An Aboriginal Rock Alignment in the Toiyabe Range, Central Nevada

BY DAVID HURST THOMAS1 AND EDWIN H. MCKEE 

PUBLISHED BY THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY

CENTRAL PARK WEST AT 79TH STREET, NEW YORK, N. Y. I0024

NUMBER 2534 JANUARY 23, 1974

AGE OF THE WALLS
"The best estimate of the age of the rock walls at Bob Scott Summit is made here by comparison of the few projectile points found near the walls with dated types from elsewhere in the Great Basin. The temporal ranges of some of these projectile point forms have been established by stratigraphic and radiocarbon analysis...(I)n the central Nevada cultural sequence, the Rose Spring Series is diagnostic of the Underdown phase, which has tentatively been assigned the time range AD 500 to AD 1300 on the basis of several radiocarbon dates (Thomas, MS, table 3.2). The nearest known site of this phase is Gatecliff Shelter, about 35 miles from the Bob Scott Summit rock walls...(T)he rock walls can be interpreted as a prehistoric deer fence, for the immediate vicinity today hosts a sizable deer population...Deer fences were used, for instance by the Shasta (Dixon, 1907, p. 431), the Wiyot (Powers, 1887, p. 102), the Lassik (Kroeber, 1925, p. 144), the Maidu (Dixon, 1905, pp. 192-193), the Achumawi (Dixon, 1907, p. 431), the Takelma (Sapir, 1907, p. 260), and the Shuswap (Teit, 1909, p. 521)...It is possible that fire was used to drive antelope into this area, for fire-driving has been reported for the Little Lake Paiute (Steward, 1938, p. 82)...But we cannot reject a priori an alternative proposition that the walls were ceremonial, without practical subsistence significance...Rock alignments and artificial rockpiles are consistently interpreted as the bodies or paraphernalia of totemic beings changed by themselves into lithic form" (Gould, 1969, p. 144)...Having proposed several alternative explanations for the Bob Scott Summit rock walls, we shall not attempt to prove any one possibility. In fact, the most plausible explanation is probably a combination of hypotheses. More than likely, deer were occasionally hunted, antelope were sometimes stampeded by the walls, and perhaps even a few mountain sheep were killed at the site. The fences may also have had secondary ceremonial significance, as was clearly the case elsewhere in the Great Basin where rock art has been found associated with identical fences. At this stage of investigation, more data are needed to test our preliminary interpretations.
Specifically, we must know whether such features consistently occur in particular microtopographic settings, such as on deer migration routes,  near habitat suitable for antelope driving, or in the higher country where bighorn sheep could have been effectively ambushed."

{Interesting content, "stone alignments" for hunting purposes, and a date of 1974
publication: http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/dspace/bitstream/handle/2246/2738//v2/dspace/ingest/pdfSource/nov/N2534.pdf?sequence=1}