Old Collections and New Approaches: Estimating Mast Resource Use in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Southwest Texas

Summary

Baker Cave is a dry rock shelter with exceptional organic preservation in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of southwest Texas. The site is best known for high floral and faunal diversity in a Paleoindian-age hearth excavated in 1976, the first of three seasons (1976, 1984, 1985) the Center for Archaeological Research (CAR) worked at the site. Only those 1976 excavations have been reported in any detail. This poster summarizes analyses to estimate mast resource use over time at Baker Cave based on samples from the 1984 and 1985 collections, curated at CAR. Field notes for the most recent excavations are currently unavailable, and much of the 1984 stratigraphy is rumored to have been mixed. The present analysis emphasizes an excavated area with multiple radiocarbon dates that fall between 877 +/- 26 (905-728 cal BP) and 9,143 +/- 38 RCYBP (10,408 and 10,299 cal BP). Through quantification (e.g., counts, ratios, weights) of nut remains in this deposit, and direct dating of multiple samples of this resource class for temporal control, we develop a gross measure of nut resource use over a 10,000-year period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 22182