Sources of sandstone artifacts and pottery from Lost Dune, a late prehistoric site in Harney County, southeastern Oregon, U.S.A.

Abstract

Granitic constituents suggest distant plutonic sources for sherds representing four of six low‐fired brown ware pots and for eight of ten sandstone artifacts from Lost Dune (35HA792), a Late Prehistoric bison processing camp in Harney Basin of southeastern Oregon, a Tertiary volcanic and sedimentary region. Eight sandstone artifacts match granite‐derived sandstone near Oregon's Owyhee River, and three former pots match altered granite and rhyolite in Idaho's Owyhee Mountains. A fourth corresponds to mixed hydrovolcanic basalts near the sandstone abrader source. The sources delineate a 30 × 70 km area > 100 km from Lost Dune. Two other pots and two milling stones match deposits near this area and elsewhere. The determined sources suggest people who used Shoshoni pots and knives at Lost Dune resided in southeastern Oregon. Pots with temper from elevations above 1500 m or recovered as sherds above 1500 m might be made in summer root‐digging camps. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Implications of New Radiocarbon Ages on Coiled Basketry from the Northern Great Basin

“…Great Basin basketry tradition centers (after Adovasio 1970Adovasio ,1986b, showing the hypothesized direction of origin for the Oregon coiled specimens. Occurrences of Intermountain Ware ceramics are from Lyons and Cummings (2002), who note that Oregon occurrences are exhaustive; Idaho and Nevada occurrences are representative.…”

“…The presence of coiled basketry in extreme southeastern Oregon (in Catlow and Owyhee River basins and one pericontact occurrence in the Warner Valley) is also consistent with the distribution of Shoshonean (Intermountain Ware) pottery in a limited number of sites in this same area. Pottery continues to the east in southern Idaho and adjacent portions of Nevada (Lyons and Cummings 2002;Lyons et al 2001;Thomas et al 1983) and, like coiled basketry, is absent from the more westerly basins. Lyons et al (2001) report that at the Lost Dune site (35HA792), obsidian generally derived from sources in the western Malheur Basin/eastern Catlow Valley area; however, for occupations associated with pottery, obsidian came predominantly from the Owyhee River drainage to the east.…”