The early Holocene archaeological record of the Great Basin documents the rapid adaptation of human populations to the changing conditions that followed the end of the last Ice Age.

As Lake Chewaucan shrank to its modern remnant, as the mammoth steppe gave way to sagebrush and other xeric-adapted communities, as the large game animals of the Pleistocene disappeared from the region, the people of the Great Basin adapted.

They developed increasingly sophisticated strategies for exploiting the plant resources of the arid basin, for managing the episodic availability of water in a landscape where water sources could be separated by many miles, and for maintaining viable populations through periods of environmental stress that would have been challenging even for well-adapted communities.

This adaptive capacity — the ability to respond to major environmental change by modifying subsistence strategies, technological systems, and potentially settlement patterns — is one of the most impressive aspects of the archaeological record of the Great Basin.