The Surface Paleoindian Record of Northern Warner Valley, Oregon, and Its Bearing on the Temporal and Cultural Separation of Clovis and Western Stemmed Points in the Northern Great Basin

Abstract

The chronological and technological relationships between Clovis and Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) projectile points in the Great Basin are unclear. There are no dated and stratified sites containing both point types. We present data from Oregon's Warner Valley, where a rich Paleoindian surface record associated with dated landforms and differences in raw materials represented within each technology allow us to evaluate current hypotheses regarding Clovis and WST points. Our results provide little support for the hypothesis that Clovis and WST points were initially components of the same lithic toolkit in the northern Great Basin. Instead, we suggest that the technologies were separated by a narrow period of time or that two cultural traditions existed during the terminal Pleistocene in the northern Great Basin.

Keywords:

• Great Basin archaeology
• Clovis and Western Stemmed projectiles
• Paleoindians

Notes

1 Taylor et al. (1996) do not present calibrated ages for their radiocarbon dates so we used calibrated dates presented in Beck and Jones’ (2010) Table 1. Acknowledging shortcomings in current calibration curves, Waters and Stafford (2007) present multiple possible calendar age ranges for Clovis: (1) using INTCAL04, they suggest a maximum range of 13,250–12,800 cal yr BP and a minimum range of 13,125–12,925 cal yr BP; and (2) using Fairbanks et al.’s (2005) approach, they suggest a maximum range of 13,110–12,660 cal yr BP and a minimum range of 12,920–12,760 cal yr BP. Because Waters and Stafford (2007, 1124) believe that 13,125–12,925 cal yr BP “probably represents the true age of Clovis,” we reference that range. See Haynes et al. (2007) for a critique of Waters and Stafford's (2007) study.

2 Beck and Jones’ (2012a) comparisons of obsidian-hydration rim and raw-material differences between Clovis and WST points are based on source data compiled in 2002 and results originally presented by Fagan (1996). The geochemical types represented in the Dietz assemblage have recently been revised by O'Grady et al. (2012). As such, those comparisons should not be relied upon too heavily until the new sourcing data are published.

3 We used Stuiver et al.’s (2013) Calib 6.0 program for all radiocarbon date calibrations.

4 Students’ t-tests are often used to determine if two samples are significantly different; however, because the distribution of artifact-transport distances are generally skewed toward local sources, they are often not normally distributed. As such, artifact-transport distances often violate one of the assumptions of t-tests. We instead bootstrapped the means by pooling all the values for both point types, drawing samples of sizes n1 and n2, and comparing the difference between the new means. The two-tailed probability is calculated as the relative frequency of bootstrapped mean absolute differences greater than the absolute observed difference. Based on our experiences, the P values obtained using t-tests and bootstrapping are generally similar. Because traditional measures of richness may be influenced by sample size (Grayson 1984; Kintigh 1984), following Eerkens et al. (2007), we calculated it using a bootstrapping routine. We bootstrapped larger samples (using 1000 iterations) so that we could directly compare richness between point types. For example, to compare the 11 Clovis points to the 55 WST points, we drew 1000 samples of 11 points each (with replacement) from the WST point sample and averaged the number of geochemical types represented in each sample.

5 To Charlotte Beck, we owe the idea that the greatest spatial and raw-material selection differences between Clovis and WST assemblages should occur in the northern Great Basin if that is where users of both technologies initially encountered one another, who suggested it during a casual conversation and encouraged us to explore it in this paper.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Geoffrey M. Smith

Geoffrey M. Smith, Assistant Professor and Executive Director of the Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, University of Nevada, Reno, earned his PhD at the University of Wyoming 2010. His research interests include the human colonization of the Great Basin, lithic technology, and Great Basin archaeology.

Teresa A. Wriston, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Desert Research Institute, Reno, NV, earned her PhD at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2014. Her research interests include geoarchaeology and Great Basin archaeology.

Danielle C. Felling

Donald D. Pattee, Staff Archaeologist, Applied Archaeological Research, Inc., Portland, OR, earned his MA at the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2013. His research interests include lithic technology and Great Basin archaeology.

Danielle C. Felling, Research Assistant, Great Basin Paleoindian Research Unit, University of Nevada, Reno, earned his MA from the University of Nevada, Reno, in 2015. His research interests include lithic technology and Great Basin archaeology.