North America - Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
1-25 (147 Records)
The results of geoarchaeological investigations at Pharo Village, a Fremont hamlet situated on an alluvial fan in central Utah, are reported in order to reveal how changes in alluvial dynamics contributed to the rise of Fremont farming there as well as the site’s eventual abandonment. Cutbanks along Pharo Creek, the meandering stream adjacent to Pharo Village, were mapped and sampled during fieldwork. Field and subsequent laboratory analysis allowed reconstruction of the alluvial geochronology...
Alpine Adaptive and Paleoenvironmental Change at Alta Toquima (central Nevada) (2015)
Why did some Great Basin foraging families spend their summers atop the very highest place in their world? Julian Steward briefly considered this question in the 1930s, but the issue resurfaced with the chance discovery of Alta Toquima, a 31-pithouse residential site at 11,000 feet. More than 150 14C determinations from Alta Toquima and nearby Gatecliff Shelter permit fine-tuned comparisons of cultural and paleoclimatic change spanning the last 7000 years. The Alta Toquima residences track both...
An Analysis of an Early-to-Mid Holocene Projectile Point Assemblage from Little Steamboat Point Rockshelter, Warner Valley, Oregon (2015)
Little Steamboat Point 1 (LSP-1) is a small stratified rockshelter in Warner Valley, Oregon. It contained an early-to-mid Holocene component consisting of faunal remains, lithic tools, and debitage. My use-wear analysis of 20 Great Basin Stemmed and Cascade projectile points examines how those tools were used via macroscopic and low-power microscopic techniques. Since the shelter seems to represent a short-occupation activity site, this analysis provides insight into the hunting and processing...
Analysis of ground stones found at a west-central Mojave Desert rock shelter site (2017)
CA-SBR-14 is a rock shelter site located in the South Range of Naval Air Weapons Station (NAWS), China Lake in the west central Mojave Desert. Subsurface investigation of the site has provided important contextual data that challenges previous interpretations of prehistoric use of the area. Artifacts collected include milling slabs on the surface of the site, fire-affected fragments that were recovered from subsurface test units, and three handstones that appear to have been deliberately placed...
Application of end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) of grain-size distributions to characterize site formation processes of Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855), Harney Basin, Eastern Oregon (2015)
Sedimentological investigations were conducted on Unit 2 of Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855), a deeply stratified, multi-component Paleoindian site located in the Harney Basin, eastern Oregon. Field descriptions and end-member mixing analysis (EMMA) of grain-size distributions of 13 sediment samples identified six stages of site formation: three stratigraphic units (SU), two unconformities, and a Bt soil horizon. EMMA resulted in the characterization of three end-members (EM) that correlate...
Archaeological Education and Public Outreach through Social Media (2015)
With the advent of technology and greater access to public lands, archaeological sites are more vulnerable now than ever before. With photos and site locations being shared across the internet, it is pertinent for us as archaeologists to pierce the veil between academics, professionals, and the general public. Visitation to archaeological sites often results in adverse effects including visitor footpaths, touching or climbing on cultural resources, presence of modern trash, and vandalism to the...
Archaeological Preservation (2015)
The Archaeological Conservancy (TAC) is the only national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving archaeological sites across the United States. In the late 1970s the founders of TAC recognized the threat and lack of protections to archaeological sites on private lands. In response, TAC was organized and incorporated. Often, TAC is contacted by archaeology firms, state agencies, and landowners with requests to explore the possibility of preserving a specific site. Many landowners find...
Art in the Time of Promontory Cave: Enhancement of Rock Art Figures Using DStretch (2017)
While the Promontory caves are well known for their preservation of perishable cultural materials, the red-ochre pictographs inside Promontory Cave 1 have attracted less attention. The conditions within the cave provided a ‘safe haven’ for organic artifacts, but the pictographs themselves have varying degrees of visibility, from quite good to poor. Archaeologists have relied solely upon descriptions made by Julian Steward during his 1930s work. Advancements in digital imagery and rock art...
