Obsidian Procurement Patterns in the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness

Summary

Cultural resources in wilderness areas can be difficult to manage due to a lack of dedicated funding and few undertakings which trigger survey through the National Historic Preservation Act. After a series of extensive wildfires in the 1990s the Malheur National Forest surveyed much of the Strawberry Mountain Wilderness Area using volunteers from the Forest Service's Passport In Time program. Crews documented several extensive obsidian dominated lithic scatter sites. The debitage and other artifacts recovered illustrated the full range of lithic reduction stages suggesting a nearby source of natural obsidian. Additional survey failed to locate any usable obsidian sources within the wilderness. X-Ray Fluorescence (XRF) characterization identified the two primary obsidian sources from these sites several miles, and approximately 2000 feet below, the sites in the wilderness. Likely travel routes between the obsidian sources and lithic reduction sites in the wilderness can be inferred from the XRF data.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 21118