The View from the Trenches: Tying Paleoenvironment to Archaeology at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The 2018 fieldwork emphasized trench excavation across the relict stream channel directly in front of the rockshelter. Sedimentary deposits comprise a well-stratified, five-part sequence of bedrock basalt overlain by a gravel bed of rounded cobbles and boulders; dark gray blocky to massive cienega (marsh) clays covered by a layer of primary Mazama tephra overlain by reworked Mazama; and finally, two meters of eolian sediments. Four obsidian flakes were collected in the basal gravels and one in cienega clays during stratigraphic profiling. Bison tooth enamel was found at the contact between bedrock and the basal gravels. Four samples were AMS 14C dated, including bison enamel (bioapatite carbonate) from the basal gravels and humate samples from the top, middle, and bottom of the cienega deposit. In the rockshelter, bison and camelid tooth enamel were AMS 14C dated for comparison with enamel from the trench. Archaeobotanical and lithic artifact data are summarized to highlight the paleoenvironmental relationship between the channel and rockshelter. Collectively, these data indicate strong stream discharge at 13,000 CAL BP, when WST human occupations occurred at the site before and after what is defined as Clovis elsewhere in the United States.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Current Perspectives on the Western Stemmed Tradition-Clovis Debate in the Far West   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25764