The Bonneville Basin and Snake River Plain Connection: Early Archaic Lithic Technology, Geochronology, and Obsidian Procurement at Bonneville Estates and Veratic Rockshelters

Summary

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 affected both regions. Did humans in the two neighboring regions respond with similar adaptive solutions? A unique opportunity to assess the affinity between these two regions is provided by the recent analyses of two deeply stratified rockshelter sites: Bonneville Estates Rockshelter (Nevada) and Veratic Rockshelter (Idaho), both of which have large, well-dated and well-preserved early Archaic assemblages. Here we focus on raw-material procurement and selection, projectile point forms and technologies, and aspects of technological organization preserved in the lithic assemblages. The new analyses provide a basis for a large-scale examination of human response to climate change and inter-regional cultural interactions.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• From Dirt to Behavior: Papers in Honor of David B. Madsen

Keywords

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