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EARLY
PREHISTORIC (12,000 - 3500 BP)
The earliest
evidence of human occupation in the Eastern Sierra dates
back to the last years of the Pleistocene era. Many of the
desert lakes were full at this time and temperatures were
cooler than today. While they would look mostly familiar to
people of our time, plant and animal communities were
distributed differently than they are now. Some animals
disappeared at or around the time people first arrived in
the area. These extinct fauna included large animals like
mammoths, camels, horses, dire wolves, and saber-toothed
cats that have been found as fossils in many places.
Archaeologists
know more about the beginning of the Early Prehistoric
period (12,000-7500 BP) than its end (7500-3500 BP). The
reasons for this gap in knowledge are presented
elsewhere. Camps of
these earliest people are found in many kinds of locations.
They are most numerous in places that were well-watered,
near old streams and marshes in large lake basins and along
major river corridors. They are also sometimes found at
higher elevations and uplands far removed from water
sources. Two important settlements of this time period are
the Lakebed site at China Lake and the Stahl site at Little Lake. Archaeological remains
at both sites portray lifeways very different than those
that followed.
EARLY
PREHISTORIC HOUSES:
Little is known
about houses of Early Prehistoric times. There are two
reasons for this. Most sites of this age are surface
artifact scatters on
eroded landforms that would not have
preserved house floors. People of this era also moved around
a lot and probably camped at any one location for only a
short time. It would make little sense to invest much effort
in constructing significant structures. Which is not to say
they had no living structures. Rather, houses were probably
very simple, perhaps no more than brush or hide-covered
lean-tos.
Unless people spend considerable time inside houses, there
are few traces left behind.
 One possible
discovery of ancient houses was made at the Stahl site.
Archaeologist Raymond Harrington reported seven buried
features that he thought were “house sites.” Circular to
oval in shape, the houses were 2.5 to 3.0 meters in diameter
and discovered near the bottom of the midden deposit.
Sediments at this depth were hard and had numerous small
pits extending further into the lower soil. These were
believed to be post-holes that once contained house
supports. Because some of the pits connected in an arc-like
shape, Harrington took them to mark the perimeter of the
early house constructions
 But there was a
problem. It was true that some of the “post holes” made a
circular outline, but there were also many similar pits in
the interior of the houses. If all of these marked the
position of old support posts, there would have been little
room for people inside the structures. Most archaeologists
today question the reality of the Stahl site houses. The
numerous pits are likely the bottoms of rodent burrows that
quit digging when the soils became too cemented.
The Stahl site
does represents the kind of settlement where houses could be
expected. The very large midden deposit at this site
contained thousands of artifacts and a wide range of tool
types. People must have either lived there for a long time
or revisited the location on many occasions to leave so much
material behind. There is little doubt that Early
Prehistoric houses will eventually be found in the Eastern
Sierra when the right sites are discovered and investigated.
They will likely be very similar to those of later periods.
EARLY
PREHISTORIC ARTIFACTS:
 Artifacts
found
at the earliest sites are almost all made by flaking or
chipping stone. Ground stone tools used to process plant
foods do rarely occur, but they are exceedingly rare at
sites older than 8500 BP. The
flaked stone artifacts
themselves indicate that tools were made to support a really
mobile lifeway. People who move around a lot may
not be near sources of new tool material (quarry) for days or weeks
at a time. Their tools need to be durable, easy to repair or re-sharpen, and they should be able to perform more than one
role. Archaeologists see this in several ways. Different
kinds of stone are more durable than others and Early
Prehistoric peoples chose to use particular materials for
artifacts that needed to last or were used in heavier
activities. Even where obsidian is superabundant, many
cutting and scraping tools were deliberately made from
harder basalts, rhyolites, and chert materials. Obsidian was
simply too brittle.
Tools also show
signs of having been repaired multiple times and apparently
kept around for some time. This is very different than in
Late Prehistoric times, when many artifacts were made and
used as needed and then immediately discarded. Some
archaeologists refer to these kinds of tools as being
“curated” – which means they were made to perform long-term
needs and not just to perform a job at the moment. Many of our tools today are of the
same sort, stored away until needed to open a beer or bottle
of wine.
Additional clues
to Early Prehistoric technology are found in the source of
the stone material. Many of the tools are made
from
lithic
sources that were not available locally. Obsidian and basalt
artifacts from the southern
Owens Valley originated at
quarries located hundreds of kilometers north or east of
where they were found. This indicates that people moved over
large geographic ranges and did so fairly quickly. Even the
most durable flaked stone artifacts would rarely survive for
more than weeks or months.
Grinding tools
were very uncommon before about 8500 BP. The few found are
barely used and look quite different than later artifacts.
