Stemmed Points and Pluvial Lakes: Assessing the Manufacture and Distribution of Western Stemmed Points in the Harney Basin, Oregon

Summary

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

The age and distribution of stemmed point technology in the Far West is important for a full understanding of late Pleistocene and Early Holocene archaeology in North America, especially for those interested in the initial settlement of the Americas. Despite the importance of stemmed points to debates surrounding the peopling process, there are still questions surrounding typology and distribution of specific stemmed point types. The research presented here provides a systematic metric and non-metric analysis of stemmed points collected, or recorded, on land managed by the Burns District Bureau of Land Management (BLM) in the Harney Basin, eastern Oregon. Robust ongoing research programs have focused on late Pleistocene and early Holocene archaeology in the Harney Basin, and over 500 stemmed points have been identified and collected from lands managed by the BLM. Here I present the analysis of those stemmed points in an effort to determine if there are discrete or continuous morphological and technological differences between defined Western Stemmed subtypes. Geochemical and geospatial data will also be incorporated in order to determine how raw-material variability and distance from geologic source potentially affects this variation. Together, these analyses will bolster our interpretations of Western Stemmed lithic technological organization.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

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

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 35996.0