0
·'""
~
~
Table6
Distribution of major artifact categories in White Mountain villages by phase.
Baker and
Pre-Baker post-Baker
Category phases phases Total
Millings tones 22 gsa 117
Manos 43 127b 170
Battered cobbles 110 265b 375
Projectile points
Typeable 178 1,324a 1,502
Untypeable 857a 1,430 2,287
Bifaces 1,050a 1,566 2,616
Roughouts 99 296a 395
Point blanks 63 778a 841
Drills 31 137a 168
Unifaces 45 218a 263
Pressure-flaked scrap 76F 1,397 2,158
Cores 10 43b 53
Functional worked bone 82 20lb 283
Chi-square= 706.0, 4/= 12,p < .001

acategory significantly more common than expected by chance (p < 0.05).
bCategory more common than expected by chance.
from dozens of other small hunting camps and hunting stands used before A.D. 600. It
is only the later components (Baker and Klondike phases and Baker/Klondike co-phase)
that provide evidence of more intensive and diverse "village" activities.
The archeological record throughout the White Mountain alpine tundra repeats, on a
larger scale, this same "pre-village/village" distinction. The "pre-village" record ofland
use is limited to hunting, camping, and butchering stations used by small hunting parties
during brief excursions, probably during summer and fall; structures and milling equip-
ment are notably lacking. After A.D. 600 the pattern of alpine land use becomes "village"
and is dominated by a small number of intensively occupied seasonal villages used as
centers of alpine plant and animal procurement by families, groups of families, and pos-
sibly entire bands.
Explaining Alpine Villages

