North America - Great Basin (Geographic Keyword)
76-100 (147 Records)
Rimrock Draw Rockshelter is located along a relict stream channel in southeastern Oregon. The lithic assemblage includes Western Stemmed (WST) points; Northern Side-notched (NSN) points; and artifacts associated with fluting technology, such as fluted bifaces, fluting flakes, overshot flakes, and bifaces with overshot flake scars. NSN and WST distributions within the rockshelter have vertical and horizontal separations, indicating temporal and areal differences in site use occurred that can be...
New Excavations at an Old Site: Reevaluation of Chronology and Subsistence at the Connley Caves (35LK50), Lake County, Oregon (2016)
The Connley Caves are composed of eight rockshelters eroded into a south-facing ridge of welded tuff, rhyolite and fine-grained basalt in the Fort Rock Basin of central Oregon. The caves contain deeply buried and well-stratified sediments dating to the late Pleistocene-early Holocene. Excavations directed by Stephen Bedwell in the late 1960s recovered many lithic artifacts and intriguing radiocarbon dates of 10,600±190 14C yr B.P. and 11,200±200 14C yr B.P. Bedwell’s interpretations of the...
A novel method to accurately source obsidian and basalt artifacts (2016)
Development of a Unique Sourcing and Artifact Analysis Technique and Database for Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, USA. Using the Tracer III SD xrf laboratory system as a key component, a very precise and detailed methodology was developed for the elemental measurement, material type identification, and geological source location of artifacts found on Dugway Proving Grounds.Following 8 steps led to a very precise and accurate elemental analysis of the Dugway basalt and obsidian artifacts and...
Numic Fire: Biogeography of Foragers and Fire in the Great Basin (2015)
Fire is increasingly recognized as a central evolutionary force shaping the earth’s ecosystems. This is especially observable in the fire-prone American West, where indigenous populations frequently used low-intensity burns to modify their habitats for myriad purposes. Given the variability of environments within the Great Basin, the effects of anthropogenic burning likely had different impacts depending on local ecological and subsistence contexts. To understand where and why anthropogenic...
Numic Fire: Modeling the Effects of Anthropogenic Fire on Foraging Decisions in the Great Basin (2015)
Ethnohistoric accounts suggest that fire played a significant role in Great Basin foraging strategies; however, there is little quantitative data on why, where, or when people burned. To begin to fill this gap, we develop a behavioral ecological model designed to test predictions about the impact of anthropogenic fires on hunter-gatherer diet breadth. We conduct an ethnographic test of the model using historic band-level variation in prey choice coupled with ecological data on variation in the...
Obsidian Provenance Studies of Sites in Northern Utah (2015)
Previous studies of obsidian from archaeological sites in Utah Valley and the Salt Lake Valley have used relatively small samples to document temporal shifts in obsidian procurement, with southern sources (especially Black Rock) dominating Fremont assemblages, while most post-Fremont obsidian comes from the Malad source to the north. Our greatly expanded XRF analysis of almost 4,000 obsidian artifacts from sites in Utah and Salt Lake Valleys confirms the temporal change noted by earlier...
Obsidian Sourcing and the Origin of the Occupants of the White Mountains High Altitude Villages (2015)
The behaviors discussed in ethnographic accounts of the western Great Basin valleys vary widely and unexpectedly. Although both Owens Valley and Fish Lake Valley were inhabited by Eastern Mono speaking groups in historic times, their population density, settlement, subsistence, and sociopolitical organization were markedly different. Archaeological debate centers on whether these differences result from historic contact or if they have some meaningful time depth into prehistory. Situated between...
On the Road Again: A Consideration of Travel Routes within the Late Fremont Regional System (2016)
Prehistoric travel routes were conduits of knowledge, goods, and people. Within regional systems they facilitated social integration and identity maintenance. This was true for Late Fremont period groups, who primarily occupied the rich river valleys of the northern Colorado Plateau and eastern Great Basin but who also spread across this vast region in smaller settlements. This paper focuses on identifying possible travel routes within the Late Fremont regional system. We consider how these...
