MORPHOMETRIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL ATTRIBUTES OF WESTERN STEMMED TRADITION PROJECTILE POINTS REVEALED IN A SECOND ARTIFACT CACHE FROM THE COOPER'S FERRY SITE, IDAHO

2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 536-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren G. Davis ◽  
Daniel W. Bean ◽  
Alexander J. Nyers
Keyword(s):  
Great Plains ◽  
Lithic Technology ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
American Southwest ◽  
Lithic Analysis ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Lithic Assemblages ◽  
Lithic Reduction ◽  
Digital Scanning ◽  
Western Stemmed Tradition

In western North America, the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) is contemporaneous with, but technologically different from, the Clovis Paleoindian Tradition as initially defined from the Great Plains and American Southwest. The foundational principles of WST lithic technology have not been as clearly delineated as those of their fluted and unfluted Paleoindian Tradition technological counterparts, largely due to the paucity of extensive WST lithic assemblages recovered from intact buried contexts. Recent excavations at the Cooper's Ferry site, located in western Idaho, revealed a stratified series of WST components spanning the late Pleistocene to early Holocene periods. The study of these components offers a unique opportunity to evaluate current expectations about WST lithic technology. Here, we describe the discovery, context, and contents of a new cache of 14 WST projectile points from the Cooper's Ferry site that provide clues about WST lithic reduction patterns and the design of early stemmed projectile points. We employ several novel methods of lithic analysis based on three-dimensional digital scanning technology and geometric morphometry and, in doing so, seek to demonstrate new ways of studying stone tools through the use of next-generation methods of lithic analysis applied to exploring the poorly known technological details of the WST.

Context, Provenance and Technology of a Western Stemmed Tradition Artifact Cache from the Cooper’s Ferry Site, Idaho

2014 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 596-615 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loren G. Davis ◽  
Alex J. Nyers ◽  
Samuel C. Willis
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Raw Material ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Before Present ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Salmon River ◽  
Material Sources ◽  
Lithic Reduction ◽  
Age Estimates ◽  
Western Stemmed Tradition

AbstractThe discovery of an artifact cache containing Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) projectile points in a clearly defined pit feature at the Cooper’s Ferry site offers a unique perspective on early lithic technology and logistical organization in western North America. A description and analysis of the cache feature reveals several new insights, including: a rocky cairn capped the surface of the pit feature; some of the artifacts were made from cryptocrystalline silicates found 16 km away; debitage analysis, including aggregate and attribute based measures, identified two distinct lithic reduction stages present in the cache; new radiocarbon assays suggest that the cache is probably not early Holocene in age and may date to associated age estimates of 11,410–11,370 radiocarbon years before present (B.P.). Unlike Clovis caches, the Pit Feature A2 cache at Cooper’s Ferry appears to be a generalized toolkit that was probably placed at the site for future use. If the 11,410–11,370 radiocarbon years B.P. assays date the creation of the Pit Feature A2 cache, then its creators were probably not pioneers in the lower Salmon River canyon but possessed local knowledge about the landscape and raw material sources; these patterns suggest greater time depth for WST foragers.

scholarly journals The Technological Diversity of Lithic Industries in Eastern South America during the Late Pleistocene-Holocene Transition

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Carlos Moreno De Sousa
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Northeastern Brazil ◽  
Southern Brazil ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Technological Diversity ◽  
Lithic Assemblages ◽  
Adjacent Part ◽  
Archaeological Cultures

Brazilian archaeological literature has insisted for decades upon associating hunter-gatherer sites dated to the Pleistocene–Holocene transition either to the Itaparica tradition, if located in central or northeastern Brazil, or to the Umbu tradition and Humaitá tradition, if located in southern Brazil, Uruguay, or any other adjacent part of Paraguay and Argentina. These associations have been based almost entirely on the presence or absence of lesmas and “projectile points,” regardless of their morphological and technological features. In the Uruguayan archaeological literature, three other cultures are recognised: Fell industry, Catalanense industry, and Tigre tradition, all in the Uruguayan region. However, the last 10 years of systematic studies on the lithic assemblages from these sites have shown that Paleoindian societies from Eastern South America are more culturally diverse than expected and that previously defined archaeological cultures present several issues in their definition, suggesting that many of these “traditions” are not valid and should no longer be used. Instead, new lithic industries and archaeological cultures should be defined only when cultural patterns are observable through systematic analyses.