Because the Great Basin alpine zone is a marginal environment and its most attractive
resources are summer-resident ungulates and large, hibernating rodents, the noninten-
sive use of these highlands by small hunting parties on short trips prior to A.D. 600 is
easily understood. It is less clear why, after A.D. 600, the nonintensive hunting pattern
gave way to the intensive alpine village pattern, an important adaptive change that per-
sisted into early historic times. This change certainly implies that something happened
to increase the attraction of residence in the alpine zone, however, and from a technoen-
vironmental perspective the most probable causes would seem to be technical innovation,
climatic change, or population growth.
Technical Innovation
It is unlikely that a technological innovation that lowered alpine residence costs or
raised alpine resource return rates is responsible for the appearance of alpine villages.
Numic (i.e., ethnographic Great Basin) domestic technology lacks items specially de-
signed for alpine use, and there is no archeological record of their former presence (e.g.,
Steward 1941 :299-302; Driver and Massey 1957; Aikens l970;Jennings 1957). Similarly,
although White Mountain alpine village houses and house appliances (e.g., hearths) are
more elaborate than their lowland Owens Valley counterparts, they are certainly not suf-
ficiently superior to account for the appearance of alpine villages.
Plausible evidence of innovative subsistence technologies capable of explaining alpine
villages is equally scanty. The bow could conceivably have had such an effect, and did,
in fact, appear in the Great Basin at A.D. 600 (Bettinger and Taylor 1974:19), roughly
contemporaneous with the first White Mountain alpine villages. The bow, however, was
no more effective in the alpine zone than in other places (e.g., the sub-alpine forest) where
villages did not appear, and any increased hunting efficiency afforded by the bow would
probably have been outweighed by losses in efficiency resulting from the disturbance of
local game by alpine villages (cf. Wehausen 1983:9, 75-76). 8
Climate Change
A more promising explanation for the appearance of alpine villages is that, either by
increasing alpine productivity or by differentially decreasing non-alpine (i.e., lowland
and foothill) productivity, regional climate change made alpine resources relatively more
attractive. With regard to the first possibility, because it is primarily short growing sea-
sons that limit the productivity of the alpine zone (Morefield 1988:8; Wehausen 1983:40-
41; Carey 1986:173), climatic warming after A.D. 600 could have caused the alpine zone
to become more habitable or more productive, and alpine villages might have appeared
as a result. This does not appear to be what actually happened, however. Temperatures
seem to have been below long-term regional norms, hence unfavorable to alpine produc-
tivity, between A.D. 400 and A.D. lOOO (LaMarche l974:Fig. 5), when the villages were
first established, although probably not as severely cold as during the preceding millenia
(Bettinger and Oglesby 1985:212; see also Curry l969:Table l0). 9 Likewise, the long-
term trend in temperature since A.D. llOO is toward colder conditions unfavorable to
alpine plant growth, as indicated by upper tree-line tree ring widths (LaMarche
l974:Fig. 5) and, more reliably, by the declining elevation of upper tree lines in the White
Mountains immediately adjacent to the alpine villages (LaMarche 1973:655). Temper-
atures may have been markedly warmer than normal between A.D. llOO and A.D. 1300
(LaMarche l974:Fig. 5), but this short-term anomaly, and any attendant increase in al-
pine productivity, clearly would not account for subsequent alpine village occupations
well documented by lichenometry (Bettinger and Oglesby l985:Fig. l), radiocarbon (see
Tables 2, 4), and time-marker artifacts (see Tables l, 3). Equally telling, there is no evi-
dence of alpine villages during earlier periods of equivalent, inferred warmth (e.g., be-
tween 2900 and 2500 B.C.; cf. LaMarche l974:Fig. 5). Presumably, during these early
favorable periods alpine resources simply remained relatively too scarce or costly to war-
rant intensive use. A warmth-induced increase in alpine productivity, then, seems neither
necessary nor sufficient to account for alpine villages.
In theory, increased annual precipitation might also increase the productivity of alpine
resources, but the effect of this is much harder to anticipate for two reasons. First, mois-
ture is much less limiting to alpine productivity than to non-alpine productivity, as in the
Desert Scrub community, for example. Because that is so, moisture increase would ac-
tually diminish the relative attraction of the alpine zone, increasing productivity less
there than in other, more moisture-sensitive environments. Second, were it accompanied
by larger alpine snow packs, increased precipitation might actually decrease alpine pro-
ductivity by decreasing growing season length and temperature, thus reducing alpine
plant growth and ungulate range quality (cf. Curry 1969:38; Wehausen 1983:40-41 ). Un-
fortunately, both considerations make it difficult to decipher the record of change in re-
gional precipitation from high-altitude data. The White Mountain lichen record (Bettin-
ger and Oglesby 1985:212), however, indicates that alpine snowpacks were greater be-
tween lOOO B.C. and A.D. 500 than any time thereafter, perhaps at least partly as a func-
tion of increased moisture, a suggestion that is consistent with the observed changes in
the elevation of upper tree lines (LaMarche 1973). Tree-ring indices do suggest short
