Terminal Pleistocene and Holocene Adaptive Strategies at the Paisley Caves, Oregon

Summary

There are key questions about the timing of the initial settlement of the northern Great Basin, how settlers adapted to the pluvial lake and wetland landscape they encountered upon arrival, and how these adaptations changed in response to Holocene climate change. The Paisley Caves in south-central Oregon provide a unique opportunity to investigate these questions. The caves produced the earliest evidence for human settlement of the Great Basin including coprolites containing human DNA dating to 14,300 calendar years BP, as well as an assemblage of morphologically human coprolites from terminal Pleistocene through late Holocene contexts. These coprolites provide an important resource for a diachronic study of human occupation and subsistence in the region. This paper presents the preliminary results of pollen, phytolith, and plant macrofossil analyses of coprolites from the Paisley Caves. The goal of these analyses are to identify human coprolites in the cave deposits, and test models emphasizing a broad-based wetland-focused subsistence economy in the terminal Pleistocene and early Holocene with increasing reliance on plant resources in the middle Holocene. This research is part of a broader project investigating site formation processes and human occupation of the caves using biogeochemical, plant micro- and macrofossil, and sediment micromorphological analyses.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 20419