Migration, Indigenous Peoples, and Identity: An Archaeological Case from the Great Basin Region of North America

One issue that is central to many arguments made by indigenous peoples is that of migration. Not only does this argument arise in present situations, such as with Raika indigenous peoples in India or the Humli-Khyampa indigenous peoples in the Tibet/China/India region, but also with arguments over history. Specifically, the movement and long-term habitation of a certain region or land by an indigenous group. The reason that this argument is so central to many indigenous peoples is that legal and social claims to land – and any natural resources contained within – are largely dictated by historical primacy. In many modern nation-states, such as the U.S., historical primacy is founded on a linear chronology of migratory events, and this historical primacy directly relates to legal and social claims over identity, resources, and land. In the Great Basin region of North America, this argument over history and migrations is central to Native American Indian concerns, for it largely dictates how far back their identity goes in terms of archaeology, cultural patrimony, and legal rights.

Although Native American Indians of the Great Basin claim – and evidence supports – that they have lived and resided within the region since time immemorial, many archaeologists have held a different theory. Also known as the Numic Hypothesis, this archaeological theory contends that the ancestors of today’s Native American Indians of the Great Basin migrated into the area some 1,000 years ago. Originally put forth by Sydney M. Lamb in 1958 and based on the now recognized faulty method of glottochronology, the hypothesis has maintained some viability due to zooarchaeological and behavioral ecological evidence. However, new data from actual indigenous peoples has brought some of the conclusions from this methodology into question.

Perhaps the strongest support and behavioral ecological evidence for the Numic Hypothesis has come from Bettinger and Baumhoff’s (1982) use of behavioral ecology’s foraging models. Through the use of foraging models, Bettinger and Baumhoff have attempted to look at the role that hunting mobile prey played in human evolution, and especially in regional colonization and economic intensification of the Great Basin region (Bettinger and Baumhoff 1982).

However, calculating the return rate for hunting mobile prey has proven tricky, and thus far, few analyses have incorporated actual live data return rates from indigenous peoples for hunting mobile prey. This has been due in part to the fact that in many cases the opportunity to record ethnographic hunting return rates based on indigenous people’s traditional subsistence patterns has long passed, coupled with the difficulty entailed in evaluating variability in hunting mobile prey.

To circumvent such problems researchers relying on behavioral ecology’s foraging models have often used proxy measures of post-encounter return rates, such as prey body size, as well as assuming that rank scales closely with size and that prey of similar size have similar rank. As Native American Indians of the Great Basin have long argued, such logical assumptions are fundamentally flawed. Hunting rank is not necessarily based on size, especially in such seasonally resource variable environments as the Great Basin. In a recent article that is the first to examine this method of proxy measurement using real data from indigenous Aboriginal Australians, Douglas Bird, Rebecca Bird, and Brian Codding strongly argue that prey size is not always correlated with prey rank.

In the article the authors examine the foraging practices of contemporary indigenous Martu hunter-gatherers in Australia’s Western Desert. The researchers aim in working with indigenous Martu peoples was twofold: 1) to illustrate, by way of quantitative ethnographic observations, some general processes that influence relationships between prey behavior and hunting strategies; and 2) to provide some tools for generating more reliable zooarchaeological measures of prey diversity and rank in behavioral ecology’s models.

Abstract

By integrating foraging models developed in behavioral ecology with measures of variability in faunal remains, zooarchaeological studies have made important contributions toward understanding prehistoric resource use and the dynamic interactions between humans and their prey. However, where archaeological studies are unable to quantify the costs and benefits associated with prey acquisition, they often rely on proxy measures such as prey body size, assuming it to be positively correlated with return rate. To examine this hypothesis, we analyze the results of 1,347 adult foraging bouts and 649 focal follows of contemporary Martu foragers in Australia’s Western Desert. The data show that prey mobility is highly correlated with prey body size and is inversely related to pursuit success – meaning that prey body size is often an inappropriate proxy measure of prey rank. This has broad implications for future studies that rely on taxonomic measures of prey abundance to examine prehistoric human ecology, including but not limited to economic intensification, socioeconomic complexity, resource sustainability, and overexploitation.

As discussed in the article, the single most important zooarchaeological application of foraging models involves establishing a reliable means for ranking resources based on the post-encounter return rate of different resources. Doing so is essential to any scientifically sound arguments about variability in resource use by indigenous peoples across time, such as the case of Native American Indians in the Great Basin and the Numic hypothesis. The Martu hunter-gatherer data clearly demonstrate that prey body size and yield relative to processing costs are poor predictors of the post-encounter return rates of highly mobile prey, a conclusion that is also in line with Native American Indian ethnographic and oral tradition evidence from the Great Basin (Jones, 2008).

As Bird, Bird, and Codding argue, hypotheses based on behavioral ecology’s foraging models have historically relied on proxy measures, a process that appears to not be highly accurate when dealing with indigenous peoples. This brings into question the conclusions reached in terms of Native American Indians in the Great Basin and the Numic Hypothesis. As the Native American Indians of the region have been arguing, prey size does not directly correlate with prey rank, especially in the Great Basin and other regions where resources are seasonally available. Using this process to support the Numic Hypothesis, therefore, is no longer scientifically sound. Furthermore, this lends credence to Native American Indian’s ethnographic and oral tradition evidence when it comes to migration and identity in the Great Basin, as the evidence used to rebut them no longer holds scientific weight. In the Great Basin region of North America, the evidence supports the argument that the Native American Indians of today did not migrate into the area some 1,000 years ago, but rather that they have been there since time immemorial.

References and Further Reading

Bettinger, Robert L.; and Baumhoff, Martin A. 1982. The Numic Spread: Great Basin Cultures in Competition. American Antiquity, 47:485-503.

Bird, Douglas W.; Bird, Rebecca Bliege; and Codding, Brian F. 2009. In Pursuit of Mobile Prey: Martu Hunting Strategies and Archaeofaunal Interpretation. American Antiquity, 74(1):3-29.

Bird, Douglas W.; and O’Connell, James F. 2006. Human Behavioral Ecology and Archaeology. Journal of Archaeological Research 14:143-188.

Jones, Peter N. 2008. Archaeology, Cultural Transmission, and the Indigenous Native American Indians of the Great Basin Region of North America. Boulder, CO: Bauu Institute.

Lamb, Sydney M. 1958. Linguistic Prehistory in the Great Basin. International Journal of American Linguistics 24(2):95-100.