Obsidian in Missouri: Updating the Record with New Data

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Obsidian has been used for the production of lithics throughout the world dating as far back as the Paleolithic. Obsidian has even been noted at archaeological sites in the American Midwest for nearly two centuries, despite being over two thousand kilometers from the nearest source. In Missouri, only twenty obsidian artifacts have been documented in archaeological contexts, only eleven of which have been geochemically sourced. Here we present the results of geochemical sourcing of a newly discovered obsidian artifact from McDonald County, Missouri in the heart of the Ozark highlands. Discovered in the summer of 2023 by a local collector, the artifact was found at an undocumented site of likely Middle Woodland origin. To determine the source of this artifact, pXRF was used, comparing data with reference samples from throughout North America. Results indicate that this artifact originated from the Obsidian Cliff source in Wyoming. This source is the most common source found in Midwestern sites, being identified as far away as Ohio. Beyond presenting the source of a rare Missouri obsidian artifact, this analysis adds to the growing database of archaeological obsidian discovered in the Midcontinent, and provides valuable insight into long distance exchange in the Woodland Period Ozarks.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 53519