North America - Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
51-75 (147 Records)
At the transition from Early to Middle Holocene, the Great Basin witnessed higher effective temperatures and reduced aquatic resource zones. Intensified use of terrestrial plants, reflected by the Middle Holocene appearance of milling equipment, is an archaeological signature of the transition, but the relative importance of terrestrial fauna and aquatic resources under either climatic regime remains unclear. Here we use Binford’s environmental frames of reference to model regional Early and...
The Hunter's Revenge: Magical Use of a Petroglyph (2015)
A petroglyph panel at 48SW85 in southwestern Wyoming presents a convincing case for the use of rock art imagery in hunting magic rituals. Based on differential weathering and revarnishing of the petroglyphs, different stylistic signatures of artists carving various animals and humans, and key superimpositions, the panel can be confidently identified as the product of at least half a dozen artists reusing the site for more than a century, and possibly much longer. The panel's basic structure...
I Can See Clearly Now!: Successfully Implementing Visual Analysis into Cultural Resource Management Projects (2015)
Visual analysis is one method used to assess indirect effects of an undertaking on cultural resources that are eligible or potentially eligible for the National Register. Viewshed analysis is commonly used to implement the visual analysis; however, to accurately assess the indirect effect, the overall scope of a project must be tied to the project activities. Perspective analysis can be used to determine the project’s visibility distance, or the maximum distance at which project activities are...
Identifying pressure flakes in lithic assemblages (2017)
Most lithic technologists would agree that pressure flakes cannot be reliably identified in debitage assemblages by their size and morphology. Analysts using fractorgraphy have had success identifying pressure flakes by determining crack velocity via microscopic features on the ventral surface. However, this technique is time-consuming and is most successful on glassy materials. Native Americans of the western continental United States, extensively used one pressure flaking technique for 8000...
If It were Your Grandma: A Tribal Perspective on NAGPRA in Utah (2017)
In 1990, the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) was passed. The passing of NAGPRA was a huge step forward for indigenous rights; the law allowed tribes to decide the ultimate outcome of Native American burials found in any context on federal or tribal land. In Utah, there are also state laws that require similar standards of protection on private land. That being said, the repatriation process can be long and painful for many tribe members who are concerned with the...
Indigenous Method and Theory in Archaeology (2017)
Indigenous Archaeology has been described as archaeology with, for, and by Indigenous people. The differences between with and for, and by Indigenous people are critical to Indigenous people and society in general. Research framed in Indigenous method and theory is built within frames of respect, relationality, and reciprocity, it is praxis that weaves through institutional and public spaces to create social change. Such social change addresses the past real world consequences of colonial...
Insights into Prehistoric Footwear Landscapes (2017)
In earlier research, we used Promontory moccasins dimensions to chart predictable relationships concerning moccasin length, foot length, stature and age. A high proportion (83%) of the discarded moccasins in the Promontory caves came from children and subadults. While a discard bias concerning adults males (more likely to discard moccasins outside of domestic contexts) must be acknowledged, the predominance of children and subadults suggested the presence of a growing population, consistent with...
Interpreting the Fifty-Year Rule: How A Simple Phrase Leads to a Complex Problem (2015)
For over 40 years some archaeologists have labored under a distorted interpretation of the fifty-year rule in which anything over 50 years of age becomes ‘archaeological’ and therefore must be recorded and evaluated for eligibility to the National Register of Historic Places. A re-examining of federal law shows that this is a mistaken interpretation. Data from the Intermountain Antiquities Computer System indicates that if this practice continues the number of featureless historical sites...
Investigating Prehistoric Obsidian Source Utilization in Birch Creek Valley, Eastern Idaho (2015)
Investigating Prehistoric Obsidian Source Utilization in Birch Creek Valley, Eastern Idaho Brooke S. Arkush and Richard E. Hughes The Birch Creek Valley of eastern Idaho lies just west of the Continental Divide in a region containing numerous obsidian sources. Although the rich archaeological deposits contained within this high desert area were first investigated more than fifty years ago, relatively little excavation-based research has occurred there since the late 1960s and our...
