ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the important role that ground stone artifacts play in modern Great Basin research. It focuses on the following research issues: ethnologies and applied anthropological studies; rock art studies; milling and social interaction; ground stone quarries and procurement sites; milling at early sites; and foragers and the sexual division of labor. Euroamerican contact with most Great Basin Indians occurred in the 1830s and 1840squite late in comparison to the southwest and coastal California. For decades, rock art research was viewed as ancillary to larger, overriding issues in the Great Basin and Desert West. For now, associations between rock art and domestic activities are better understood in the northern Great Basin than in most western locations. Regional attitudes regarding the function of rock art are variable. David Hurst Thomas's landmark study at Monitor Valley in central Nevada set new standards for archaeologists and essentially introduced the new archaeology' to the Great Basin.
