BY THE HUNTER, FOR THE GATHERER - ART, SOCIAL-RELATIONS AND SUBSISTENCE CHANGE IN THE PREHISTORIC GREAT-BASIN

The western Great Basin witnessed a transition from generalized huntin g and gathering to a strategy emphasizing seed gathering at c. AD 1200 . This was matched by accelerated production of ritual art: rock engra vings, depicting big game and hunters. To explain this paradox. seed g atherers creating hunters' art, I examine directly relevant ethnograph y to show that the art concerns an application of a shaman's power: ki lling a mountain sheep was a metaphor for making rain. This was increa singly important with a seed-oriented economy but, since subsistence i s more than diet, involving things like the sexual division of labour, it has implications for social relations. An examination of these sho ws two systems of inequality: men over women, and shamans over non-sha man males. The increase in male-oriented ritual art with subsistence c hange can then be understood in terms of ideological efforts to mainta in gender asymmetries, and the growing forms of incipient political or ganization present in this region.