Cascadia Cave, the Excavations

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cascadia Cave (35LIN11) is an iconic rockshelter and rock art site at the edge of Oregon’s Willamette Valley and Western Cascade Range. Following excavations in 1964, Tom Newman reported an early Holocene radiocarbon age of 8810 cal BP and a Cascade projectile point assemblage that was central to what has come to be known as the Old Cordilleran Tradition. In 1988 the site was revisited as part of a National Register nomination and an additional small-scale excavation was done. An evaluation of these efforts, supplemented by seven new radiocarbon dates and obsidian hydration age estimates, show the site was intensely occupied from at least the early to middle Holocene (9500–4500 years BP), after which occupation was more ephemeral and intermittent. The reanalysis clarifies the place of Cascadia Cave in the context of the Willamette Valley’s environmental and cultural history. Further, an overview of the rock art may provide archaeological evidence of the historic incursion into the Willamette Valley by the mid-Columbia River Klickitat.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Future Directions for Archaeology and Heritage Research in the Willamette Valley, Oregon   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35548.0