State & Local, Archaeology 

First-time visitors often perceive the great basin as a vast sagebrush sea, a monotonous and barren landscape. But for the ancient people who live there, this sprawling land was full of beauty and rich resources. In this book, leading archeologists discuss the survival skills of the region's ancient residents, from setting a deadfall and running a trout line in desert waters to chain-linking a hundred rabbit skins into a winter blanket. Their decorated baskets and has, headdresses and sandals, duck decoys and antelope traps, some 10,000 years old, tell the history of resourceful, mobile people who knew the region intimately, adapted to drastic changes in climate, and left their mark upon the land in rock art and equipment caches. In these pages, the reader will find remarkable stories of human ingenuity, persistence, and above all survival in an extraordinary place.