The Geoarchaeology of Playa-Dune Complexes on Edwards Air Force Base

Summary

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

Archaeologists working in the western Mojave Desert have long assumed that sediments in the region contain limited depth. The playas that dot the landscape are often assumed to have formed at the end of the Pleistocene, with playas having no stratigraphy and no buried cultural deposits. In the Antelope Valley, the dunes that are present are thought to be at least 10,000 years old, and to contain minimal depth. Archaeologists working on Edwards AFB have frequently argued that it is worthless to dig more than 20 cm into dunes, and more than 10 cm into playas. Over the last five years, research on Edwards AFB has called into question many of these assumptions, with excavations into playas encountering stratigraphic changes and buried cultural deposits. This work has shown that the playa-dune complexes on Edwards AFB have a complex geologic and cultural history. It will be argued that assumptions about the shallow depth of deposits has hindered investigations into the cultural history of the Mojave, and produced a bias toward more recent cultural events. Excavations should be terminated based upon the age of sediments rather than the presence or absence of cultural material in a 10 or 20 cm span.

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): 37690.0