periods of markedly increased precipitation between A.D. 800 and the present (La-
Marche 1974:Fig. 6), but the record is too short to permit comparison with earlier wet
periods, when no villages were present. These data, however, show no obvious corre-
spondence between the intervals of increased precipitation and the timing of alpine vil-
lage occupations, as indicated by clusters of radiocarbon dates for White Mountain
houses (see Table 4) at A.D. 1425-A.D. 1450 (a period first wet then dry), A.D. 1490
(during a long wet period), and A.D. 1640-A.D. 1665 (a near-normal period). Taken
overall, then, the climatic data at our disposal provide no telling evidence linking the
occupation of alpine villages to precipitation-induced increases in alpine productivity.
It is also possible that alpine villages appeared in response to climatic changes that
reduced resource availability in traditional habitats, that is, below the alpine zone, low-
ering marginal rates of return to the point that they could be matched by rates attainable
by exploiting a broad range of alpine plants and animals from alpine villages. Since alpine
productivity is relatively inferior to begin with, this eventuality is likely only in the case
of climatic parameters that are less limiting in the alpine zone than elsewhere. Regional
drought, in particular, would decrease alpine productivity much less than non-alpine
productivity, and thereby increase the relative attraction of the alpine zone. Once again,
however, empirical data make it difficult to argue that droughts were responsible for the
appearance of alpine villages, simply because the droughts that occurred between A.D.
600 and Euro-American contact (the interval of alpine village occupation) were almost
certainly no more severe than several that occurred between 5000 B.C. and A.D. 600,
none of which occasioned the appearance of alpine villages (LaMarche 1973, 1974; Curry
1969). Moreover, as we have seen above, what tree-ring evidence we have indicates no
obvious correspondence between variations in regional precipitation and the timing of
alpine village occupation.
In combination, the paleoclimatic data available from eastern California suggest it is
unlikely that the White Mountain alpine villages reflect a simple response to cold, wet,
warm, or dry climatic anomalies that improved the relative attraction of alpine resources.
This is consistent with our knowledge of hunter-gatherer adaptive behavior, which, in
the absence of facilities for extended resource storage, is much more profoundly affected
by short-term (i.e., annual), high-amplitude variations in climate than by the long-term,
low-amplitude (e.g., Curry 1969:42; LaMarche 1973:658) variations generally accepted
as indicative of climate change. That, of course, diminishes the likelihood of establishing
direct causal linkages between paleoclimatic change and adaptive change, even when the
two seem to coincide temporally (e.g., Antevs 1948; Baumhoff and Heizer 1963). The
potential influence of climate on adaptive change is further mediated by the ability of the
plant and animal populations upon which hunter-gatherers rely for food to rebound rel-
atively quickly from even disastrous environmental/climatic attrition (e.g., Wehausen
1983:67-70; Grayson 1979). Because of this, the high-amplitude, short-term changes in
climate that most affect hunter-gatherers should, in theory, result in the use of costly
adaptive innovations only as short-term remedies. It is unlikely, however, that alpine
villages can be explained in this way. In eastern California, annual climatic anomalies of
the kind to which hunter-gatherers would be most sensitive, and therefore the most likely
to account for the appearance of alpine villages, tend to be of about the same magnitude
when one compares periods much longer than a century, regardless of the overall climatic
trends within those periods (Curry 1969:38). If annual extremes of climate were no more
severe after A.D. 600 than before, then it is improbable that climatic anomalies alone are
enough to account for alpine villages, which are an exclusively late-prehistoric phenom-
enon.
The archeological record in eastern California provides additional support for the idea
that more than climate must be involved in the appearance of alpine villages. It indicates
that both the pace of aboriginal adaptive shifts and the intensity of aboriginal resource
use increased there during the Holocene in the absence of any evidence of a parallel, that
is, continuing directional, trend in climate (cf. Bettinger 1977:Table 8; 1975:Tables 37,
38; 1989:338-342; see below). Climate simply cannot account for the persistence of these
innovative behaviors, or their increasing incidence with time. The rise in annual fre-
quency of high-cost, green-cone pinon procurement in Owens Valley, from nearly zero
at A.D. 400 to nearly one by A.D. 1850 (cf. Bettinger and Baumhoff 1983; Bettinger
1989:340-341), for example, is certainly too large to be explained by any known Holo-
cene, or, indeed, Quaternary, climatic change.
On the other hand, although Holocene climatic change seems insufficient to explain
long-term adaptive shifts among the prehistoric hunter-gatherers of eastern California, it
could quite clearly have been very effective in triggering such shifts. This follows from
the susceptibility ofhunter-gatherers to annual variations in available resources and their
common response to such shortfalls by resort to innovative, but high-cost, adaptive mea-
sures. Such costly innovations might very well be institutionalized as adaptive shifts, that
is, to persist and become more frequent with time, if resources were critically short rela-
