Prehistoric Mobility Patterns and Geochemistry of FGV Toolstones at Slocan Narrows Pithouse Village and the Upper Columbia River Area

Summary

The work of Charlotte Beck and George T. Jones dramatically advanced toolstone provenance studies from how to conduct field survey, to how to prepare samples for laboratory analysis. Building on their pioneering work, this paper details the beginning of our efforts in sourcing fine-grained volcanic (FGV) toolstones in the Upper Columbia River area of the interior Pacific Northwest. Handheld portable x-ray fluorescence (HHpXRF) instrumentation was used to non-destructively analyze the FGV artifact assemblage from Slocan Narrows Pithouse Village. A systematic sub-sample (N=20) of the FGV artifacts were then destroyed to form glass beads for wavelength dispersive XRF (WDXRF) analysis. In this paper we provide details on the methodology, and we compare the results of both analytical techniques. Results of WDXRF are expected to provide higher quality data that will enable us to resolve and identify toolstone sources whose compositions could not be resolved in the HHpXRF data because of the lower analytical precision that results from variations in artifact size and geometry. The data from this study supplement a broad examination of the lithic assemblage at Slocan Narrows that aims at defining past lithic procurement and use patterns in the Upper Columbia River Area.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)   •
• Toolstone Papers in Honor of the Careers of Charlotte Beck and George T. Jones

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 16026