Owens Valley

This field guide describes the geology and mining history of the Owens Valley and Mono Basin regions. It is keyed to 31 area maps and 4 regional maps found at

Area Maps
https://www.academia.edu/39792400/OWENS_VALLEY_AND_MONO_BASIN_ROADSIDE_GEOLOGY_AND_MINING_HISTORY_AREA_MAPS

Regional Maps
https://www.academia.edu/33103616/OWENS_VALLEY_AND_MONO_BASIN_ROADSIDE_GEOLOGY_AND_MINING_HISTORY_REGIONAL_GEOLOGIC_MAPS

The Pre-Newberry period in the Inyo-Mono Region has garnered debate in terms of population and land use pattern. Initial thought centered on the abandonment of areas due to climatic fluctuations that prompted population depression. Subsequently, however, the focus turned to the role of different settlement shifts during the middle Holocene and how these changes generated a more ephemeral archaeological record in response to short-term occupation and high mobility. In conjunction with this alternative is the potential for buried deposits to exist under recent Holocene alluvium, and that the visibility of this portion of the record is obscured by taphonomic processes.
In order to assess the viability of these alternative explanations, data on numerous dart points from multiple regional reports and projects, along with new data from the Harry Riddell and Rollin and Grace Enfield collections was compiled. Morphometric analysis was undertaken to address variability in middle Holocene dart forms and obsidian sourcing and hydration data were enumerated and added to new sourcing and hydration data from the Enfield sample. These data were then analyzed across landforms of differing ages within the region. The underrepresentation of points on particular landforms of differing age was addressed and artifact frequencies corrected in an attempt to identify biases.
Known point morphologies remained consistent in many cases adhering to previous conclusions. Identification of a Wide-Stemmed form was established with the possibility that it represents a generalized form related to Pinto points, potentially a preform. Timing of point forms also adhered closely to expected ranges, albeit conditioned by the limitations inherent in obsidian hydration dating (OHD). The perceived gap in pre-Newberry occupation breaks down with the addition of new data, particularly data obtained from the Inyo-White Mountains east of Owens Valley. Occupation of the region appears to gradually increase throughout the middle Holocene with a slight acceleration post 4000 B.P. and a more dramatic pulse during the Late Newberry interval (ca. 2000 B.P.).

Once the third-largest lake in California and among the world’s greatest sources of dust, for decades the dried Owens Lake was merely a footnote to the most notorious water grab in modern history. Now, the desert lake has been reassembled—not refilled—to redeem its lost value without returning Los Angeles’s main water supply. In The Spoils of Dust, this “bargain” redemption and its conjuring of a beguiling “lakelike” landscape is the backdrop for investigating contemporary relationships between landscape architecture, engineering, and perception. Assembled atop a barren waste, the Promethean lake reveals the frameworks we use to reinvent nature in the Anthropocene. Whether by technical dust “drawing” or casual roadside views, the new water-wise lake is an awkward and fascinating monument to the prismatic ways we know and value landscapes today. Unexpectedly, this has made its imaginative design the linchpin for critical water resource decisions, thrusting landscape architecture into a consequential position. The book concludes with a landscape atlas and robotic interface for a playful and integrated approach to landscape infrastructure design.

Robert Bettinger and Martin Baumhoff’s 1982 Article, The Numic Spread: Great Basin Cultures in Competition, was innovative in that it provided a theory to explain the longstanding question that has intrigued Great Basin archaeologists for decades; namely: why did an indigenous population centered in the Owens Valley of California spread throughout the Great Basin in a relatively recent and short time period? Bettinger and Baumhoff give us an attractive theory: they propose that instead of an innovative technological advance that gives one group an advantage over another in terms of warfare or technology, a cultural advantage was achieved by means of advantageous food processing strategies.  Examining Bettinger and Baumhoff’s 1982 article, and comparing their adaptive theory with other relative information, it is apparent that despite some arguable shortfalls their argument has merit, yet fails to consider that there were various factors that in addition to and combined with their theory can best explain the reason for the rapid expansion of the Numic people during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly.

The last 2,000 years of prehistory in the southern Owens Valley of eastern California witnessed major changes in human subsistence, settlement, and technology. Using a household perspective, we test the hypothesis that these societies became increasingly focused on the nuclear and/or extended family as the basic economic unit. To this end, we examine patterns in the acquisition of exotic materials, especially obsidian and marine-shell beads, in relationship to other locally produced artifact categories. Results show (1) an increasing geochemical diversity in obsidian and an increasing density of non-local beads, indicating increased and geographically wider trading activities through time; (2) an increasing heterogeneity between household units in terms of access to non-local obsidian after 650 B.P., indicating differential
access to exchange networks; and (3) a correlation between house size and obsidian diversity after 650 B.P., suggesting that larger domestic units differentially participated in the movement of exotic goods. These findings support the notion
that households, as basic economic units, were increasingly focused on internal subsistence and exchange pursuits, rather than village- or communal-level activities, and that exotic material goods became increasingly privatized over time in association with the privatization of subsistence resources.

Online access for this thesis was created in part with support from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) administered by the Nevada State Library, Archives and Public Records through the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA). To obtain a high quality image or document please contact the DeLaMare Library at https://unr.libanswers.com/ or call: 775-784-6945.Remote-sensing, seismic and field studies indicate three major zones of Quaternary deformation near the Sweetwater Mountains. Holocene fault scarps are present in the Antelope, Little Antelope, Smith and Bridgeport Valleys, and in the Sonora Basin. Two other vaguely defined zones, between Carson and Antelope valleys, and from the Bridgeport Valley east to Bald Mountain, may represent Mio-Pliocene zones of faulting which more recently have acted as conjugate shears releasing stress between fault basins in the Western Great Basin between the Sierra Nevada and Walker Lane shear zone. The northern portion of the Sie...