tive to population to begin with and the innovation permitted population to grow in the
face of the climatic adversity that triggered it. In this way, the demand for resources gen-
erated by the innovation would be higher, and thus the probability that it would be
brought into play greater, after climate amelioration than before. By similar logic, climate
change could have triggered the alpine village pattern around A.D. 600 ( 1) if regional
population had already grown large relative to traditional resources; and (2) if alpine
villages, and perhaps other kinds of adaptive innovations instituted at the same time (see
below), allowed population to continue to grow despite short-term adversity. By this
ratchetlike process, the resources generated by these innovations could have become in-
creasingly necessary to support aboriginal populations under less and less extreme con-
ditions, that is, during more normal years, rather than just during relatively infrequent
environmental calamities.
Regional Population Growth
The argument that growing population was ultimately responsible for the appearance
of the White Mountain alpine villages is quite plausible, but difficult to demonstrate.
There is evidence, in the form of increased numbers oflarge sites and increased numbers
of time-sensitive artifacts, that between 2500 B.C. and historic times population in-
creased substantially in Owens Valley, which was the base of operations for many of the
White Mountain alpine village residents (Bettinger 1977:Table 8; 1975:Tables 37, 38).
It cannot be deduced from this alone, however, that the inferred growth of Owens Valley
population accounts for the adaptive shift observed in the alpine zone at A.D. 600. A
better case for the population argument is made by noting that the appearance of alpine
villages falls within an interval of well-documented adaptive changes in Owens Valley
subsistence and settlement patterns between A.D. 600 and A.D. 1000 that seems best
explained as the result of demographic stress (Bettinger 1989:338-342).
The appearance of alpine villages is almost certainly an indirect (at least) functional
response to the inferred population growth because viable alpine village occupation was
dependent on intensive pinon procurement, which appeared and persisted in response to
that growth. This dependency follows from the restriction of alpine village occupation to
the warm season, when resources had to be stockpiled for winter use. Alpine resources
are normally too scarce to be accumulated in bulk, however, and if so accumulated are
too difficult to transport to caches accessible from winter villages on the valley floor. In
this way, alpine village residence compromises winter survival. Pinon is the one Great
Basin resource capable of compensating for this summer resource shortfall because a
large crop provides more than enough stored food to last the winter, and maximum crop
size can be estimated a year and a half ahead of harvest (Thomas 1983:62; Lanner
1981 :80-81). Accordingly, when the anticipated pinon crop was good, alpine villagers
could have relied on that for winter food, harvesting it in the fall following a summer spent
living on the more exotic resources of the alpine zone. There is additional evidence in the
form of macrofossils recovered from many alpine villages, and tentatively identified as P.
monophylla and P. jlexilis, that pine-nut caches unused in winter were subsequently con-
sumed by alpine villagers, perhaps when fresh alpine resources were momentarily scarce.
In the same way, groups wintering on stored pine nuts in the pinon woodland might have
occasionally drawn upon alpine resource caches made the previous summer. It is think-
able, then, that alpine village occupation could not occur before the development of in-
tensive pinon procurement, which was occasioned by regional population growth: pinon
alone could provide a reliable source of winter food and obviate the need to set aside or
transport substantial winter stores during the summer months.
Support for the idea of a more direct connection between late-prehistoric population
growth and the appearance ofWhite Mountain alpine villages is provided by the timing
of village abandonment immediately upon Euro-American contact. The presence of trade
beads and absence of other glass, porcelain, and metal artifacts typically abundant in
contact-period aboriginal sites indicate that the White Mountain villages were occupied
until just before the appearance of settlements in Owens Valley (ca. 1861), and then ab-
ruptly abandoned (hence the absence of their mention in ethnographic accounts; cf.
Thomas 1982:90). This early contact abandonment is consistent with the idea that alpine
villages were occupied in response to demographic pressure, because we know that pres-
sure lessened at contact as a combined result of native depopulation through warfare and
disease-which eased pressure on native resources-and the availability of potential
sources of alternative native employment (as farmhands, washerwomen, maids )-which
had the same effect. At the same time, access to Euro-American technology (firearms and
a variety of metal containers and tools) and new, contact-produced microhabitats that
lent themselves to traditional techniques (e.g., harvested grain fields for gleaning) in-
creased returns available from environments readily accessible from valley-floor villages.
As these elements came into play, the most marginal precontact native activities ceased
to yield return rates equivalent to those obtainable by other means and were dropped
from the native system. The alpine village pattern would seem to be one such casualty of
contact-lowered economic costs.
Alpine Villages and Great Basin Culture History

