Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

Pintwater Cave is a large, stratified, dry cave near Indian Springs, Nevada. As part of preliminary work conducted in 1963-64, surface artifacts on the cave floor were collected and a single test pit was dug without reaching noncultural deposits. A significant number of artifacts was recovered, but they have not been described until now. The collection is dominated by wooden dart and arrow shafts and fragmentary projectile points of the Elko series. Radiocarbon dates range from 9,300 to 3,000 B. P. Systematic multidisciplinary research by the Desert Research Institute at the cave may provide answers to several problems, including the as yet unresolved chronological and subsistence issues in southern Great Basin prehistory and the local effects of Holocene environmental fluctuations.