Oregon Tribal Historic Preservation Offices: Problems and Challenges of Starting and Maintaining a THPO (2017)
In 1992, amendments were made to the National Historic Preservation Act (NHPA) to include provisions for Indian tribes to assume the responsibilities of the State Historic Preservation Officer (SHPO) on tribal lands, and establish the position of a Tribal Historic Preservation Officer (THPO). THPOs are responsible for conducting a comprehensive survey of tribal historic properties and maintaining an inventory of such properties, preparing and implementing a tribal-wide historic preservation...
Over the mountains and through the desert: obsidian use, procurement, and transportation in Northwest Colorado (2017)
Obsidian is a rare raw material in northwest Colorado. As no naturally occurring sources have been identified in the region, obsidian artifacts recovered at archaeological sites were likely brought in through exchange or direct procurement during seasonal foraging routes. Using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis to identify obsidian sources, this poster addresses three questions related to obsidian artifacts found in the Colorado Bureau of Land Management, White River Field Office (WRFO): what...
An overview of cultural resources monitoring at the Nevada National Security Site (2017)
An integral component of the cultural resources management program at the Nevada National Security Site (NNSS) is the monitoring of cultural resources that have been determined eligible to the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP). The Desert Research Institute periodically conducts field evaluations of these cultural resources in order to document their condition and note any deterioration due to natural processes or unauthorized activities. NRHP eligible properties at the NNSS include...
Paleoarchaic Occupations in the Eastern Great Basin: Results of GIS Predictive Modeling for Identifying Paleoarchaic Sites in Southern Nevada (2015)
Within the Great Basin, site locations dating to the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition (PHT) are generally associated with specific geographical features. GIS is a useful tool for identifying geographical features likely to contain sites dating to the PHT period. Guided by previous Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene investigations in the Great Basin, a GIS predictive model combining topographical features likely to have been favorable for PHT period occupation was developed. Topographical features...
Paleoethnobotany at LSP-1 Rockshelter, Lake County, OR: Assessing the dietary diversity of plant foods in Holocene diet (2015)
Over the past five field seasons, collaborative research at the LSP-1 rockshelter in Oregon’s Warner Valley conducted by the University of Nevada, Reno archaeological field school and Bureau of Land Management has revealed a record of human occupation spanning the Holocene. While faunal remains are prominent in the deposits, nutritional information can also be derived from pollen and seed data at LSP-1. This paper presents the results of paleoethnobotanical analysis with respect to diet breadth...
Paleoindian Lithic Conveyance and Land-Use in the Northwestern Great Basin: A Summary of the Current Evidence (2017)
For more than a decade, the University of Nevada, Reno has conducted archaeological survey in the northwestern Great Basin, searching for Paleoindian sites under the auspices of the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (formerly the Sundance Archaeological Research Fund). Our work has identified a rich record of early occupation in southeastern Oregon and northwestern Nevada. Additionally, we have reanalyzed existing collections of Paleoindian artifacts from Last Supper Cave and Hanging...
Partners, Passports, Parsimony, and Preservation (2016)
The Intermountain Region of the Forest Service manages 34 million acres of public land in Utah, Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming, California, and Colorado. As yet, more than 30,000 sites have been recorded in the Region. From inventory to excavation, to curation and interpretation, and stabilization, the Intermountain Region has fielded a well rounded Heritage program. This presentation will review a multitude of management challenges and successes accomplished with minimal funding and plenty of help from...
Patterns in the Transport of Tosawihi Chert to the Little Boulder Basin, Northern Nevada (2017)
The Tosawihi chert quarries of northern Nevada have played a significant role in the development of hypotheses by Great Basin archaeologists about pre-contact procurement and transport of lithic raw materials. Here, such hypotheses are tested using data obtained from ongoing investigations in the nearby Little Boulder Basin. These investigations have resulted in the analysis of chipped stone assemblages from dozens of site loci, which consist primarily of Tosawihi chert and many of which can be...
People and Animals on the Move: Insights from the Promontory Caves on Proto-Apachaean Faunal Use and Hunting Practices (2017)
The faunal assemblages recovered from the Promontory Caves by Julian Steward, and more recently by John Ives and Joel Janetski, suggest that the subsistence practices, hunting patterns, and mobility strategies of those using the caves ca. AD 1100 to 1300 differed greatly from those of later peoples who used similar ceramics in the same region. While there are many potential explanations for these differences, this paper uses faunal data to argue that large game hunting, together with the...
