Tui Chub Taphonomy and the Importance of Marsh Resources in the Western Great Basin of North America

Debates about the importance of marsh resources to prehistoric hwnan subsistence in the western Great Basin are longstanding. Recent questions regarding the natural vs.cultural origin offISh remains in lakeside archaeological sitesjllrther impede understanding of ancient subsistence patterns. Taphonamic study of a huge assemblage of tui chub (Gila bicolor) remains from an archaeological site in Stillwater Marsh, western Nevada, was undertaken to identify agents of depasition in marsh settings. The Stillwater fISh remains showed limited surface modification-cut marks, burning, and digestive etching and staining-and thus these attributes were not usejill indicators of origin. Fish mortality profiles, reconstructed by regression analysis of body size, indicates cultural selection of young/small fish rather than natural catastrophic mass death. The low survivorship of vertebrae in the chub assemblage suggests differential treatment of cranial and postcranial body part' by cultural agents. The Stillwater site fish assemblage represents a vast number of small fISh; the presence of small tui chub from archoeological sites throughout the western Great Basin suggests that prehistoric fishers targeted relatively small chub in the subsistence quest.