Paleoarchaic Settlement of the South Salish Sea during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition: A View from Bear Creek (45KI839)

The Bear Creek site (45KI839) in Washington State’s central Puget lowland is among the earliest lithic artifact-bearing, professionally excavated archaeological sites on the Pacific coast between Haida Gwaii and the Santa Barbara Channel. Data recovery excavation in 2013 provided an unprecedented view of Native American settlement in a rapidly changing coastal lowland setting during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene (LPH) transition. The site is an epitome of difficulties inherent in finding deeply buried, intact early components in dynamic depositional environments. Our site formation model is therefore foundational, drawing on geoarchaeological data at the basin- and micro-scales, on paleoenvironmental evidence, and on a comprehensive dating regime. The lithic assemblage includes stemmed and unfluted concave-base projectile points and a variety of bifacial and expedient flake tools sharing affinities most closely with Western Stemmed Tradition assemblages throughout the greater interior Pacific Northwest and Great Basin, and is similar to a string of LPH sites along the coast from Haida Gwaii to South America. The contributions to this session explore individual analytic facets of the investigations at the Bear Creek site, while drawing broader conclusions about this site as a coastal variant of the Western Stemmed Tradition.