Bear Creek (45KI839) Data Recovery Investigation and the Paleoarchaic Settlement of the South Salish Sea during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition

Summary

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 excavations in 2013 provided an unprecedented view of Native American settlement in a rapidly changing coastal lowland setting during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene (LPH) transition. We summarize the results of these excavations and attendant analyses and address some broader implications of the research to date, including the settlement of the earliest peoples in western North America, patterns of land-use in the Pacific Northwest’s dynamic post-glacial environment, and rethinking regional culture-historical sequences. The Bear Creek LPH component contains a lithic assemblage akin to the Western Stemmed Tradition in the interior although it also shows elements of continuity with later regional technological traditions. The lithic assemblage and other contextual data meet expectations derived from models of WST settlement of the interior Pacific Northwest which originated from a Pacific coastal migration.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paleoarchaic Settlement of the South Salish Sea during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition: A View from Bear Creek (45KI839)   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 15931