Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

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.