Younger Dryas Archaeology and Human Experience at the Paisley Caves in the Northern Great Basin

Abstract

stones and bones are the fundamental building blocks of prehistory, especially the deep hominin prehistory. The only thing that survives from the earliest humans, except in rare instances of the humans themselves, is stones and bones in that order. it was in this context that the late archaeologist Glynn isaac (1977) characterized the archaeology of the earliest humans as "squeezing blood from stones." stones and bones must, however, be placed in context, and that largely comes from profiles or rather stratigraphy. stones, bones, and profiles thus constitute the three building blocks of much of the early archaeology from the appearance of earliest humans to the advent of the neolithic or its equivalents on various continents. so it is no wonder that this book, dedicated to two prominent scholars whose careers focused on the earliest americans, the Paleoindians, is about stones, bones, and profiles. in fact, tools and tool making from raw stone material and the remains of food residues, or one of these, are what we find at nearly all Paleoindian sites in western north america. Where we find them and in what contexts are key to understanding the implications of these remains for reconstructing the lifeways of ancient peoples. and by and large, other items are rare or absent, except in a few cases, and often these are likewise made of either stone or bone. We are referring to such things as bone tools (needles, awls, gaming pieces, and others), ornaments (beads), and possibly in a few instances

Late Pleistocene subsistence in the Great Basin: Younger Dryas-aged faunal remains from the Botanical Lens, Paisley Cave 2, Oregon

“…BP, Cave 2 was open to direct entry but was darker than it is today. University of Oregon field school excavations between 2002 and 2011 covered a total of 22 m 2 and removed 30.3 m 3 of sediments from Cave 2 (Jenkins et al, 2016).…”

“…yr BP suggesting the BL was primarily utilized by humans for up to two centuries before it was abandoned and later buried by the Upper Mud Lens. For additional details of the Paisley Caves stratigraphic context, including the Botanical Lens, see Jenkins et al (2016).…”

Return to Fort Rock Cave: Assessing the Site's Potential to Contribute to Ongoing Debates About How and When Humans Colonized the Great Basin

“…Bedwell's (1970, 1973) Northern Great Basin chronology, based on his research at Fort Rock and Connley Caves, relied on what for decades was the earliest and largest single set of terminal Pleistocene to late Holocene radiocarbon ages in the region, nearly all from the Gakushuin Laboratory. Their removal from the record would seemingly impact our assessment of the region's cultural chronology, but their absence is more than balanced by an ambitious program of excavation and survey in the Fort Rock and Chewaucan (Summer Lake) basins since 1989 (Jenkins, Connolly, and Aikens 2004; Jenkins et al 2016), and the systematic dating of fiber artifacts (Connolly and Barker 2004; Connolly et al 2016). To date, there are at least 475 14 C determinations from this work, a majority being AMS dates with standard errors less than 100 years.…”

“…Disregarding these, and Bedwell's 31 Gakushuin dates, we are left with 275 cultural dates on artifacts, charcoal, hearths, butchered bone/hide/fur, and human coprolites/hair ranging from ~14,600 cal B.P. to modern (Jenkins et al 2016:144–170), on which the current regional chronology is based (Aikens et. al.…”

“…Recent work at the nearby Paisley Five Mile Point Caves demonstrates that people occupied the northern Great Basin by at least ~14,500 cal B.P. (Gilbert et al 2008; Jenkins et al 2012, 2013), suggesting that although Bedwell's (1973) claim of a roughly contemporary occupation at Fort Rock Cave remains undemonstrated, it should not necessarily be dismissed outright. Work at the Paisley Caves has also highlighted the utility of returning to old sites in search of new data.…”