Renewed Investigations at Leonard Rockshelter

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Leonard Rockshelter is located in Pershing County, Nevada. Initially mined for bat guano, workers discovered artifacts in 1938, prompting a visit by Robert Heizer. Heizer returned to excavate the site in 1950 and reported more than 2 m of stratified deposits from which he recovered a modest assemblage of perishable and lithic artifacts. Of interest to the University of Nevada Reno’s Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit (GBPRU) was Heizer’s find of obsidian flakes in association with guano that returned a radiocarbon date of 11,200 14C BP. This Clovis-era date prompted the GBPRU to return to the site in 2018 and 2019 to evaluate Heizer’s claim of a potential Clovis-era occupation and gain a better understanding of the site’s stratigraphy. We discuss our 2018 and 2019 excavations with a focus on understanding the age of the deposits and Leonard Rockshelter’s importance in the western Great Basin.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• Far West Paleoindian Archaeology: Papers from the Next Generation

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32941