Advances in Documentation, Digital Curation, Virtual Exhibition, and a Test of 3D Geometric Morphometrics

2014 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 64-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Z. Selden ◽  
Timothy K. Perttula ◽  
Michael J. O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
Morphometric Analysis ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Digital Curation ◽  
Ceramic Vessel ◽  
Archaeological Materials ◽  
Digital Scanning ◽  
3D Documentation ◽  
Range Of Variation

AbstractThree-dimensional (3D) digital scanning of archaeological materials is typically used as a tool for artifact documentation. With the permission of the Caddo Nation of Oklahoma, 3D documentation of Caddo funerary vessels from the Vanderpool site (41SM77) was conducted with the initial goal of ensuring that these data would be publicly available for future research long after the vessels were repatriated. A digital infrastructure was created to archive and disseminate the resultant 3D datasets, ensuring that they would be accessible by both researchers and the general public (CRHR 2014a). However, 3D imagery can be used for much more than documentation. To illustrate this, these data were utilized in a 3D morphometric analysis of the intact and reconstructed vessels to explore the range of variation that occurs in ceramic vessel shape and its potential contribution to the local ceramic taxonomy. Results of the 3D morphometric analysis demonstrate the potential for substantive analytical gains in discussions of temporal resolution and ceramic technological organization in the ancestral Caddo region.

scholarly journals Convection Initiation Caused by Heterogeneous Low-Level Jets over the Great Plains

2018 ◽  
Vol 146 (8) ◽  
pp. 2615-2637 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua G. Gebauer ◽  
Alan Shapiro ◽  
Evgeni Fedorovich ◽  
Petra Klein
Keyword(s):  
Great Plains ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Warm Season ◽  
The United States ◽  
Dimensional Structure ◽  
Nonuniform Heating ◽  
Low Level ◽  
Low Level Jets ◽  
Convection Initiation ◽  
Capping Inversion

AbstractObservations from three nights of the Plains Elevated Convection at Night (PECAN) field campaign were used in conjunction with Rapid Refresh model forecasts to find the cause of north–south lines of convection, which initiated away from obvious surface boundaries. Such pristine convection initiation (CI) is relatively common during the warm season over the Great Plains of the United States. The observations and model forecasts revealed that all three nights had horizontally heterogeneous and veering-with-height low-level jets (LLJs) of nonuniform depth. The veering and heterogeneity were associated with convergence at the top-eastern edge of the LLJ, where moisture advection was also occurring. As time progressed, this upper region became saturated and, due to its placement above the capping inversion, formed moist absolutely unstable layers, from which the convergence helped initiate elevated convection. The structure of the LLJs on the CI nights was likely influenced by nonuniform heating across the sloped terrain, which led to the uneven LLJ depth and contributed toward the wind veering with height through the creation of horizontal buoyancy gradients. These three CI events highlight the importance of assessing the full three-dimensional structure of the LLJ when forecasting nocturnal convection over the Great Plains.

scholarly journals Origins and spread of fluted-point technology in the Canadian Ice-Free Corridor and eastern Beringia

2018 ◽  
Vol 115 (16) ◽  
pp. 4116-4121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heather L. Smith ◽  
Ted Goebel
Keyword(s):  
Great Plains ◽  
Western Hemisphere ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
Clear Understanding ◽  
Eastern United States ◽  
Evolutionary Patterns ◽  
Geometric Morphometric ◽  
Projectile Points ◽  
Proximate Source ◽  
Fluted Points