Assessing the Validity of pXRF for Sourcing Cherts in the North American Great Basin (2015)
As a cost-effective and non-destructive method for multi-element analysis, portable x-ray fluorescence spectrometry (pXRF) has the potential for broad archaeological application. Several studies have demonstrated the validity of pXRF for sourcing obsidian and fine-grained volcanic artifacts. In this study, I assess the validity of pXRF for sourcing chert artifacts from Paleoindian sites in the North American Great Basin. Because chert artifacts dominate many archaeological sites, the ability to...
Betwixt and between the long and short of it: the Pequop projectile point type site in Goshute Valley, Northeastern Nevada, and implications for the Long and Short Chronology debate in the Great Basin (2017)
In a 1995 study of the chronological patterning of Elko Series and Split-stemmed projectile points, Bryan Hockett concluded that neither type entirely matches the patterns of the Bonneville or Lahontan Basins; and that neither area represents good chronological analogues for northeastern Nevada. Dart points recently found in the well-dated context of an Early Archaic stratified open site in the northern Goshute Valley exhibit characteristics of both early side-notched and corner-notched types. ...
Bighorn Sheep Processing in the White Mountains, California (2015)
Previous research in the eastern Great Basin using stable isotope analysis of faunal remains suggests that bighorn sheep (Ovis canadensis) responded to climate change by shifting their ranges to higher elevations during warm intervals. A shift in sheep ranges would have increased travel and transportation costs for central place foragers based in lower elevation valleys. We expect that hunters responded to the increased costs in a number of ways, including altering settlement strategies and...
Bison ecology and pre-contact human land use at the Promontory Caves (2017)
Promontory people were proficient bison hunters with a sophisticated understanding of bison ecology. In contrast, modern researchers know relatively little about pre-contact bison ecology in the Great Basin. We combine botanical analysis of dung and isotopic analysis of various substrates (dung, hair, hide, bone) to reconstruct ancient landscapes and bison behaviour during the Promontory occupation. Carbon isotope compositions indicate that a C3-dominated environment existed at the Promontory...
Bison, Cold Storage and Holocene Climate Change on the Snake River Plain (2016)
Over the past several years, efforts to expand our knowledge of the Holocene climate of southern Idaho have been initiated through analyses of the relationships between bison remains recovered from seven cold lava tubes on the eastern Snake River Plain and several paleoenvironmental indicators. Although the mere existence of these unique storage features would suggest that they would always be utilized, we suggest the key variables associated with such use would revolve around fluctuations in...
The Bonneville Basin and Snake River Plain Connection: Early Archaic Lithic Technology, Geochronology, and Obsidian Procurement at Bonneville Estates and Veratic Rockshelters (2016)
Though often considered parts of two different culture areas, the upper Snake River Plain of southeastern Idaho and the Bonneville Basin of the eastern Great Basin may have more similarities in land use and lithic technology than usually thought. In fact, commonalities can be easily documented in projectile point chronologies, subsistence patterns, and even the use of some of the same obsidian sources. In this paper, we consider the early Archaic period, when comparable ecological changes...
Caught Between Two Regions: A Historical Perspective on How Archaeologists Understand the Fremont Regional System (2016)
Like every archaeological region, current views concerning Fremont are influenced as much by the history of archaeologists as it is by the archaeology itself. This paper presents a (very brief) history of Fremont archaeology and archaeological thought, focusing on how particular developments and individuals influenced how Fremont was understood. Our aim is not to be comprehensive, and we will undoubtedly omit important events and information, including contributions of many in attendance. Our...
Chipped Stone Results from Four Lowland Virgin Branch Puebloan Sites (2016)
The Yamashita sites are four Virgin Branch Puebloan sites in southern Nevada dating between the early Pueblo II (AD 1000-1050) and the Pueblo III period (AD 1200-1300). This poster summarizes the chipped stone tool and debitage data collected from the sites. The goals of this project were to examine what the chipped stone tool and debitage site assemblages revealed in regard to lithic technology organization. As sedentary settlements with a horticultural subsistence, the expectation was that...
"The City’s gone—nought…remaining to disclose the site of this forgotten Babylon:" Ephemeral Architecture and Identity at Black Rock City. (Apologies to Horace Smith; "Ozymandias") (2015)
The temporary (at least physically) community of Black Rock City, which is constituted for one week each year in the Nevada desert at the Burning Man festival, is made up of hundreds of camps. Many of these camps create architecture, or create reference to architectural style and history, that helps cement a sense of identity to that particular camp. The architectural referents are generally not obscure, as they are intended to be read by both camp members, and others who are not members of the...
