Laboratory XRF, Clovis/Folsom Obsidian Procurement, and the Reconstruction of Paleoindian Procurement Ranges: 40 Years of My Collaboration with Bruce B. Huckell

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For 40 years my laboratory has been providing x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses to Bruce Huckell and his graduate students since we first met when we were both in graduate school (UA and ASU). This has included various rock types including hydrothermally altered rhyolite (Socorro “Jasper”), but most especially Paleoindian through Archaic period obsidian. Additionally, Bruce helped me collect, map, and record a number of obsidian sources and secondary deposit sources in the Southwest mainly in New Mexico. This all gave Bruce a rather unique insight into the types of appropriate questions to pose that obsidian source provenance can potentially answer. Most central here, and much of the focus in this paper, is the reconstruction of Clovis and Folsom procurement ranges based on obsidian source provenance. And one of the most vexing questions that has arisen, is why so much obsidian from western Mogollon-Datil Volcanic Province obsidian in Middle Rio Grande Clovis contexts – Mule Creek and Cow Canyon sources? While we discussed this a number of times, we arrived at no satisfying answers. Here I will advance a number of inferences as to why obsidian from this, and some other regions, were so sought after by Clovis and Folsom knappers.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Papers in Celebration of Bruce B. Huckell, Part 2

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52383