Fluted projectile points have long been recognized as the archaeological signature of early humans dispersing throughout the Western Hemisphere; however, we still lack a clear understanding of their appearance in the interior “Ice-Free Corridor” of western Canada and eastern Beringia. To solve this problem, we conducted a geometric morphometric shape analysis and a phylogenetic analysis of technological traits on fluted points from the archaeological records of northern Alaska and Yukon, in combination with artifacts from further south in Canada, the Great Plains, and eastern United States to investigate the plausibility of historical relatedness and evolutionary patterns in the spread of fluted-point technology in the latest Pleistocene and earliest Holocene. Results link morphologies and technologies of Clovis, certain western Canadian, and northern fluted points, suggesting that fluting technology arrived in the Arctic from a proximate source in the interior Ice-Free Corridor and ultimately from the earliest populations in temperate North America, complementing new genomic models explaining the peopling of the Americas.

scholarly journals Simulation Informed CAD for 3D Nanoprinting

Micromachines ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason D. Fowlkes ◽  
Robert Winkler ◽  
Eva Mutunga ◽  
Philip D. Rack ◽  
Harald Plank
Keyword(s):  
Analytical Model ◽  
Computer Aided Design ◽  
Critical Mass ◽  
Three Dimensional ◽  
Three Dimensional Objects ◽  
Non Linear ◽  
Out Of Plane ◽  
Digital Scanning ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Bending Nanowires

A promising 3D nanoprinting method, used to deposit nanoscale mesh style objects, is prone to non-linear distortions which limits the complexity and variety of deposit geometries. The method, focused electron beam-induced deposition (FEBID), uses a nanoscale electron probe for continuous dissociation of surface adsorbed precursor molecules which drives highly localized deposition. Three dimensional objects are deposited using a 2D digital scanning pattern—the digital beam speed controls deposition into the third, or out-of-plane dimension. Multiple computer-aided design (CAD) programs exist for FEBID mesh object definition but rely on the definition of nodes and interconnecting linear nanowires. Thus, a method is needed to prevent non-linear/bending nanowires for accurate geometric synthesis. An analytical model is derived based on simulation results, calibrated using real experiments, to ensure linear nanowire deposition to compensate for implicit beam heating that takes place during FEBID. The model subsequently compensates and informs the exposure file containing the pixel-by-pixel scanning instructions, ensuring nanowire linearity by appropriately adjusting the patterning beam speeds. The derivation of the model is presented, based on a critical mass balance revealed by simulations and the strategy used to integrate the physics-based analytical model into an existing 3D nanoprinting CAD program is overviewed.

Regional Variability in Lithic Miniaturization and the Organization of Technology in Late Glacial Southern Africa (~18-11 kcal BP)

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marika Low ◽  
Justin Pargeter
Keyword(s):  
Southern Africa ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Late Glacial ◽  
Regional Variability ◽  
Local Conditions ◽  
Lithic Assemblages ◽  
Lithic Reduction ◽  
Organization Of Technology ◽  
Controlled Fracture ◽  
Technological Study

Abstract Miniaturized stone tools made by controlled fracture are reported from nearly every continent where archaeologists have systematically looked for them. While similarities in technology are acknowledged between regions, few detailed inter-regional comparative studies have been conducted. Our paper addresses this gap, presenting results of a comparative lithic technological study between Klipfonteinrand and Sehonghong – two large rock shelters in southern Africa. Both sites contain Late Glacial (~18-11 kcal BP) lithic assemblages, though they are located in regions with different geologies, climates and environments. Results demonstrate that lithic miniaturization manifests differently in these different regions. Both assemblages provide evidence for small blade production, though key differences exist in terms of the specific technological composition of this evidence, the raw materials selected, the role played by bipolar reduction and the manner in which lithic reduction was organized. Patterned variability of this nature demonstrates that humans deployed miniaturized technologies strategically in relation to local conditions.

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