Perishable Artifacts from Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (26EK3682), Nevada: A Technological Analysis of Artifacts from the Early through Late Holocene (2016)
Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (26EK3682) in Elko County, Nevada, is a stratified multi-component site on the western edge of the Bonneville Basin excavated between 2000-2009. The shelter has produced hundreds of perishable artifacts spanning from the early Archaic to historic periods, and it provides an excellent opportunity to examine perishable technology diachronically throughout the Holocene in the eastern Great Basin. This poster presents the results of a complete analysis of all...
Petroglyphs as time markers for Pleistocene occupation of the Great Basin (2017)
The association of cupules and pit and groove petroglyphs is possibly the oldest form of "rock art" in the Americas as evidenced in the northern Great Basin. Recant methods of dating petroglyphs, made possible by unusual paleoclimatic circumstances, have resulted in what may be the identification of the ‘North America’s oldest petroglyphs." Three sites located on the shores of ancient Pleistocene Lakes, two at Lake Lahontan in northern Nevada and one at Long Lake in southern Oregon, have given...
Physical Characterization of Stoneware Ceramic Materials (2015)
The Davenport Pottery manufactured earthenware and stoneware in Utah, between 1853 and 1888. This poster uses data from a broad range of analyses, including XRF, INAA, petrography, and mechanical stress testing to develop profiles of the outcomes of technical processes at the pottery shop. These characteristics then provide insight into various key research topics in archaeology, including pottery systematics, life-expectancy and depositional time lag, experimental archaeology, and the...
PLANT RESOURCES IN GREAT BASIN HIGH ALTITUDE FORAGING (2015)
Prehistoric high altitude occupation sites in the White Mountains and Toquima Range contain archaeobotanical assemblages that inform on the use of plant resources both alpine in origin and imported from lower altitudes. Plant assemblages from the two areas show many similarities in the range of plant resources represented, as well as evident differences that reflect variable modes of high altitude living across the Great Basin. This presentation compares the plant materials from the White...
A Point of Order on Great Basin Projectile Typologies and Chronologies (2016)
Archaeological sites in the Desert West are primarily open-air lithic scatters lacking organic preservation. Often, the only way these sites can be dated is via typological cross-dating using projectile points. This method of dating assumes that morphological types represent discrete and uniform time periods across large geographic areas; these time periods are based on the ages of point types at a handful of well-dated sites. Although typological cross-dating remains common, research has shown...
Population Size and Structure in the A.D. 13th Century Occupation of Promontory Cave 1 (2017)
The extraordinary preservation and narrow time frame (A.D. 1240-1290) for the occupation of Promontory Cave 1 on Great Salt Lake allow for unusual insights into the population and demography of its Promontory Culture inhabitants. We use two methods to determine population size. First, with accurate data on the habitable space in Cave 1, we calculate space needs per person from ethnographic accounts of Western North American hunter-gatherer groups in order to estimate likely group size. Second,...
The Pre-Mazama Occupation of the LSP-1 Rockshelter, Warner Valley, Oregon (2015)
For the past five years, a crew from the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, University of Nevada, Reno, has excavated in the LSP-1 Rockshelter in Warner Valley, Oregon. Our work has identified a modest record of pre-Mazama (~7,700 cal BP) occupation comprised of lithic tools and debitage, a well-preserved faunal assemblage, shell beads, and hearth features. In this paper, we highlight major trends in the LSP-1 assemblage and place it within the broader context of northern Great Basin...
Predicting Archaeological Site Locations in the McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area in Colorado (2015)
Archaeological predictive models are used in two main applications to 1) identify areas of cultural resource sensitivity in an unsurveyed area and 2) better understand historic and prehistoric use of a landscape. The model created here straddles these two applications, serving to predict cultural resource sensitivity in the primarily unsurveyed McInnis Canyons National Conservation Area (MCNCA), and to understand the distribution of known sites in that area. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM)...