ABSTRACT
This chapter examines Steward's contributions to the ethnographic history of the American Great Basin region and the influence that he had on succeeding generations of Great Basin practitioners. Hunter-gatherer research may seem to some insignificant or, worse yet, inconsequential to the goals of twenty-first century anthropology. Functional in perspective and behavioural by design, Steward's essay 'The Economic and Social Basis of Primitive Bands' constitutes the first systematic 'scientific' study of hunters and gatherers in American anthropology. The significance of Steward's thesis was its problem-oriented, comparative approach to a systematic and scientific study of 'primitive bands' among the hunter-gatherers populations of the world. Steward's contributions to hunters and gatherers research had a profound influence and impact on American anthropologists and the discipline itself. Steward's use of Great Basin hunter-gatherers in his theoretical paradigm has led to a slowing of the acceptance of new approaches in the Great Basin.
