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OVERVIEW: PREHISTORIC
PEOPLES OF THE GREAT BASIN (MODULE 14) |
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(Click here
to go directly to the lecture notes module above) |
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(Click here
to go directly to the syllabus daily topics schedule for this lesson)
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| A. |
Lesson Overview:
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The
Great Basin is geographically adjacent to the Desert Southwest and shares
many ecological characteristics with it. While having high mountains
with their own alpine kinds of ecosystems, much of the Great Basin is
quite arid. For cultural ecologist Julian Steward, the
highly-mobile, patrilineal culture of the Shoshone Indian peoples of this
region represented a "classic" cultural response to local
environmental parameters. In some respects, some of the Archaic
Desert Tradition cultures seem to corroborate this, but then we see a
relatively brief "interlude" (ca. A.D. 400-1300) when native
peoples are sedentary, practice maize agriculture, and live in
above-ground masonry houses, relatively similar to those found to their
southeast in the Anasazi area. After 1300 globally it gets cooler
and locally it gets drier, the Fremont life way disappears, and
Shoshone peoples occupy the region. Such congruencies are
fascinating and often reflect deeper dynamics. This lesson seeks to
try to understand the course of human presence in the Great Basin
and how climatic — and thus locally environmental — change may have
impacted cultural trajectories in the area. |
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| B. |
Lesson Objectives: |
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1. |
Define
the geographical and environmental parameters that characterize the Great
Basin from Pleistocene times to the present. |
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2. |
Learn the
fundamentals of the ancient cultural trajectories of peoples in the Great
Basin from Pleistocene times to ethnohistoric times. |
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3. |
Learn
about the Holocene climatic trajectories of the Great Basin area and how
this was reflected in landscape change |
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4. |
Using the Hogup Cave chronology, try to
understand possible relationships between changing climate and landscape
and how these were reflected in ancient cultural change. |
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5. |
Focus on
understanding the dynamics of both the emergence and decline of the
Fremont Culture and the "Little Ice Age." |
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| C. |
MATRIX Principles: |
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1. |
Principle 3: Social Relevance
- The role of environment on the development of past societies. |
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Discussion
- Julian Steward gave us his classic study of the Shoshone culture as
exhibiting a remarkable necological fit" within the environmental
parameters of the Great Basin. For him, cultures were the way they
were because culture itself was primarily an adaptive process.
Following Steward's argument, the environmental conditions of the Great
Basin could have provided a sort of nceiling" for cultural complexity,
provided such conditions persisted over time. What then, do we do
with the Fremont Culture? Historical Particularists could explain
the nFremont Interlude" as resulting from the diffusion of cultural
elements from the nearby Anasazi lands of the Southwest. This kind
of approach seems overly fortuitous and overly-simplistic. One
response is to consider the dynamic interplay between local Great Basin
cultures and climatic modifications that lead to increasingly moister
conditions for the area. In this class we discuss the nature of the
evidence for climatic change in the Great Basin and its reconstructed
history. We then look at the chronological match between moister,
more benign conditions (for agriculture) that appear to have prevailed
during Fremont times. Is this an example of environmental
determinism, for environmental possibilism? Students are encouraged
to weigh the pros and cons of this argument.
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(Click here
to go to a full list of MATRIX Principles as applied to other modules
for this class)
(Click here
to go to the Cross-tabulation of North American Archaeology Course
Modules, Module Overviews and SAA Seven Principles)
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| D. |
Instructional Procedures: |
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This class is fundamentally a lecture class. Materials needed are a
blackboard and maps. Slide transparencies, PowerPoint presentations,
and/or appropriate geographic websites can also be utilized. |
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| E. |
Assessment: |
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In this class the materials presented will be tested as part of the first
of three examinations. Both essay and short-identification questions can
be developed by consulting the "Terms
related to discussion of PREHISTORIC PEOPLES OF THE GREAT BASIN"
found at the end of the class lecture notes for this module (Module 14).
Essay questions related to this
module can be found by clicking the following numbers (47,
48),
or by searching in the Essay
Bank.
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