Excavations conducted in 2002

With sponsorship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), DRI is conducting an extensive archaeological study of the Bonneville Basin, located in Utah and Nevada. This area is well known for caves containing stratified deposits derived from human occupation spanning the Holocene epoch (last 12,000 years). Dr. David Rhode, Research Professor with DRI’s Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences, will lead this year-long project to analyze plant remains collected from the Bonneville Basin cave sites. Several of the sites have been excavated recently, revealing abundant well-preserved remains of plants that comprised the dietary mainstay of the hunter-gatherer societies that existed in this arid region.

Entrance to Danger Cave

Plant remains already have been collected from Danger Cave, Floating Island Cave, and Camelsback Cave. The research will include these existing collections as well as new collections accumulated during current excavations at Bonneville Estates Shelter, which has a detailed archaeological sequence extending back 12,000 years. After the plant remains have been identified according to species and quantified, Dr. Rhode will integrate data from the individual sites into a regional record of plant-oriented subsistence strategies. He then will examine the changing strategies in relation to climate-driven changes in available plant resources occurring through the Holocene epoch.

Excavations conducted in 1957

Four main research issues will be addressed. First, the purported adoption of small seeds as a dietary mainstay by people in the Bonneville Basin during the very early Holocene (10,000 years ago) will be reexamined using new evidence from Danger Cave and Bonneville Estates Shelter. Second, the record will be used to examine human response to widespread aridification and a decline in abundance of key food resources that began 8000 years ago. Third, climatic amelioration that occurred approximately 4000–3000 BP (before the present) should have strongly affected subsistence patterns, potentially resulting in dietary specialization on high-return resources or, alternatively, an expansion of population in response to a greater carrying capacity. The regional record will allow tests among these alternatives of adaptive flexibility to resource abundance versus adaptive integrity and population growth. Finally, late prehistoric subsistence shifts, including the rise of Fremont farming societies and the subsequent shift back to foraging by Gosiute peoples, will allow testing of tradeoffs between foraging and farming strategies.

An integrated record of the Bonneville Basin will be developed that will rank among the longest and most detailed records of prehistoric plant use in North America, as thorough as any record in the world. This record will be compared with an equally well-dated and detailed regional paleoenvironmental record to address important issues of regional prehistory and adaptations to changing climates and resource distributions by foraging societies. Dr. Rhode will train graduate students and members of local archaeological groups in paleoethnobotanical techniques and methods. Additionally, this research will be used to develop and enhance public displays at Utah's Danger Cave State Park.