Microarchaeological Approaches to the Identification of the Younger Dryas in the Northern Great Basin

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.

The Younger Dryas Chronozone (YDC) is a cooling event occurring 12,900–11,600 years ago (cal BP) marked by rapid changes in plant and animal communities, subsequently affecting late Pleistocene human population organization and settlement dynamics across the globe. In North America’s Northern Great Basin, these changes appear to have positively affected mobile foragers, but a lack of well-dated archaeological sites in the region hinders our ability to test this hypothesis or to adequately understand its role in shaping the archaeological record. Thus, there is a need for more datable archaeological occupations and high-resolution studies of Pleistocene-aged deposits in the region. At the Paisley and Connley Caves, stratified deposits have yielded rich Western Stemmed Tradition assemblages spanning the YDC, providing a unique opportunity to address this issue. We present ongoing geoarchaeological research at each site and discuss both the macro- and microscopic characteristics that help define the YDC. These data provide a powerful approach for disentangling human-environment dynamics taking place during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene transition in the 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): 32511