Abstract
Great Basin archaeologists eagerly incorporated Binford’s (1980) forager-collector model into their settlement pattern analyses because Julian Steward’s (1933, 1938, 1941) work on the cultural ecology of Great Basin hunter-gatherers predisposed them to think of the influence of resource distributions on foraging and mobility strategies (Rhode 1999; Zeanah and Simms 1999). Thomas’ epistemologies for Monitor Valley and the Carson Desert of Nevada (Thomas 1983a, 1985) stood out as exemplary applications of the model (Bettinger 1991a: 70-73) because they demonstrated that ethnographic Great Basin bands that shared the same culture, language, and technology ran the gamut from pure foragers (i.e., Kawich Mountain Shoshone), through seasonally mixed foragers and collectors (i.e., Reese River Valley Shoshone and Carson Desert Paiute) to full-time collectors (i.e.,Owens Valley Paiute).