New Perspectives from Smith Creek Cave: A Lithic Technological and Geochemical Analysis of the Paleoindian Assemblage

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.

With the recent reporting of pre-Clovis-aged Western Stemmed components at archaeological sites in the Great Basin, there is renewed interest in the previously excavated Paleoindian assemblage from Smith Creek Cave. There, a stemmed-point component was originally dated to approximately 13,000 years ago. A thorough technological analysis of the lithic assemblage, however, was never completed, making comparison to other contemporaneous sites in the eastern Great Basin difficult. Here, building on a recent study of the Smith Creek Cave bifaces, a technological analysis of the entire Smith Creek Cave lithic assemblage, including unifacial tools and debitage, is reported and combined with a geochemical analysis of the obsidian and fine-grained volcanic materials. This data provides useful information regarding the lithic technological organization and mobility strategies of the prehistoric visitors to Smith Creek Cave and allows the site to be placed in a regional context for the Paleoindian 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): 33457