Backtracking: Ancient Art of Southern Idaho. Max G. Pavesic and William Studebaker. Idaho Museum of Natural History, 69 pp., 1 map, 57 figs. (42 in color); with a foreword by Catherine S. Fowler, $21.95 (paper).

The purpose of this paper then is to add new data on yet another distinctive Great Basin atlatl with attached weight and associated dart foreshafts, one of which still has a stone point attached to the shaft, and to explore the implications of such a find to studies of Great Basin culture dynamics. At the same time, the fallibility of the statistical support for the discriminant analysis which purportedly allows one to classify unknown projectile points as either arrowheads or dart tips (Thomas 1978) is examined. This paper, of course, builds upon extant studies of Great Basin atlatls (Hester, Mildner, and Spencer 1974), and other studies of atlatls known archaeologically and ethnographically in the New World (Grant 1979; Hester 1974a, 6 W.Taylor 1966; L. G. Massey 1972 W. Massey 1961; Driver and Massey 1957 Metraux 1949; Cressman, Williams, and Kreiger 1940; Cressman, et al 1942; Cressman 1944) and particularly in the Southwest (Kidder and Guemsey 1919; Guemsey and Kidder 1921; Guemsey 1931; Aveylera, Maldonado-Koerdell, and Martinez del Rio 1956).

While attending the 32nd Annual Meeting of the Society for California Archaeologists, April 8-11, 1998, I became acquainted with Dr. Henry C. Koerper who gave a paper with two co-authors, Henry Pinkston and Michael Wilken, and the paper's title was "Nonreturn Boomerangs in Baja California Norte." I asked for a copy of that paper and one other (Koerper 1997) he had previously written, "A Game String and Rabbit Stick Cache from Borrego Valley, San Diego Country, (Koerper 1998: 252-270). I told him about two wooden "Rabbit Clubs" which had been found in Lovelock Cave, (Loud and Harrington 1929:Plate 16a and b) (Figure 1) and the nine so-called "rabbit clubs" found in Fish Cave near Fallon, Nevada by S.M. Wheeler and his wife Georgia [Wheeler S.M. and Wheeler G.N. 1969:68-70; see also Winslow (1996) and Winslow and Wedding (1997:140-150.)] I told Dr. Koerper that I would date four of the nine so-called "rabbit clubs" from Fish Cave by Accelerator Mass Spectrometry. I sent samples off to Dr. "Erv" Taylor at the University of California, Riverside and the results came back a few weeks later. However, before I relate the dates to you, let us look at the site. Fish Cave in which the seven "rabbit clubs" and two "boomerangs" were found by the Wheelers.

This comment, in large measure, is a statement about the present state of knowledge of American archaeology in 1994. The unpublished "gray literature" grows more massive with each passing day. Most of it does not warrant publication, but some of it is critical to our knowledge. I do not know what influence our "dark gray" publications would have had on Catherine S. Fowler, David Rhode, or Brian Hemphill, but I am certain those preliminary reports would have made some impression on their critical thinking about archaeology in the Great Basin. I recognize some of our ideas in print by various subsequent authors. I also think one solution to this problem would be that the State Historic Preservation archaeologists, who do read these "gray" reports, should make a recommendation as to whether these reports should be published.

In 1982, a small coiled basketry bowl with simple, triangular design elements pendant from the rim was donated to the Nevada State Museum. The circumstances under which the basket was found were not fully explained, but the donor did say the basket was recovered by him from a cave in the Oakridge District of the Willamette National Forest on the North Fork of the Willamette River in Lane County, Oregon. Sandy silt still adheres to the interior of the basket, and provides evidence of partial burial by cave debris. As the present residence of the donor is unknown, further details on the nature and exact location of the cave, and other particulars of the find, are not available at this time.

This report synthesizes the distributional data on Lovelock wickerware basketry types around the peripheries of Pyramid Lake and Winnemucca Lake (playa) in western Nevada. At present, there are seven radiocarbon dates on Lovelock wickerware from the Lower Truckee Basin, ranging in age from 580 ± 100 RCYBP to approximately 3,270 ± 180RCYBP (Taylor et al. 1994). The only known vessel form employing this kind of weaving is a conically shaped carrying basket. In the specimens of this kind of plaiting from Pyramid Lake, two almost complete conical baskets show refurbishing and reuse, and most of the rest show evidence of repair.