Comparative Analysis of Incised Stone Artifacts from Gatecliff Shelter and Ruby Cave, Great Basin, Nevada (2015)
As part of our on-going research on incised stones throughout Nevada, this poster presents the results of a comparative study we recently undertook of the Ruby Cave artifact collection and Trudy Thomas’s (1983) illustrations of the Gatecliff Shelter collection in order to determine whether shared stylistic patterns exist between the two incised stone assemblages. Our analysis techniques are based on a combination of methods used by previous researchers in the Great Basin as well as new methods...
A comparison of macro botanical materials recovered from a multi-stratified site in west central Colorado: dating from 200-13,000BP (2016)
Over the last 9 summers we have conducted extensive excavations at a rock shelter (Eagle Point) located above the Gunnison River in west central Colorado. The deposits are laddered and the macro botanical fill from the features indicates that from the Paleo Period to the last occupation in 200BP similar plant resources were available and exploited. There are some differences. We want to briefly present the differences and similarities in plant exploitation from the Paleo (13,000BP) through the...
Continuing the Search for Pre-Clovis Aged Cutmarked Bones in the Great Basin: Recent Results (2016)
Hockett and Jenkins (2013) suggested that two bones directly AMS dated prior to the Clovis era (ca. > 13,100 calendar years ago) recovered from the Paisley Caves, Oregon, displayed stone tool cutmarks. Since this publication, additional bones were identified as possibly exhibiting cutmarks from Paisley Cave #2. In addition, in the 1950’s Phil Orr recovered a number of burned large mammal bones from Pleistocene-aged deposits in several caves flanking the eastern margins of the Winnemucca Lake...
David Hurst Thomas: A Retrospective (2015)
This contribution opens the Fryxell session by providing an overview of the career of David Hurst Thomas. Thomas’ career spans some 50 years and includes contributions to Great Basin, Southeastern and Southwestern archaeology, from the paleoindian to the historic periods. He has produced widely-used textbooks; the first textbook in statistics for anthropologists; and other popular words. Significantly, he served as a founding board member of the National Museum of the American Indian....
Decisions in the Desert (2015)
This is a study of stone tool raw material procurement utilizing archaeological sites located in and around the Sheeprock Mountains in north-central Utah. In an effort to apply Metcalfe’s and Barlow’s "Field Processing Model" (1992), to prehistoric lithic raw material procurement, the researcher collected culturally deposited obsidian from archaeological sites in and around the Sheeprock Mountains. Over the course of 3 field sessions from 2011-2013, 250 samples of obsidian lithic debitage were...
Digital Data Collection, D-Stretch And Databases: New Approaches To Recording Rock Art In Lincoln County (2015)
A BLM-funded rock art recordation project recently undertaken in Lincoln County, Southern Nevada has focused on three Areas of Environmental Concern: Mount Irish, Shooting Gallery and Pahroc. The overall Project was designed to be a comprehensive heritage inventory of all archaeological evidence in these Areas, and based on a systematic sample there are close to 700 recorded sites in these areas of which around 200 contain rock art. Building on earlier work by the Nevada Rock Art Foundation and...
Divergent Histories: Prehistoric Use of Alpine Habitats in the Toquima and Toiyabe Ranges, Central Great Basin (2015)
Alpine villages are extremely rare in the Great Basin. To date, villages located at elevations above 10,000 ft. are only known to occur in the White Mountains and the Toquima Range. Demographic forcing and climatic change has been used to explain the existence of these villages, but these propositions do not identify more specific selective pressures that led to the establishment of high-elevation villages in some ranges but not others. Comparison of artifact distributions and environmental...
Dynamics of Adaption and Diversity: A Phylogenetic Analysis of Material Culture from Fremont Archaeological Sites. (2016)
This study is uses phylogenetic analysis to examine the dynamics of cultural evolution on material culture. The hypotheses assert that variation in material culture is significantly influenced from nearness and interactions with neighbors, impacts of local environments, and adaptation through distance in time and geographic space. However, cultural transmission processes occur differently for various types of cultural material and/or traditions. By using phylogenetic analysis of several types of...