What's Cooking at Devils Kitchen? Context, Content, and Chronology of an Early Site on the Modern Oregon Coast

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Preliminary geoarchaeological investigations at the Devils Kitchen site (35CS9) produced a stratified archaeological record comprised of stone tools, debitage, and fire-cracked rock associated with alluvial deposition occurring between ~11,600 and 1900 14C BP (i.e., ~13,470 and 1800 cal BP). The robust Holocene-age portion of this record demonstrates that the site was occupied throughout multiple periods of significant post-glacial environmental change. Though most notably, the discovery of lithic artifacts between the position of wood charcoal samples radiocarbon-dated to between 11,000 and 5900 14C BP (i.e., 12,700 and 6700 cal BP) seemed to suggest that a late Pleistocene-age occupation of the site was plausible— making it only the second known example in the region. The limited nature of the initial test excavations and augering meant that further work was necessary to increase chronological resolution of the site’s lower stratigraphy. This paper reports the results of a multi-year effort to excavate a block of 22 new 1 × 1 m units at the site and presents a robust assay of new radiocarbon dates acquired to complement existing litho- and pedostratigraphic models of the site, providing clarification for the depositional context of the lowermost cultural materials recovered at the Devils Kitchen site.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39091.0