Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

A rich archaeological record spanning much of the Holocene exists in the Coso Range of southeastern California. An archaeological survey of over 2,564 acres was focused within the pinyon-juniper zone of these uplands at Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake. In total, 184 prehistoric sites were recorded, and are used here to evaluate a series of alternative models regarding the origins of intensive pinyon nut use in the southwestern Great Basin. These findings indicate that fully-ripened nuts were probably used on a regular basis deep into antiquity, but the more intensive(and expensive) harvest of green-cone pinyon nuts largely occurred after 1,350 B.P This conclusion has important implications for interpreting prehistoric land-use patterns in the region, and supports earlier hypotheses about the mechanisms responsible for the spread of Numic populations during the later phases of prehistory.