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31 • Tiller 1983). Unfortunately, these sources provide no information about how the Apache collected, stored, processed or consumed these resources. Great Basin populations are more often associated with pinon utilization, and pinon nuts are quite often listed as the vegetal staple in their diets. The fall pinon harvest was often a communal affair, and certain populations moved wholesale to the pinon groves for the several months during which the nuts could be collected. Pinon groves, and sometimes individual trees, were sometimes "owned" or were said to belong to certain people, families or bands. Pinon nut production is cyclic, so harvests would not be plentiful every year, and subsistence patterns were adapted to this, targeting different groves in different years, or focusing on other resources when pinons were not sufficiently abundant. Cones and nuts were often stored or cached since the harvest season was limited; unshelled nuts remain edible and usable for some time. Pinon nuts were thus a valuable winter food resource and some accounts indicate that groups might winter in the pinon groves to be close to their stores rather than transport nuts back to a residential base elsewhere. Most accounts of storage indicate nuts were stored still in the cones in a variety ofstorage facilities including subterranean Gists, caves and crevasses, caches constructed in trees, and stockpiles built on the ground. Archaeological evidence of the latter storage methods is present at and around the Bustos Wickiup Site (26WP 1742) in Nevada (Simms 1989). Stone ring features at this site are interpreted to be the remains of surface stockpiling, where cones were piled on bedrock surfaces and covered with branches and rocks. Similar features were also found on two sites in eastern Utah in Lisbon Valley (Graham 1995). Architectural features recorded during inventory of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site include a number of small stone rings composed of numerous rocks, some of which may be storage features (Kalasz 1990), though function is only hypothesized. Pinon nuts were collected either directly from the ground, shaken from cones still on the trees, or cones were collected. The cones could either be allowed to dry and open naturally, or were sometimes roasted to force opening. The nuts were eaten raw, roasted, or dried, or could be ground into a flour or meal and added to other foods, or cooked and eaten as soup, gruel or bread. Nuts were shelled using a mano (or "muller'") and grinding slab to crack the shells. Then, through what was sometimes described as a rather deft and difficult-to-master technique, the shells were culled from the nut meats, or could be winnowed away. Pinon nuts were roasted by tossing them in a basket with hot coals, though this, too, required some dexterity and practice so as not to bum either the basket or the nuts. Some accounts indicate the shells were ground with the nut meats. Soup or gruel was usually made by stone boiling. Atoms were harvested and consumed in similar fashion. The harvest itself was often a communal affair, and was usually done by women and children. Ownership of oak groves is documented. There was nearly always a preference for certain species ofoak, usually tan oak or one of the other oaks whose nuts produced whiter meal. Most accounts indicate ripe atoms were gathered from the ground or knocked from the trees, collected in burden baskets, and transported to . camps not necessarily located in the grove. The skin of green acorns could be peeled and the nut meat dried for later use; storage for as much as five years was reportedly feasible. The shell was cracked for removal using a muller and grinding slab, or pestle and bedrock mortar. Acoms were