To accept the argument that the White Mountain alpine villages were occupied in re-
sponse to population pressure, probably triggered by short-term climatic change, im-
mediately directs attention to an issue of more general interest. We have noted that alpine
villages have been found in two Great Basin mountain ranges: the White Mountains and
the Toquima Range in central Nevada. At this point only the preliminary results are
available from the excavations at Alta Toquima village in the Toquima Range. Even so,
it is clear that locality sustained a shift from a pre-village hunting pattern to a village
residential hunting-and-gathering pattern very much like the one we have documented
for the White Mountains. Present dating suggests these shifts took place within two cen-
turies of each other; it is not certain which is the earlier, but projectile points known to
date between A.D. 600 and A.D. 1300 in the Great Basin are relatively more common in
the White Mountain villages than at Alta Toquima, which suggests that the oldest of the
White Mountain villages are older than Alta Toquima. Why should these shifts have
taken place so close in time in both central Nevada and eastern California?
One possibility is that a regional climatic change might have affected both places in
the same way at about the same time. This would imply that, when adjusted for differ-
ences in available resources, population densities were roughly the same in both areas;
only then would a change for the worse in climate, a deep drought, for example, trigger
alpine villages in both places at the same time. The logic here is simple: if we assume the
basic similarity of resource costs and returns for alpine villages in central Nevada and
eastern California, and further assume that occupation of these villages was contingent
upon rising costs in non-alpine environments, then regional resource costs and returns in
central Nevada and eastern California would have had to have been about the same just
prior to the advent of villages in both locations. Given their proximity, this argument
would make the most sense if it were argued that central Nevada and eastern California
were part of a single population/resource system more or less in regional equilibrium.
This equilibrium could have been achieved gradually, by slow population growth in
both central Nevada and eastern California, until, sometime before A.D. 600 or there-
about, populations previously isolated by unoccupied tracts had become part of a single,
interacting regional population. Adjustments within this demographic system could have
been brought about by family movement, choices of postmarital residence location, and
intermarriage. These would gradually, and with much lag, equalize local populations
and resources in a way that reflected regional, rather than local, conditions. In such a
system it is likely that a regional climatic deterioration would bring about more or less
coincident similar adaptive changes in both eastern California and central Nevada. Al-
pine villages could represent one such response to regional climatic fluctuation.
The alternative explanation for the near-simultaneous appearance of alpine villages in
eastern California and central Nevada is that there were directional demographic influ-
ences flowing from one area to the other. The postulated wavelike spread ofNumic peo-
ples (cf. Lamb 1958) advancing northward and eastward into the Great Basin from a
southeastern California homeland near or in Owens Valley provides a potential mecha-
nism through which these demographic forces could have acted. Bettinger and Baumhoff
(1982, 1983) place the beginning of this spread roughly around 1000 B.P., or essentially
coeval with the appearance of alpine villages in eastern California and central Nevada.
A connection between the appearance of alpine villages and the spread ofNumic peoples
is made more likely by the nature of the spread envisioned by Bettinger and Baumhoff,
who infer it was accompanied by an adaptive shift parallel in all respects to the alpine
pre-village/village shift in the White Mountains and the Toquima Range. Specifically,
they have held that, through the use of low-quality plant resources, such as seeds, early
Numic-speaking peoples living in eastern California developed a costly but highly effec-
tive adaptation capable of sustaining relatively large numbers of people on relatively
small tracts of land. They argue further that these ancestral Numic peoples subsequently
used this adaptation to expand their territory within the Great Basin at the expense of
pre-Numic peoples, whose adaptation through the selective use ofhigh-quality resources,
such as mountain sheep, produced calories at lower cost but was less efficient than its
Numic counterpart at extracting costly calories from low-quality resources, and so pro-
duced fewer calories per unit of territory. Because of this, pre-Numic peoples were pow-
erless to stay the invasive spread of the more costly, but less spatially demanding, Numic
adaptation.
According to this model, the spread of Numic-speakers across the Great Basin, and
initially from eastern California to central Nevada, would bring these areas into demo-
graphic equilibrium because movement along the front would not occur until the popu-
lation/resource balance there equaled the balance in areas occupied by Numic-speakers
behind the front. We can assume that the White Mountain alpine villages produced re-
sources at acceptable costs given the population/resource equilibrium that characterized
the Numic homeland, for lacking this they would not have been occupied. It follows that
the same equilibrium, moving with the front of the Numic spread, would have caused
alpine villages to be established subsequently wherever they were feasible (cost-justified),
which could have been the case in central Nevada.
To connect the occupation of alpine villages with the development and spread of a
distinctive Numic adaptation, as this model does, produces expectations quite different
from those of the first, in which demographic equilibrium is gradually achieved. Most
notably, it predicts at least some degree of adaptive discontinuity attending the Numic
spread in areas outside the Numic homeland because it is adaptive discontinuity that
permits the hypothesized Numic spread itself to occur. Put another way, the model en-
visions alpine villages as a natural extension of in situ intensification in eastern California

