Assessing the Validity of Mojave Desert Lake Mohave and Silver Lake Projectile-Point Types

ABSTRACT

This study uses univariate and multivariate statistical analyses to assess whether Lake Mohave and Silver Lake projectile points from the Mojave Desert of western North America are statistically discrete, recognizable, and valid types. Univariate analyses run on 400 Lake Mohave and Silver Lake points reveal significant differences in six linear and three angle measures, though overlapping measurements pose difficulties for differentiating the types. To address the problem of overlapping measurements, multivariate principal components and discriminant function analyses were employed to statistically define groups of related attributes. Size- and shape-based attributes of the stem distinguish approximately 80% of the sample to type and reveal region-wide consistency among archaeologists who have classified these points to type. Though this study did not entirely overcome the challenge of using metrics to differentiate Lake Mohave from Silver Lake points, key discriminating variables are now better defined and the types deemed valid.

KEYWORDS:

• Western Stemmed Tradition
• Paleoindian
• Lake Mohave point
• Silver Lake point
• Mojave Desert

Acknowledgements

Creating the Mojave Desert projectile-point database was a team effort, and the authors thank many people for their assistance: Mark Basgall, Mark Becker, Ryan Byerly, Daron Duke, Mark Giambastiani, Janelle Harrison, and Jan Taylor. EJK also wishes to thank Jim Shearer of the Barstow, California, Bureau of Land Management and David Nichols of the Mojave National Preserve for their ongoing support of his research around pluvial Lake Mojave. None of these individuals is, of course, responsible for the ideas presented here, nor are the two reviewers who provided excellent comments that substantially improved the focus and quality of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Edward J. Knell

Edward J. Knell earned his MA from the University of Wyoming, his PhD from Washington State University, and is currently a professor of anthropology at California State University, Fullerton. His Great Basin research focuses on the Mojave Desert of California, with a long-term research project around pluvial Lake Mojave, addressing issues of lithic technology and technological-organization strategies, land use, settlement patterns, lithic raw-material conveyance, and past climate. This Paleoindian-based research dovetails with his research on the Late Paleoindian Cody complex of the Great Plains, for which he considered similar questions. Dr Knell’s research is published, among other places, in American Antiquity, Journal of Field Archaeology, Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, PaleoAmerica, Plains Anthropologist, and a volume he co-edited titled Paleoindian Lifeways of the Cody Complex (University of Utah Press).

Matthew E. Hill

Matthew E. Hill Jr is an Associate Professor in the University of Iowa’s Department of Anthropology. He earned an MA from the University of Kansas and a PhD from the University of Arizona. His research focuses on issues of human–environmental interactions on a landscape scale, expressed in long-term behavioral changes (spanning the end of the Ice Age to the modern period) across various environmental settings. His current research focuses on the appearance of ancestral Apache groups on the Great Plains, understanding changing land use and subsistence practices of bison hunters on the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains from Paleoindian to late prehistoric periods, and the use of forest resources by modern rural women in Rajasthan India. Dr Hill’s research is published, among other places, in American Antiquity, Journal of Field Archaeology, PaleoAmerica, Plains Anthropologist, Quaternary International, and Quaternary Science Reviews.

Mark Q. Sutton

Mark Q. Sutton began his career in 1968, working at a site with the local community college while still in high school. He went on to earn a BA (1972), an MA (1977), and a PhD (1987) in anthropology. He has worked for the US Air Force, the US Bureau of Land Management, various private consulting firms, and taught at several community colleges and universities, including California State University, Bakersfield from 1987 to 2007 where he retired as Emeritus Professor of Anthropology. He now teaches at the University of San Diego. From 1986 to 2000, Dr Sutton served as the Editor of the Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology. Dr Sutton has investigated hunter-gatherer adaptations to arid environments, entomophagy, prehistoric diet and technology, and the prehistory of California. Dr Sutton has worked at more than 150 sites in western North America, has presented some 126 papers at professional meetings, and has published more than 240 books, monographs, articles, and reviews on archaeology and anthropology, including the textbooks Introduction to Native North America, A Prehistory of North America, Archaeology: Science of the Human Past, Introduction to Cultural Ecology, Paleonutrition, Bioarchaeology, and Laboratory Methods in Archaeology.