Small Mammals from the Hell Gap Site, Wyoming and their Paleoecological Significance

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.

Limited small mammal remains were recovered from Hell Gap during the early 1960s. Based on these remains, a lowering of "life zones" was proposed at Hell Gap around c.a. 10,800 yrs B.P. In 1997, the Early Holocene small mammal population of the Hell Gap site Locality One was reinvestigated. Flotation samples were collected by five centimeter intervals within defined stratigraphic units. Small mammal remains were also collected during archaeological excavations in 1996-1998. Since 1998, additional small mammal remains continued to be collected during excavations and have been recently examined. While the small mammal sample from the site continues to be sparse compared with medium or large mammals, these small mammals remain critical for paleoenvironmental reconstructions of this early Holocene period.

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): 23824