The Role of Theory and Ethnographic Analogies in Understanding Paleoindian Obsidian Acquisition, Mobility, and Mating Strategies in the Great Basin

Interpreting Pleistocene foragers by analogy with ethnographic hunter-gatherers can be tricky because the former lived in climatic circumstances and at population densities unlike the latter. Our challenge is to use theoretically informed predictions, validated by ethnographic observations, to recognize past behavior that may fall outside the range of ethnographically documented variability. This is no novel insight, but analogies fail if they serve only to explain away the past variation they were intended to clarify. We refer to western Australian hunter-gatherers as an analogy to pose an explanation of Paleoindian obsidian acquisition and conveyance in the Great Basin but are mindful that good analogies serve to build understandings of prehistoric behavior that are grounded in theory and serve to clarify critical similarities and differences between prehistoric and ethnographic cases.