Trek Up the River: A Cobble Tool Technology as Clue to Interior California's Antiquity

Summary

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

An early quartzite cobble lithic technology is evidenced by a multi-site pattern of datasets including waste cores and tools with highly patinated flake scars on remains deeply embedded in the natural desert pavement of the Pleistocene shorelines along the Lower Colorado River (LCR). Reduction technology is represented at Vista del Lago (CA-SBr-1456) located near Havasu Landing, California. The distribution pattern of multiple similar sites along the western shoreline of the LCR and Gulf of California (eastern shoreline of Baja California) was reported by Malcolm J. Rogers in 1939. These scattered sites are considered as a potential connecting link between interior California to a submerged ~ 12,700-year-old pre-Clovis paleo-coastal cobble tool dataset found off the Baja peninsula and reported by Matthew DesLauriers at Cedros Island in 2017. The presence or absence of a statistical typological, technological, and chronological correlation between the various cobble sites (with datasets available for study) is considered using Optically Stimulated Thermoluminescence (OST), XRF, and relative dating of pertinent Pleistocene shoreline benches. A corollary early technology along the inland shoreline would support the extension of a Paleocoastal peopling into interior regions via the Gulf of California and the Lower Colorado River channel.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 26038