Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

In this paper, an attempt will be made to draw additional attention to Owens Valley agriculture. Following a brief review of research conducted in Owens Valley, attention will be directed toward an explanation of why agriculture developed in that region. This evaluation will use as a research orientation Mark N. Cohen's (1977) population-growth hypothesis for the development of agriculture, and it will test this hypothesis against archaeological data published by Robert L. Bettinger (1975, 1976, 1977, 1978).