Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?

DOCUMENT Citation Only Brigid Grund. Stephen Williams.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Various methods have been used to differentiate among activity areas at archaeological sites (e.g., element and lipid analysis), but additional work in this area is needed. To our knowledge, no previous studies have attempted to classify indoor and outdoor spaces by examining soil microbial community composition. Phospholipid fatty...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tony Fitzpatrick.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Cross‐over immunoelectrophoresis (CIEP) analyses from chipped stone artifacts have been completed to provide additional information on faunal procurement and use at Hell Gap. Results include positive reactions to dog and bovine antisera, with canid and bison bones represented in the faunal assemblage at the site. In addition to blood...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Mary Lou Larson.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Chipped stone tools and debitage from the Hell Gap site offer evidence of a wide range of activities such as procurement, manufacture, and use of stone tools. Several features with multiple pieces of chipped stone (piles) excavated from the earliest Paleoindian components at Locality I appear to show different production...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Naomi Ward. Macy Ricketts. Rachael Shimek. Mary Lou Larson. Marcel Kornfeld.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Paleomicrobiology is probably best known as an approach that yields anthropological findings connected to human health and disease, such as long-term records of oral microbiomes recovered from ancient dental calculus. However, the tools of microbial ecology have been tested for their potential to address other anthropological...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Alix Piven. Elizabeth Lynch.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Research at Hell Gap has incorporated a number of technological innovations since investigations began at the site in the early 1960s. Recent advances in digital techniques have spurred the rise of digital documentation and analysis in the field. Low-cost yet high-quality photogrammetric softwares such as Agisoft Photoscan have...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Tammy Rittenour. Heidi VanEtten. Judson Finley.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The Witness Block (Locality I) at Hell Gap preserves a well-studied open-air stratified record of near-continuous Paleoindian occupation. Radiocarbon-based age control has been problematic due to age reversals and inconsistencies related to old and young carbon contamination and calibration uncertainties. Recent work by Pelton et al....

DOCUMENT Citation Only Spencer Pelton. Brigid Grund.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In the 1960s, the Hell Gap site in eastern Wyoming produced at least eight archaeological cultural complexes that spanned almost the entire Paleoindian period, becoming the key chronological site for Plains Paleoindian archaeology and beyond. High resolution spatial and chronological data spanning this occupational sequence were...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Carlton Gover. Justin Garnett.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. During the 2018 field season, a fluted preform was recovered during surface survey at Hell Gap Locality IV. A shovel test was dug at the location of the preform to investigate the stratigraphy, landform characteristics, and assess the possible age of the deposit. The test uncovered 675 very tightly vertically clustered artifacts,...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Danny Walker. Rachael Shimek.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Limited small mammal remains were recovered from Hell Gap during the early 1960s. Based on these remains, a lowering of "life zones" was proposed at Hell Gap around c.a. 10,800 yrs B.P. In 1997, the Early Holocene small mammal population of the Hell Gap site Locality One was reinvestigated. Flotation samples were collected by five...

DOCUMENT Citation Only Marcel Kornfeld. Mary Lou Larson.

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. A key question for interpreting both human behavior and the Paleoindian cultural sequence, the two pillars of significance attached to the Hell Gap site, concerns the nature of site formation. This term, however, is ambiguous. Site formation begins when people carrying on daily activities discard and lose objects. Once lost, the...