Structure and Formation of a Paleoindian Deposit: The Hell Gap Site, Wyoming

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

A key question for interpreting both human behavior and the Paleoindian cultural sequence, the two pillars of significance attached to the Hell Gap site, concerns the nature of site formation. This term, however, is ambiguous. Site formation begins when people carrying on daily activities discard and lose objects. Once lost, the objects are subject to various surface geomorphic processes (wind, water, plant and animal behavior) and eventually under conditions of aggradation become buried in the sediment. Objects buried in the sediment, whether originally left by people or brought in by various geomorphic processes, form patterns that may be informative of cultural behaviors, geomorphic processes, and in most if not all cases, both. In this presentation I examine the vertical and horizontal structure of the Hell Gap site at several scales to begin the assessment of Hell Gap site formation.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Hell Gap at 60: Myth? Reality? What Has It Taught Us?

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23932