Investigating the nature and timing of the earliest human occupation of North America using a novel integration of biogeochemistry and micromorphology (2017)
Paisley Caves, Oregon, is one of the key sites in current debates surrounding the peopling of the Americas. Ancient DNA evidence for human occupation of the cave has been debated, and coprolites have been said to be visually dissimilar to human faeces. This has implications for how we understand early occupation and migration in this part of North America. Our project will contribute to this debate, using a novel integration of biogeochemistry and sediment microstratigraphy. The aim is to assess...
Investigation and Analysis of Anthills Found in Archaeological Settings in the Northern Great Basin. (2015)
Anthills are ubiquitous across the Great Basin, with the potential to affect archaeological sites through bioturbation. This study considers if lithic debitage found on the surface of anthills (and within) represents the redistribution of specific size grades, with an emphasis on vertical redistribution of smaller flakes from below ground to the surface. Our study targeted anthills near previously analyzed lithic plots around the perimeter of Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855), a Paleoamerican...
Is Bigger Always Better? Body-Size, Prey Rank, and Hunting Technology (2015)
Zooarchaeological applications of rationale derived from the Prey Choice Model (PCM) are based on the assumption that prey body-size is a robust proxy for prey rank and post-encounter return rate. The PCM predicts dietary expansion and contraction in response to the encounter rates with large-sized and highly ranked game. In zooarchaeological assemblages, co-variation in the abundances of large and small-sized prey are often viewed as reflecting changes in foraging efficiency and are usually...
James F. O’Connell and Great Basin Archaeology (2015)
Jim O’Connell began his professional career in anthropology as a Berkeley graduate student under Robert Heizer, conducting his dissertation (1971) research on the prehistory of Surprise Valley in NE California. A teaching position at UC Riverside (1970-72) was soon supplanted by a research fellowship (1973-78) in Prehistory at Australian National University during which he pursued ethnoarchaeological research among the Alyawara. In 1978, he joined the Anthropology Department at the University of...
Just How Depressed were the Fremont? (2016)
Some of David Madsen’s earliest work centered on understanding variation in Fremont lifeway’s, especially subsistence. Current models of Fremont subsistence continue to emphasize geographic and temporal variation in subsistence but also identify resource depression of large game resulting from over-hunting and increases in population. In this paper I present zooarchaeological data from 15 archeological sites on the eastern shore of Great Salt Lake spanning the Fremont interval. These data do not...
A Line in the Sand: Bioarchaeological interpretations of life along the borders of the Great Basin and Southwest. (2016)
Prior to A.D. 1300, several archaeologically defined cultures were identified at the intersection of the American Great Basin and Southwest. Human skeletal remains were analyzed from site that represent the borders and the heartlands of the Fremont, the Virgin Branch Puebloan, and the Northern San Juan Puebloan cultural areas. The goal was to examine how life in the crossroads of these regions affected the experiences of individuals and groups. The following indicators were used to reconstruct...
Lithic Sourcing Using Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (2015)
Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometry (LIBS) has been used in Colorado and Wyoming for identifying and sourcing lithic materials for the last ten years. These have primarily focused on chert and silicified sandstone materials and quarry-derived artifacts. During 2012-2013 the LIBS was used to assess whether Bridger chert from sources in northwestern Colorado and southwestern Wyoming could be distinguished from each other. It was found that with greater than 80% accuracy, chert from these areas...
Lithic Technological Organization at Last Supper Cave: Reconstructing Paleoindian Mobility and Landscape Use at an Upland Site in Northwestern Nevada (2015)
Excavations at Last Supper Cave (LSC), Nevada by Tom Layton and Jonathan Davis in the early 1970s revealed an extensive record of occupation including a Paleoindian component recently re-dated to ~10,300 14C B.P. Despite the potential for the site to reveal information about Paleoindian lifeways in the Great Basin during the Terminal Pleistocene/Early Holocene (TP/EH), analysis of these early artifacts, including numerous Great Basin stemmed projectile points, tools, and debitage, was never...
