One objective of the most recent re-excavation of the Rose Spring site in eastern California was to evaluate the impact of the introduction of the bow and arrow on local obsidian exploitation. Part of the strategy of the study involved the collection and analysis of a large sample of lithic reduction/production waste produced over the 5,500-year occupation of the site. A change was anticipated in the use of bifacial cores with the adaptation of a new hunting technology requiring less lithic material. A model of change was posited and then tested by using the data generated from the study. The results of the analysis indicate the possibility that certain changes in the reduction strategies practiced by the inhabitants of Rose Spring did not become manifest until nearly 1,000 years after the appearance of the bow, suggesting persistence of the use of the dart and atlatl until about A.D. 1500. An alternative interpretation based on obsidian hydration data is also discussed. Depositional mixing late in time coupled with change in site tool production activities late in time could account for the apparent appearance of continuity of earlier dart point reduction strategies during the long-term use of the site.

Data relating to prehistoric human skeletal material from the northern cultural Great Basin are scant, especially for the period dating within the last 2,000 years. Recent discoveries of two separate prehistoric inhumations in southwestern Idaho resulted in professional data recovery efforts by the Idaho State Historical Society. The radiometric assessments of the remains place the date of the interments at approximately 900 and 1,300 years ago. Descriptions of each burial and associated artifacts serve as a baseline for future studies in human paleobiology in this region.

A small group of perishable artifacts was collected by members of the Archaeological Survey Association of Southern California (ASA) from a cave or rockshelter near Mitchell Caverns in the Providence Mountains, eastern San Bernardino County, California, some time about 1962. The cave was designated "Cave No. 5" and the collection was stored at ASA offices, most recently at their offices in Redlands, California. The collection was "rediscovered" by one of us and a brief description of the assemblage was presented (Yobe 1984). This report documents the artifacts and their associations.

In their work, Rock Drawings of the Coso Range, Grant et al. (1968:70) described a site in Sheep Canyon (which they called INY-9A [S-151]) containing some 744 drawings. In association with that site, Grant et al. (1968) noted evidence of a sheep corral (which they thought dated to the historic period), a cave site, hunting blinds, and cairns. They further noted (1968:70) that over half of the design elements recorded in Sheep Canyon were of bighorn sheep. That site has been revisited several times, most recently by the senior author in 1985, and is formally recorded as CA-INY-1375 (Fig. 1). Of particular interest is a panel depicting what appear to be 12 opposing bowmen. That panel is described herein and comparisons to other such (rare) occurrences are made.

Phyllopods of the genera Triops, Lepidums, and Branchinecta are common inhabitants of many ephemeral lakes in the American West. Tadpole shrimp (Triops spp. and Lepidums spp.) are known to have been a food source in Mexico, and fairy shrimp (Branchinecta spp.) were eaten by the aboriginal occupants of the Great Basin. Where found, these crustaceans generally occur in numbers large enough to supply abundant calories and nutrients to humans. Several ephemeral lakes studied in the Mojave Desert and northern Great Basin currently sustain large seasonal populations of these crustaceans and also are surrounded by numerous small prehistoric camp sites that typically contain small artifactual assemblages consisting largely of milling implements. Although it seems likely that prehistoric peoples would have exploited such a seemingly valuable resource, direct archaeological evidence for phyllopod use thus far has been lacking. Attempts to extract protein residues from certain artifacts found at such lake sites in southern Idaho, as well as the exploration of other avenues of indirect evidence, have recently been undertaken in an attempt to establish the merit of the "shrimp camp" hypothesis.