but not in central Nevada, where they should appear out of place in relation to any in
situ trajectory of intensification. There is some archeological support for this idea: the
White Mountain alpine villages are quite compatible with the larger pattern of late-pre-
historic adaptive change noted in eastern California (Bettinger 1989:339-342), while
Alta Toquima Village denotes an adaptive change that stands by itself in a record of
prehistoric adaptation in central Nevada that is otherwise notable for its stability and
distinct lack of change (cf. Thomas 1973).
The model also predicts alpine village occupation to be later in central Nevada than
in the White Mountains. The lag, however, need not be great and might be invisible
archeologically: the entire Numic spread from eastern California to Idaho, Utah, and
Oregon is regarded as having required no less than perhaps five, nor any more than per-
haps seven, centuries. At these rates, it would have taken no less than one, nor much more
than two, centuries for Numic groups to have spread from eastern California to central
Nevada; such temporal differences would be difficult to detect archeologically. More sus-
ceptible to test is the prediction of the model that, beyond central Nevada, alpine villages
ought to have sprung up still later in time in other Great Basin mountain ranges with the
wavelike spread of N umic-speakers.
Summary and Implications

Survey and excavation in the White Mountain alpine highlands have disclosed a re-
markable change in aboriginal adaptation. Sometime after A.D. 600 an existing pattern
centering on hunting and short-term occupation was replaced by a pattern that featured
the intensive procurement of a broad range of plants and animals by families or groups
of families who resided seasonally in centrally located base camps or villages equipped
with well-built houses and extensive and diverse inventories of processing and manufac-
turing gear and stocks of raw materials. This dramatic shift in alpine land use appears to
have been a response to regional population growth that decreased rates of return oflow-
land subsistence activities to the point where it became cost-effective to use alpine plants
and other costly resources (e.g., pinon, small seeds) previously used casually or ignored
altogether. This and other adaptive changes previously recorded in eastern California
may be related to the development of a distinctive Numic adaptation and may have fa-
cilitated the subsequent spread ofNumic-speaking peoples out of the southwestern Great
Basin across Nevada and eventually into Utah, Idaho, Oregon, and Wyoming. If so, the
appearance of alpine villages in central Nevada could reflect the movement of Numic-
speaking peoples ancestral to the Nevada Shoshoni into that area. Alternatively, the ap-
pearance of alpine villages in both the White Mountains and central Nevada could reflect
two instances of local resource intensification within a larger area roughly in demo-
graphic equilibrium.
The broader implications of alpine villages seem clear. That the complexities of Great
Basin alpine land use, so obvious now, remained for so long undetected, exposes seem-
ingly fundamental flaws in our traditional assumptions regarding Great Basin human
ecology. Certainly in question is the widely held implication of Stewardian theory that
locationally stable, warm-season residential bases, and hence, stable social formations
larger than the family band, arise only where resources are unusually abundant (e.g.,
Fowler 1982:126; Jennings and Norbeck 1955:3; Madsen 1982:207; Elston 1982:189).
That villages have now been found in places where theory said they should not be (i.e.,
where resources are scarce), suggests that the carrying capacity of Great Basin environ-
ments, and the adaptive alternatives available to Great Basin hunter-gatherers, have
both been seriously underestimated. And if that is so, the potential for temporal and spa-
tial adaptive diversity, and a host of large-scale sociocultural phenomena (e.g., ethnic
replacement) that often characterize adaptively heterogeneous areas, has also been
underestimated.
Notes
Acknowledgments. This manuscript benefited from conversations with Michael Delacorte, David
Zeanah, David Hurst Thomas, and especially my close friend Donald Grayson. Thomas, Grayson,
Robert Kelly,James O'Connell, and an anonymous reviewer provided useful comments on an ear-
lier draft. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (BNS85-06972), several
University of California Faculty Research Grants, and volunteer agreements with the lnyo Na-
tional Forest.
1
LaMarche et a!. ( 1984) summarize experimental data suggesting that, as a function of lower
partial pressures and consequent less-effective uptake of C02> photosynthetic efficiency of White
Mountain herbs, woody perennials, and shrubs declines directly with elevation. At 3,990 m, pho-
tosynthetic efficiency is reduced by 30% relative to the rate attained by plants on the valley floor.
2 Although some experimental data are available (e.g., Simms !987), we currently lack a reliable
basis for ranking Great Basin resources according to their efficiency per unit of handling time as in