Lithic technology and other archaeological investigations of Rock Creek Shelter (35LK22) (2017)
Excavations in 1967 at Rock Creek Shelter (35LK22), located within the Hart Mountain National Antelope Refuge in Lake County, Oregon, revealed a stratified record of frequent occupation that may potentially extend into the early Archaic. The artifacts recovered from the rockshelter include a chipped stone assemblage (n=1307), cordage/basketry and other perishable material (n=464), ground stone (n=24), faunal remains (n=1046), and numerous samples (n=68). The lithic material, that consists of...
Looking at High-Altitude Obsidian Use in the Great Basin (2015)
Until recently, most of what was known about the prehistoric use and conveyance of obsidian in the Great Basin was derived from analysis of time-sensitive artifacts recovered from caves and rockshelters. Over the past 35 years, however, archaeological research conducted in high-altitude settings has provided new insights about synchronic and diachronic patterning unique from many lowland assemblages. This paper will present the results of obsidian provenance analysis from sites in the White...
Managing Meaning: Mitigation, Monitoring, and Mentoring at a Rock Art Site in the Uinta Basin, Utah (2015)
In 2014, SWCA, in collaboration with Crescent Point Energy U.S. Corp and Sunrise Engineering, completed detailed analysis, laser 3D scanning, mapping, monitoring, and dust mitigation of a rock art site in the Uinta Basin, Utah. Detailed analysis of the rock art figures—characteristic of the Archaic, Fremont, Ute, and Historic periods—gives us insight into possible movement of peoples between the Tavaputs Plateau and Uinta Basin. Importantly, the interest in the project lies not only with...
Managing, Protecting, and Interpreting Utah Army National Guard Cultural Resources (2016)
Since 2011 USU Archeological Services has assisted the Utah Army National Guard in the management and interpretation of its varied cultural resources. The work was conducted through a Cooperative Agreement between the UTARNG and Utah State University Quinney College of Natural Resources. Initially, USU Archeological Services worked with the UTARNG on data recovery in advance of firing range construction, however the presence of unexploded ordnance required great changes in project scope with...
Mats, trays, bowls, and patches: results from the analysis of over 9,000 years of Catlow Twine basketry in the archaeological record (2017)
Catlow Twine is a unique and diagnostic basketry type found in archaeological sites of the Great Basin and some parts of California. It has a relatively wide geographic distribution and is thought to have over ~9,000 calendar years before present (cal B.P.) of technological continuity. Through the reexamination and recording of specific attributes and the direct Accelerator Mass Spectrometry (AMS) dating of Catlow Twine basketry from sites in Nevada, California, and Oregon, I have observed these...
Memory and Materiality in Rock Art and Ghost Dance Performances (2017)
In this paper, I examine the materiality of memory practices as expressed in rock art associated with the Ghost Dance in the Great Basin, Colorado Plateau, and Eastern California. Building on Jeff Malpas’ (2010) claim that "place is perhaps the key term for interdisciplinary research in the arts, humanities, and social sciences in the 21st C." (Creswell 2015:1), and Susan Kuchler’s perspective of ‘landscape as memory’ in which embodied experiences "govern the mnemonic transmission of land-based...
Mobility, Exchange, and the Fluency of Games: Promontory in a Broader Sociodemographic Setting (2015)
We are currently undertaking new investigations of the Promontory Cave 1 and 2 (Great Salt Lake, Utah) collections Julian Steward excavated in the 1930s along with renewed excavations in both caves to explore Steward’s suspicion that these AD 13th century assemblages were created by migrating ancestral Apacheans. Artifacts for gaming are richly represented, including a ball, hoops, feathered darts, cane, wooden, and beaver tooth dice, and markers or counting sticks; a guessing game using buried...
More than Just Bones: A Biocultural Analysis of Fremont Human Remains (2016)
Many existing studies of Fremont mortuary data have been limited to documenting the location of burials, the presence or absence of burial goods, and the position of the remains. Furthermore, much of the analyses of Fremont human skeletal remains have focused almost exclusively on population-level comparisons or evidence of extreme violence. Current bioarchaeological methods have expanded the type of questions that researchers can ask. Equipped with hypotheses influenced by social theory, it is...