The Warner Valley lies in the northwestern Great Basin where Nevada, California, and Oregon meet. Some 17,000 years ago, near the end of the Pleistocene, the valley was covered by a deep lake. As it receded, it cut numerous rock shelters into the cliffs of Steamboat Point and Little Steamboat Point. By at least 13,000 years ago, humans were using the changing lake shores for seasonal encampments. The rock shelters were also being used for more intense occupations. The valley was used intermittently for the next 10,000 years as the lake gradually disappeared and the valley became a desert environment.
This volume reports on three field seasons in the valley along with another five years of laboratory analysis by the University of Nevada, Reno under the leadership of Geoffrey Smith, a professor of archaeology. The result is a record of some 10,000 years of human occupation including open-air sites, lithic technology, plant and animal foods, and bone and shell artifacts. Using a multidisciplinary approach, Smith and his colleagues were able to track both the environmental and cultural record and how they interacted over this long period of time.
In the Shadow of the Steamboat is a fascinating case study of archaeological research using the latest techniques to study a 10-millennia period in a changing environment.
