They were skilled craftworkers with a comprehensive material toolkit, using the full range of available materials — stone, bone, fiber, and others — to meet the demands of daily life in a challenging but resource-rich environment.

The Landscape and the People Who Used It

The Great Basin of the late Pleistocene was not the barren landscape that the term “desert” might suggest to modern readers.

The presence of Lake Chewaucan — and of dozens of other pluvial lakes across the basin — created a network of resource-rich environments embedded within an otherwise arid matrix.

The lake edges provided water, aquatic birds, fish, and diverse plant communities.

The upland areas between the lakes offered a different set of resources — seed-bearing plants, rodents, and periodically, larger game animals.