Welcome to my Home Page Updated October 16, 2024

I visited the University of Oregon/University of Nevada, Reno Field School at the Connley Caves July 2024 at the invitation of Katelyn McDonough and Richie Rosencrance. I will be analysing the fauna from Connley Cave 6, focusing on the pre-Mazama occupations.

I completed my second fieldwork season at the ca. 13,900 cal BP Sheg Xdaltthi (McDonald Creek) site located in central Alaska during the summer of 2023. I am in the process of identifying the fauna via morphometrics while collaborating with the Max Planck Institute in Germany who is identifying faunal specimens via ZooMS.

Together with my co-author Eric Dillingham, "Large Scale Traps of the Great Basin" was published by Texas A&M Press in April, 2023. It is available for purchase on amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com and tamupress.com.

Together with my colleagues Ted Goebel, Kelly Graf, and Ed Stoner, we finished a manuscript on a remarkable set of three open-air Paleoindian sites from northeastern Nevada that appear to represent two kill zones and an associated campsite related to a large scale trapping event that occurred ca. 8,500 years ago during the waning phase of the Paleoindian Period in the Great Basin. The paper was recently published by the journal PaleoAmerica.

Together with my co-author Jason Spidell, we just completed a monograph on the typology and chronology of Early and Middle Archaic projectile points across the Great Basin. It is available for download in the list below and blm.gov.

I completed field work at the paleontological site of Mining Canyon Cave in September, 2022. Located in central Nevada, this site contains well preserved bones up to 30,000 years old, and appears similar in character to Mineral Hill Cave (publication below). Identification and analysis has begun. It appears that the extinct North American cheetah (Miracinonyx trumani) is among the animals represented; Miracinonyx is also present in Mineral Hill Cave.

2022 Lions and Brown Bears Colonized North America in Multiple Synchronous Waves of

Dispersal Across the Bering Land Bridge. Molecular Ecology 2021(00):1-15.

2023 Large-Scale Traps of the Great Basin. Texas A&M University Press. {Available for purchase at amazon.com, barnesandnoble.com, tamupress.com}.

2017 Late Pleistocene Subsistence in the Great Basin: Younger-Dryas-aged Faunal Remains from the

Botanical Lens, Paisley Cave 2, Oregon

Archaeology & Taphonomy Research

Bryan Hockett's Webpage

2024 DNA Metabarcoding and Macroremains From Coprolites Reveal Insights into Middle and Late Holocene Inhabitants of Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, Nevada. Antiquity 2024:1-18.

2018 A Brief History and Perspective of Spirit Cave, Nevada

Archaeology & Taphonomy Research

2021 Prehistoric Human Response to Climate Change in the Bonneville Basin, Western North

America: The Bonneville Estates Rockshelter Radiocarbon Chronology. Quaternary Science Reviews 260 (2021):106930.

2023 A Latest-Paleoindian-Aged Pronghorn Trap in the Goshute Valley, Eastern Great Basin, USA. PaleoAmerica 9(1):25-47.

2016 Preface: Of Ancient Econs and Modern Humans

2019 The Projectile Points from Bonneville Estates Rockshelter: Description of Two New Point Types and Implications for the Long and Short Chronology Debate in the Great Basin . Nevada Archaeologist 31: 9-50.

Prehistoric large-scale traps are more common across the Great Basin and Nevada than once believed, suggesting that large game hunting was an important activity throughout much of the occupation of the Great Basin. Pronghorn, mountain sheep, and deer traps were built with a variety of raw materials and took a variety of shapes across the Great Basin. Pronghorn traps were built at least 8,500 to 7,500 years ago. Our book on the subject was recently published by Texas A&M University Press.

Updated: October 16, 2024.

2016 Why Celebrate the Death of Primitive Economic Man? Human Nutritional Ecology in the 21st Century