Revisiting the Western Stemmed Tradition Component of Last Supper Cave, Nevada

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Last Supper Cave (LSC) is located in the rugged High Rock Country of northwestern Nevada. Thomas Layton excavated the cave in 1973–1974 under the auspices of the Nevada State Museum. He recovered a diverse assemblage of lithic, fiber, and wooden objects including a number of Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) points. Radiocarbon dates and time-sensitive projectile points suggested that people used the cave for much of the Holocene. Despite the assemblage’s potential to address a range of questions, it was never fully analyzed. Beginning in 2008, researchers from the University of Nevada, Reno and Nevada State Museum began reanalyzing the collection—work that continues today. Here, we present new radiocarbon dates from cultural features that provide a better understanding of when people visited the site, with a particular focus on the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Our work draws upon Bob’s many contributions to our field in the areas of radiocarbon dating, lithic technology, and hunter-gatherer archaeology.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Three Sides of a Career: Papers in Honor of Robert L. Kelly   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 37832.0