Evidence for Winter Bear Hunting from Lava Tube Caves in Southwest Washington

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The southwestern flanks of Mt. Adams, Washington, contain numerous lava tube caves. These lava tubes can be quite complex, containing narrow passages on multiple levels. In the course of exploring these lava tubes, modern cavers have inadvertently discovered a total of sixteen projectile points and a flake tool, within twelve different lava tubes. These artifacts were all found within the “dark zone” and taken together these discoveries reflect a pattern of precontact cave use. A variety of analyses have been performed in an attempt to determine the function and age of these artifacts, including technological/use-wear analysis, blood protein residue analysis, obsidian sourcing and obsidian hydration. Positive blood protein residue results, coupled with ethnographic accounts of winter bear hunting, suggest that these artifacts may be related to the hunting of hibernating bears in their dens in winter.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35804.0