Ted Goebel and Kelly Graf
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| Figure 1: Map of Nevada and location of Goshute Valley. |
In 1999-2001 archaeologists from the University of Nevada and Elko District of the Bureau of Land Management conducted systematic archaeological survey for Paleoindian sites in the Goshute Valley, eastern Elko County, Nevada (Figure 1). Field work has focused on the southwest portion of the valley, along the Nelson Creek drainage (Figures 2, 3), where fresh water would have flowed into the basin during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Six prehistoric archaeological sites have been found that contain stemmed projectile points, indicating human occupations dating to before 8,000 years ago. In addition, a number of stemmed point isolates, a fluted point isolate, and a crescent isolate have been discovered. A major goal of our research in the Goshute Valley has been to investigate Paleoindian lithic technological organization and how it relates to settlement patterns. Specifically, we want to use the lithic artifact assemblages recovered from these sites to characterize whether Paleoindians in the Goshute Valley were highly mobile hunters or somewhat sedentary foragers focusing subsistence pursuits in and around pluvial lake/marsh environments.
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| Figure 2: On Paleoindian survey in Goshute Valley. | Figure3: Water break! Nelson Creek drainage in background. |
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| Figure 4: Transit training at Mizpah Point. |
Six archaeological sites with stemmed points have been discovered to date (Figures 4, 5, 6). These include Walker Well, Crescent Beach, Mizpah Point, Phalen Creek, Harlips, and GBS-Dune. Lithic assemblages recovered from Walker Well, Mizpah Point, and Harlips contain projectile points diagnostic of the early period of Great Basin prehistory, while Crescent Beach and Phalen Creek also contain later prehistoric projectile points (i.e., Gatecliff, Elko, and Desert Side-Notched types). All of these sites are surface lithic scatters; however, Walker Well and GBS-Dune also have buried cultural components. Walker Well is contained within a 50-cm thick sand sheet, while GBS-Dune occurs within a set of low sand dunes. None of the sites, except GBS-Dune, have yielded wood charcoal or bone, so that radiocarbon dating is not possible. Our attempts to date bone from GBS-Dune have not yet been successful, but we hope to attempt this again using some artiodactyl tooth fragments that were recovered in 2000.
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| Figure 5: Mizpah Point surface collection. | Figure 6: Walker Well site (on low ridge to left of truck). |
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| Figure 7: Stemmed points and bifaces from Nelson Creek sites. |
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| Figure 8: Crescents and flake tools from Nelson Creek sites. |
Bifacial stemmed points from the Nelson Creek sites are primarily square-based points. (Figure 7). In western North America, square-based points such as these have been referred to as "Windust" (in the northern Great Basin) and "Scottsbluff" (in the High Plains and Rocky Mountains). Parman stemmed point bases (with convex, tongue-shaped stems) are also common. Elsewhere in the Great Basin, these stemmed projectile point forms have been radiocarbon dated to between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago. All of the stemmed points from the Nelson Creek sites display heavy edge-grinding along the margins of their stems and bases.
Other lithic tool forms include preforms of bifaces (Figure 7), end scrapers, side scrapers, gravers, and retouched flakes (Figure 8). Some of the end scrapers appear to have been hafted.
We are currently analyzing the lithic artifact assemblages from three of the "clean" stemmed-point sites --Walker Well, Harlips, and Mizpah Point. In order to characterize lithic procurement strategies and reduction activities that were carried out at the sites, as well as their relationship to Paleoindian mobility levels, we are focusing on a number of variables, including raw material, biface form, core form, tool bank, and tool production (for more information on using lithics to discern mobility versus sedentism, see Bamforth 1986; Graf 2001; Kelly 1988; Parry and Kelly 1987). Preliminary results of some of these analyses are briefly presented below.
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| Figure 9: Lithic raw materials present in the Nelson Creek sites. |
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| Figure 10: Biface forms present in the Nelson Creek sites. |
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| Figure 11: Frequencies of biface cores and expedient flake cores. |
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| Figure 12: Proportions of tool blanks in the Nelson Creek sites. |
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| Figure 13: Proportions of formal and informal tools. |
Lithic raw materials include obsidian, basalt, and cryptocrystalline silicates (ccs) (Figure 9). The basalt and ccs are local in origin. At Mizpah Point, these raw materials occur in the beach gravels that underlie the site. At Walker Well and Harlips, the ccs materials appear to have originated from two nearby ccs outcrops, while the basalt materials may have come from large basalt flows located about 10 km south of the sites, in the Currie Hills. Obsidians are more exotic. Obsidian sources so far identified in the Nelson Creek assemblages include Browns Bench obsidian (located about 200 km north of the Nelson Creek area) and Topaz Mountain obsidian (located about 150 km southeast of Nelson Creek, in central Utah). "Exotic" obisidian as well as local basalt and ccs were used to manufacture bifaces and bifacial projectile points, suggesting that the Paleoindian occupants of the sites were moving across very large territories and had direct access to distant sources, and were retooling locally while visiting the Nelson Creek area.