It is possible that these earliest tools were used to
prepare products other than seeds. After their introduction,
ground and battered stone tools become abundant very
quickly.
Millingslabs and
handstones are common at sites containing
Pinto points, which occasionally also contain other kinds
of plant processing tools. Largely ignored before this time,
plant foods clearly became important in relatively short
order.
  Few other
artifact types have been found at Early Prehistoric sites. This is partly due to the fact that organic remains (wood,
bone, and shell) preserve poorly in really old surface
deposits. But it also may reflect the
way people lived.
Rare
examples
of
shell beads and
modified stone
objects have been
discovered
at
early sites, but
intergroup trade and decoration was probably less important
than in
later periods.
FOOD
REMAINS:
 Poor
preservation has also made it hard to find food remains at
Early Prehistoric sites in the Eastern Sierra. Almost
nothing is known about the kinds of plant foods that may
have been eaten and we can but guess about that the grinding
tools that occur. It is likely that people of this era used
a range of seeds, nut crops, roots and tubers but the
details wait future discoveries. There is better information
regarding early hunting activities and the kinds of animals
people were relying upon. Speculation continues on whether the
earliest people ate extinct fauna like mammoths or camels,
but there is no firm evidence of this. Sites in the Eastern
Sierra and nearby areas suggest that most modern animal
forms were consumed. These include large game like mountain
sheep, medium-size rabbits and hares, and a many kinds of
small rodents, reptiles, and fish. Even though large animals
were plentiful in the rich environments of this period, it
appears that people relied as much or more on smaller
critters that were more easily acquired.
SOCIAL
ORGANIZATION:
A lack of
information on Early Prehistoric houses limits our
understanding of social organization during this interval.
Based on less secure reasoning, it appears that at least two
kinds of social patterns
 existed between 12,000-3500 BP. The
earliest people were highly mobile and probably lived in
small groups. They relocated their camps often as food or
other important resources in the local area became depleted,
or because much better resources become available someplace
else. People were unwilling to travel too far to hunt or
gather foods. They preferred to move the entire settlement
when the pickings were better elsewhere. Judging by the
small amounts of material found at many sites, these may
have been one or two family groups that occasionally
assembled in larger numbers to harvest food windfalls or
arrange marriages.
Another kind of
organization appeared after 8500 BP in at least some parts
of the Eastern Sierra. This was probably similar in many
ways to the lifeway that is better documented for the Middle
Prehistoric period, after 3500 BP. Social groups were larger
and consisted of multiple extended family units that lived
as a single community. These people still moved around a
lot, but occupied centralized
 settlements for longer periods
of time. Areas and resources at some distance from the main
village were exploited by smaller task groups who spent time
way from the main base camp. Hunters might go to the uplands
to obtain mountain sheep and plant foods might be collected
in distant habitats. Products gathered at some distance from
the central camp were returned to that location and shared
amongst the wider community. This kind of organization
allowed people to live in larger groups and stay at one
place for longer periods. It also allowed for more
successful use of resources in a broader area around the
site.
RAW
MATERIALS / MOBILITY:
We have already
commented on how Early Prehistoric materials often
originated at locations far from where they are found. Some
of these exotic goods may have been obtained by trading with
groups in those distant areas, but we believe most of them
were directly obtained when the people were there
themselves. This indicates that people ranged over large
areas and covered these distances fairly quickly. It is
quite possible that the same social groups spent time in the
San Joaquin Valley, southwestern Nevada, and around Mono
Lake in addition to the Eastern Sierra. Occasional finds of
shell beads from the southern California coast and Gulf of
California probably indicates trade with people at the edge
of that zone.
OTHER
SITES:
 The Lakebed and
Stahl sites highlighted here relate to two distinct kinds of
settlement pattern. The artifact scatters at China Lake
sites studied by Emma Lou Davis formed over a long period of
time. Small groups revisited the same location on many
occasions, each time leaving a small amount of artifacts
behind. What archaeologists discover as dense clusters of
tools and waste flakes in fact represent the accumulations
of numerous visits. The lakeshore environment and small
streams feeding the basin must have been an attractive place
to live between 12,000 and 7500 BP, but people seldom if
ever stayed very long.
 The Stahl site
appears to be something else. Located near an important
source of fresh water even as Eastern Sierra climate was
growing warmer and drier, people stayed here for much longer
periods. The midden at Little
Lake (on the left) is extremely large, deep, and contains many kinds of
artifacts, cooking features, and even human burials. People
probably stayed here for several months at a time and
returned resources from surrounding environments to the one
centralized location. These visits to other places in the
area must have produced temporary camps and food processing
stations, but they have not yet been identified.
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