2019-07-13_Archaeology_Magazine

40 ARCHAEOLOGY • July/August 2019

Central, and Southern subfamilies.

In the 1950 s, linguist Sydney Lamb first coined the term

“Numic,” after the word numa, which means “person” in most

of the languages. He proposed that Numic languages were so

closely related that they must have descended from a common

tongue within the relatively recent past. Lamb went further,

suggesting that Numic speakers originally came from a home-

land around southern California’s Death Valley and migrated to

the areas where they now live about 1 , 000 years ago at the very

earliest. A map of the distributions of the Western, Central,

and Southern Numic languages across the Great Basin shows

that they appear to radiate out in a fan shape from southern

California, which seems to support Lamb’s proposed Numic

Spread theory.

A prominent supporter of this theory is University of Cali-

fornia, Davis, archaeologist Robert Bettinger, who has long

worked in California’s Owens Valley, on the western edge of the

Great Basin. There, Bettinger believes he has mustered archae-

ological evidence for the origins of the Numic Spread. He has

found that beginning around a.d. 600 , hunter-gatherers in

the Owens Valley began to move from a way of life based on

extensive game hunting to one that was more focused on col-

lecting resources such as pinyon pine seeds. Around this time,

people in the Owens Valley first began using twined flat bas-

kets—called seed beaters—which are a highly efficient means

of gathering seeds. At the same time, people in the region were

adopting the bow and arrow, which was rapidly making its way

from north to south across the Americas. Bettinger and his

colleagues proposed that the people of Owens Valley were the

original Numic speakers, and that their adoption of the bow

and arrow and the new baskets for harvesting seeds made them

highly successful in the Great Basin. This, Bettinger believes,

allowed them to spread out quickly from their homeland,

beginning perhaps around a.d. 1200. Soon, the ancestors of

today’s Shoshone, Paiute, and Ute had established themselves

across the Great Basin, replacing or absorbing the pre-Numic

peoples. “If we’re right, then this was a really remarkable evo-

The notion that today’s Numic people have a deep history

on the landscape of the Great Basin stretching back thousands

of years is controversial among scholars. Many archaeologists

and linguists believe that the ancestors of today’s Shoshone,

Paiute, and Ute only began to live throughout the Great

Basin 1 , 000 or even 500 years ago. This theory, known as the

Numic Spread, posits that Numic people left valleys in today’s

southern California and fanned across the Great Basin, rapidly

replacing pre-Numic hunter-gatherers during the course of

a single, relatively recent migration. The acceptance of this

theory has sometimes led to Numic people being left out of

decision-making processes regarding ancient sites on public

land that predate a.d. 1000.

Now, an analysis of all the known incised stones found in the

Great Basin supports the Southern Paiutes’ contention that

prayerstones played a central role in a continuous religious tra-

dition. The analysis, carried out by Thomas, has inspired a new

concept, the Prayerstone Hypothesis, which not only supports

the idea that incised stones have long played a significant role

in Numic cosmology, but also the abiding belief of the South-

ern Paiutes and their fellow Numic speakers that

their ties to the Great Basin are very old indeed.

W

hen SpaniShexplorerS first reached

the Great Basin in the mid-eighteenth

century, they found Shoshone, Paiute,

Ute, and other Numic peoples thriving in the harsh

landscape. Living in extended family groups of fewer

than 20 , Numic people hunted a wide range of game,

from gophers to bighorn sheep. However, they spent

much of their time collecting roots, nuts, and seeds,

which provided the majority of their caloric intake.

In the 1920 s, anthropologist Julian Steward

began to conduct ethnographic work in the Great

Basin and focused on how environmental factors

there shaped people’s subsistence strategies—what

he called the “gastric” elements of Numic people’s

culture. Steward was one of the first to classify the

Numic languages, dividing them into the Western,

NEVADA

WYOMING

UTAH COLORADO

OREGON

ARIZONA NEW MEXICO

IDAHO

CALIFORNIA

0 100 200 miles

Western

Numic

Central

NumicNumic

SouthernSouthern

NumicNumic

Gatecliff Shelter

OwensValley Spring Mountains

Owens Valley in eastern California is believed by some archaeologists to be

the original homeland of Numic-speaking people.

The Numic languages are divided into three subfamilies

spoken by Native Americans in the American West.