Western Stemmed Tradition Settlement–Subsistence and Lithic Technological Organization in the Catnip Creek Delta, Guano Valley, Oregon, USA

ABSTRACT

Cave and rockshelter sites have long been the cornerstone of Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) research in the northwestern Great Basin; however, these sites likely offer a narrow view of Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene lifeways. Open-air sites dominate the WST record and are critical to our understanding of WST settlement–subsistence practices and technological organization. I present the results of a lithic technological, source provenance, and spatial analysis of the Catnip Creek Delta (CCD) Locality, Guano Valley, OR. The CCD Locality contains one of the densest concentrations of Paleoindian artifacts in the region. My results indicate that the CCD Locality WST assemblage is likely a product of numerous short-term occupations by residentially mobile groups who primarily used the location to replenish their lithic toolkit and as a hunting location.

KEYWORDS:

• Great Basin
• Western Stemmed Tradition
• lithic analysis
• toolstone sourcing
• settlement–subsistence strategies

Acknowledgements

I thank the Northern Paiute and Klamath Tribes for facilitating this research on their traditional lands. Bill Cannon (BLM) made this research possible and our time in the “Big Empty” considerably more comfortable. Anan Raymond (USFWS) helped us navigate the permitting process. Ken Adams, Sophia Jamaldin, Nicole George, Kristina Wiggins, Katelyn Mohr, David Harvey, Danielle Felling, Sara Sturtz, and Richard Rosencrance made valuable contributions to this project in the field and the lab. Craig Skinner and Alex Nyers characterized some artifacts for this study and offered generous assistance as we developed our toolstone sourcing methodology. I especially thank my advisor, Geoff Smith, for taking me to Guano Valley and supporting me throughout this entire process. Funding for this study was provided by the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, a Jonathan O. Davis Scholarship, the Lander Endowment of the Desert Research Institute, Amateur Archaeologists of Northern Nevada, and the Russel J. and a Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Year Fellowship. Feedback from Chris Morgan, D. Craig Young, Chris Jazwa, Geoff Smith, and several anonymous reviewers improved the quality of this manuscript. Any errors are my own.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The Delta model uses a 40-kV Rhodium (Rh) anode X-Ray tube and Olympus Innov-X Systems software. We employed the fundamental parameters calibration provided by the Innov-X software and ran our device using the two-beam (40 and 10 kV) GeoChem mode at 60 s per beam. To build our comparative collection, we initially characterized nearly 1000 previously sourced artifacts analyzed by the NWROSL between 2004 and 2013. Over 60 geochemically distinct obsidian/FGV types from the northwestern Great Basin are represented in that sample. Additionally, over the last 5 years we visited known obsidian and FGV source locations around the northwestern Great Basin to collect geologic samples to build a more robust comparative collection. Our comparative collection currently contains over 90 geochemically distinct obsidian and FGV types from our study area. To make source assignments, we initially analyzed ratios (in parts per million) of the Mid-Z elements strontium (Sr), zirconium (Zr), niobium (Nb), yttrium (Y), and rubidium (Rb) using bivariate scatterplots with R software. With the growth of our comparative collection, we have transitioned to statistically assigning all sources using discriminant function analysis in the FORDISC program (Pilloud et al. 2017). To assess the accuracy of our in-house assignments using these methods, we submitted 43 previously uncharacterized artifacts from the Parman localities (Smith 2007) to the NWROSL for geochemical characterization. Our source assignments of those artifacts matched the NWROSL’s source assignments perfectly, indicating that our results are very accurate.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit; Lander Endowment of the Desert Research Institute; Russel J. and a Dorothy S. Bilinski Dissertation Year Fellowship; Amateur Archaeologists of Northern Nevada; Jonathan O. Davis Scholarship.

Notes on contributors

Derek J. Reaux

Derek J. Reaux is a recent PhD graduate from the University of Nevada, Reno. He earned his BA in anthropology at the University of Kentucky in 2014. His research interests include the peopling of the Americas, lithic technology, and Great Basin archaeology.