Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

The study of ethnographic-period basketry disproportionately focuses on decorative baskets or utilitarian ones associated with the subsistence economy, and does not consider basketry technology from a behavioral-ecology perspective. The present study examines cross-cultural variation in basketry cradles in Central California, proposes a model of pre-contact diffusion of cradle technology across the Great Basin and California, and considers cradles as both a form of reproductive investment and a technology that attenuated foragingopportunity costs for mothers of breastfeeding infants.