Bifaces present in the three assemblages include edged (early stage) bifaces, thinned (middle stage) bifaces, preform (late stage) bifaces, and finished bifaces (Figure 10), indicating that manufacture and retooling of bifaces occurred at the sites. There are differences, however, in the proportions of these bifaces between the sites. At Mizpah Point, for example, there are relatively high frequencies of edged, thinned, preform, and finished bifaces, indicating that the full range of biface reduction was being carried out at that site. This is not surprising, given that ccs and basalt cobbles can be quarried from the beach deposits that underlie the Mizpah Point site. Harlips and Walker Well, on the other hand, have fewer early stage bifaces, and considerably more late stage and finished bifaces, indicating that early stages of biface reduction were being carried out elsewhere (likely at a quarry), and nearly finished bifaces were being transported from that place to the Harlips and Walker Well camps. When we break-down biface types by raw material, we find that at the three sites, virtually all edged, thinned, and preform bifaces are made on local basalt and ccs, while virtually all finished and broken bifacial point bases are made on exotic obsidian. These data suggest that the Walker Well, Harlips, and Mizpah Point sites served not only as small habitation sites or "camps," but also as "retooling stations" where exhausted and broken bifacial points were replaced with new, locally manufactured bifaces.
Many archaeologists have discussed the importance of bifaces to mobile hunter-gatherers (Kelly 1988). Bifaces are multi-function tools that can be utilized as cores (for the production of flakes), knives, and projectiles. Thus, they appear prominently in technological systems of mobile humans because of their flexibility and transportability. In mobile settlement systems, then, we should expect to see high proportions of bifaces being utilized as formal cores, and low proportions of expediently produced, informal flake cores. In the Nelson Creek sites, this pattern can be seen (Figure 11). Harlips and Mizpah Point are rich in bifaces and poor in flake cores (with biface-to-core ratios of 9:1 and 8:2, respectively). Walker Well has relatively more informal flake cores than these two sites, but nonetheless displays a somewhat high biface-to-core ratio (1:1). These data suggest that the early inhabitants of the Goshute Valley preferred biface cores over expedient flake cores for the production of flakes for use as tools. That bifaces were being utilized as cores can also be seen in the fact that in the Harlips and Mizpah Point assemblages a high proportion of tools were being manufactured on bifacial thinning flakes, clearly the products of biface core technologies (Figure 12). Walker Well again does not fit this pattern; nearly 50% of the tools in this assemblage were manufactured on flakes from simple flake cores. This may be an indication that Walker Well was occupied for a longer time than the other sites, and served more as a hunting camp than retooling station.
Tool production can also provide clues about degrees of mobility. In mobile situations, tool kits should primarily consist of formal tools made in advance of use, given that mobile hunter-gatherers often need to perform specific tasks at unexpected places on the landscape. In less mobile situations, hunter-gatherers will likely produce more informal, expedient tools, "as the need arises." All three assemblages analyzed display very high proportions of formal tools (Figure 13), suggesting relatively short stays at the sites and high degrees of mobility. Certainly, formal tool production also can be the result of tool curation in response to raw material shortages, but given the fact that all of the Nelson Creek sites are situated on or near local sources of fine-grained lithic material, this most likely was not a factor at these sites.
Our analyses of the lithic assemblages from the Goshute Valley are just beginning. Additional artifacts and sites were found during the 2001 field season, and these need to be added to the analysis. More extensive obsidian sourcing studies are underway, as are sourcing studies of the presumed local basalts. Other metric variables related to tool use-life histories are being measured, and together the results of these analyses will be incorporated into a more detailed reconstruction of Paleoindian technological organization in the Goshute Valley. So far, our results suggest that the Paleoindian inhabitants of the region were highly mobile, never staying for long at these sites. This interpretation of Paleoindian settlement runs contrary to other interpretations suggesting that the early inhabitants of the Great Basin were broad-spectrum foragers who spent most of their time collecting resources in and around pluvial lake settings.
Special thanks to Bryan Hockett and the Elko District of the Bureau of Land Management for logistical support of this project. Also, thanks to Craig Skinner for conducting obsidian sourcing studies, and students from the 2000 UNLV Field School.
Bamforth, Douglas B.
1986 Technological Efficiency and Tool Curation. American Antiquity 51:38-50.
Graf, Kelly E.
2001 Paleoindian Technological Provisioning in the Western Great Basin. M.A. Thesis, Department of Anthropology, University of Nevada Las Vegas.
Kelly, Robert L.
1988 The Three Sides of a Biface. American Antiquity 53:717-734.
Parry, W. J., and Robert L. Kelly
1987 Expedient Core Technology and Sedentism. In: The Organization of Core Technology, edited by J. K. Johnson and C. A. Marrow, pp. 284-304. Westview Press, Boulder