the diet breadth and patch-choice models of optimal foraging theory (cf. MacArthur and Pianka
1966). The assumption here that sheep and marmots are among the highest-ranking alpine re-
sources rests on their size (since as a rule large packages are more efficiently handled and processed
than small packages) and the tendency of hunter-gatherer populations, indeed all populations, to
value meat calories much more highly than plant calories (Hill eta!. 1987).
3 Cudaback (1984:472) estimates a short-term linear decrease in overall human performance
(e.g., in endurance, reasoning ability, visual acuity) of about 10% for every increase of 1,000 m
above 2,000 m, or equivalent to the rate of decrease in photosynthetic activity in plants. Certain
faculties (e.g., visual acuity), are restored to sea-level standards after a few days, but others (e.g.,
endurance), show little or no improvement with increased time spent at elevation.
4
Preliminary results indicate that depositional patterns differ dramatically between alpine and
lowland settings in eastern California. In general, a greater fraction of broken tools and tool-work-
ing debris ends up inside structures in the alpine zone than below 9,500 ft. Presumably, this reflects
a greater tendency to conduct all sorts of activities indoors in the alpine zone.
5
Although they are reliable time markers, ceramics are not useful in this comparison because
they are functionally connected with domestic activities that do not take place in hunting camps or
blinds.
6
The other 14 radiocarbon dates on White Mountain village houses were discounted on the basis
of perceived conflicts with other dates or uncertainties regarding stratigraphic context. One date is
clearly inconsistent with the date yielded by a second, more securely situated, sample from the same
structure. Alll3 remaining samples showed essentially modern radiometric activity, indicating oc-
cupation within the last ISO years. Such historic artifacts as glass beads indicate that several of the
White Mountain alpine villages were occupied as recently as this, so it is quite possible that some,
if not most, of these assays are valid. Unfortunately, however, none of these samples was accom-
panied by conclusive archeological evidence corroborating such recent occupation, so the possibil-
ity of postdepositional sample contamination (e.g., by rootlets) cannot be discounted.
7
Although differences in sampling strategy complicate the comparison between village and non-
village (i.e., transect) assemblages, the two tend to differ in ways that duplicate the distinctions
between the village and pre-village assemblages recovered from alpine village locations. Domestic
structures, of course, are wholly lacking in the off-village assemblage, just as they are in the pre-
village assemblage. Further, like the pre-village assemblage, the off-village (transect) assemblage
displays fewer-than-expected numbers ofmillingstones, manos, battered cobbles, projectile points,
roughouts, and drills, and more-than-expected numbers of bifaces. Unifaces and cores, however,
are more common than expected in the off-village assemblage but less common than expected in
the pre-village assemblage.
8
The bow replaced the atlatl, presumably because it is more accurate, can be fired more rapidly
and from a concealed and confining position, and because the arrow travels faster and farther than
the atlatl dart. Because ofthis, the archer can fire more times at more animals than the dart hunter.
These advantages evidently precipitated the replacement of the atlatl by the bow throughout the
New World by the time of contact in all but a very few specialized and largely understandable
contexts (cf. Driver and Massey 1957:356).
9
LaMarche's paleoclimatic interpretation of the White Mountain bristlecone pine tree ring rec-
ord has been questioned by some (D. A. Graybill, personal communication, 1990). Scudari
(1984:120), however, reports results from the southern Sierra Nevada that support LaMarche at
least in part.
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Aboriginal occupation at high altitude: alpine villages in the White Mountains of

Article in American Anthropologist · January 1991

Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Economies View project

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Aboriginal Occupation at High Altitude:

M UCH OF GREAT BASIN ANTHROPOLOGY operates through a paradigm that recog-

ROBERT L. BETTINGER is Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis, CA 95616.

Alpine Villages in the Great Basin

The Alpine Zone as a Village Location

Alternative Explanations of Alpine Villages

White Mountain Alpine Research

Phase/Co-phase Surface Midden Structure Unclear Total

Chronology of White Mountain Alpine Land Use

Chi-square = 364.4, 4f = 5, p < .001

Chi-square= 706.0, 4/= 12,p < .001

Explaining Alpine Villages

Alpine Villages and Great Basin Culture History

visions alpine villages as a natural extension of in situ intensification in eastern California

Summary and Implications

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