Freshwater Crustaceans as an Aboriginal Food Resource in the Northern Great Basin

Phyllopods of the genera Triops, Lepidums, and Branchinecta are common inhabitants of many ephemeral lakes in the American West. Tadpole shrimp (Triops spp. and Lepidums spp.) are known to have been a food source in Mexico, and fairy shrimp (Branchinecta spp.) were eaten by the aboriginal occupants of the Great Basin. Where found, these crustaceans generally occur in numbers large enough to supply abundant calories and nutrients to humans. Several ephemeral lakes studied in the Mojave Desert and northern Great Basin currently sustain large seasonal populations of these crustaceans and also are surrounded by numerous small prehistoric camp sites that typically contain small artifactual assemblages consisting largely of milling implements. Although it seems likely that prehistoric peoples would have exploited such a seemingly valuable resource, direct archaeological evidence for phyllopod use thus far has been lacking. Attempts to extract protein residues from certain artifacts found at such lake sites in southern Idaho, as well as the exploration of other avenues of indirect evidence, have recently been undertaken in an attempt to establish the merit of the shrimp camp hypothesis.