The mass capture of large animals by Indigenous peoples via extensive rock, wood, and brush corralling and drifting features is an ancient practice extending back at least 5,000 years in the Great Basin of western North America. Mid-nineteenth-century explorers and land surveyors wrote about such features, and archaeological documentation of these expansive communal hunting structures began in about 1950, when Jack Rudy recorded the Mount Moriah pronghorn trap in eastern Nevada. In this book, Bryan Hockett and Eric Dillingham discuss more than 170 aboriginal traps, located mostly in west-central, central, and northeastern Nevada. Six years in the making, this publication has benefited from the expertise that Hockett and Dillingham have acquired in conducting research on Great Basin big game traps over much of their careers; it is also notable for their collaboration with Native Americans, other archaeologists, and avocational archaeologists in acquiring information about various trapping features.
The first two chapters discuss big game traps in the Great Basin and their spatial distribution, target species, design, and associated features, as well as the history of archaeological research on this topic. Traps in valleys and foothills were mostly used to capture pronghorn and deer, whereas those in higher-elevation montane settings targeted bighorn sheep. Many traps were placed within migration corridors where artiodactyls could be successfully hunted during both spring and fall. Large-scale traps consist of V-shaped wings/fences attached to corrals, single fences that connect to one side of a corral entrance, linear rock alignments/drivelines, and rock walls. The latter two trap types functioned to channel or “drift” quarry toward hunters who concealed themselves behind stacked rocks or within rock blinds. Rock alignments are discontiguous, comprising relatively low rock stacks or cairns, taller stacked stone “hunters” meant to mimic kneeling or crouching humans, and rock anchors, which are tightly clustered stones for supporting vertical wood poles. Drift fences and rock alignments can be quite long, with some fences measuring more than 1,500 m and some alignments extending over 500 m.
Chapter 3 summarizes trap attributes and the chronology of trap-based hunting, considering 97 corrals, 50 drivelines, 8 walls, and 15 kill zones. Kill zones are concentrations of catastrophically broken projectile points, marking locations where animals were dispatched, presumably within now-decayed wood and brush corrals. Two of the main challenges in studying large-scale traps are determining their absolute ages and recovering species-specific faunal remains from associated features. Only 15 traps or trapping-related sites have been radiocarbon dated, yielding a temporal range between 3660 and 100 cal BP. Most information about dates of individual traps has been inferred from associated projectile points, which can result in broad age ranges being assigned to single traps, especially when dart points are concerned. Through a combination of absolute- and cross-dating, Hockett and Dillingham propose the following temporal trends for trap-based artiodactyl hunting in the Great Basin: large-scale trapping began by at least 8300 cal BP, increased in intensity between 4800 and 3800 cal BP, remained common from about 3800 to 1300 cal BP, and declined somewhat but remained important between 1300 and 150 cal BP.
Chapters 4 and 5 discuss the two largest trap concentrations and associated sites in the western Great Basin: the Tunna’ Nosi’ Kaiva’ Gwaa and Pine Grove Hills trap complexes. Situated in the eastern Bodie Hills, Tunna’ Nosi’ Kaiva’ Gwaa (TNKG), a Paiute phrase meaning “antelope dreaming mountain place,” covers 850 ha and contains 53 sites dating from about 5000 to 200 cal BP. Trapping features consist of seven corrals and 12 drivelines, all of which are thought to be associated with communal pronghorn hunting. TNKG also includes nearly 100 hunting blinds, 133 lithic scatters, 171 rock rings, scattered small middens, and various petroglyphs. Viewed as a complex, this impressive constellation of sites and features represents a traditional residential locale where people gathered to hunt pronghorn, harvest pinyon, and conduct related ceremonies.
The Pine Grove Hills/Bald Mountain area is about 35 km northwest of TNKG and contains 23 prehistoric traps (nine corrals and 14 rock alignments) dating between about 4800 and 150 cal BP. Most of the corrals are thought to have targeted pronghorn, whereas a majority of the drivelines are viewed as bighorn sheep hunting facilities. Numerous hunting blinds and clusters of stacked rocks are associated with the traps; rock rings, middens, lithic scatters, petroglyphs, and several bow stave trees occur across the immediate landscape. As with TNKG, the Pine Grove Hills Complex probably served as a communal gathering spot where abundant animal and plant foods provisioned seasonal festivals.
Chapter 6 considers the Easy Junior Complex, which comprises six communal hunting features along the eastern flanks of the Pancake Range in eastern Nevada. Easy Junior 1 is among the best-preserved juniper corrals in the Great Basin. Easy Junior 3 contains one of the densest kill zone point concentrations ever found, with more than 200 projectile points documented at the corral entrance, including 46 Elko series dart points and 147 projectile point fragments.
Chapter 7 presents some thoughts on how large-scale artiodactyl traps and associated features and sites contribute to our understanding of broader topics in Great Basin prehistory, such as changing trends in settlement and subsistence practices. Hockett and Dillingham also note that large-scale traps in various parts of the world are remarkably similar in design, mostly because they exploited the behavioral tendencies of certain animals. For example, Great Basin pronghorn fence-and-corral traps resemble Near Eastern “kites” used to hunt gazelles, and Great Basin rock alignments containing rock blinds constructed for bighorn sheep are quite similar to caribou hunting facilities found in the American Arctic and Norway.
Wherever they were employed, large-scale big game traps required communal labor to build, maintain, and operate, and studying these expansive features can aid in reconstructing aspects of ancient social organization, especially when coupled with relevant ethnographic accounts. It appears that Great Basin artiodactyl drives were often accompanied by the mass harvest of key plant foods such as pinyon seeds and roots, with the resulting food surpluses supporting large communal gatherings characterized by the exchange of information and goods, ritual and recreational activities, and alliance building.
Large-Scale Traps of the Great Basin is an impressive compilation of data and represents one of the most thorough regional treatments of prehistoric big game hunting in North America. The substantial time and effort embodied in this publication are notable, and it stands as a significant contribution to the study of ancient human lifeways in the Intermountain West.
