Obsidian Sourcing and the Origins of the Black Mountain Redoubt Site, Wyoming

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Projectile points are one of the few artifacts present on the surface of archaeological sites that may also serve as a diagnostic of the site’s relative age. A shift in the archaeological record can be seen through changes in projectile point technologies between the Late Archaic and the Historic periods in northwest Wyoming. The exact causes of these changes are unknown. This time period also saw a decrease in the diversity of obsidian found at local sites. The Black Mountain Redoubt site, located in the Washakie Range at 8200 feet, contains diagnostic projectile points including Late Archaic, Rose Springs, and Desert Side Notch indicating the site is multi-component. However, projectile point types like Rose Spring and Desert Side Notch have wide chronological ranges, making it difficult to date archaeological sites where only these types are present. Through experimental archaeological comparison of the obsidian assemblage from the Black Mountain Redoubt site, I answer questions about technology, mobility, exchange, and migration in the Central Rocky Mountains. This poster explores the preliminary data collected using X-ray fluorescence (XRF) to examine similarities and differences between the debitage versus the projectile points via analysis of geochemical composition.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25756