scholarly journals The Radiocarbon Record of the Western Stemmed Tradition on the Southern Columbia Plateau of Western North America

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 471-494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Brown ◽  
Daniel M. Gilmour ◽  
Paul S. Solimano ◽  
Kenneth M. Ames
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Late Pleistocene ◽  
Younger Dryas ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Temporal Overlap ◽  
Western Stemmed Tradition

The late Pleistocene–early Holocene archaeological record of the interior Pacific Northwest is dominated by what has been regionally referred to as the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). While various efforts have attempted to clarify the chronology of this tradition, these have largely focused on data from the Great Basin and have been disproportionately preoccupied with establishing the beginning of the tradition due to its temporal overlap with Clovis materials. Specifically focusing on the Columbia Plateau, we apply a series of Bayesian chronological models to create concise estimates of the most likely beginning, end, and span of the WST. We then further explore its chronology by modeling its temporal span under various parameters and criteria so as to better identify places in the chronology that need further work and those that are robust regardless of data iteration. Our analysis revealed four major findings: (1) WST conservatively dates between 13,000 and 11,000 cal BP, likely extending to ~13,500 cal BP; (2) the most problematic period for WST is its termination; (3) the WST is incredibly long-lived compared to roughly contemporary Paleoindian traditions; and (4) the WST was seemingly unaffected by the onset of the Younger Dryas.

North America III: West of the Rockies

Horse Nations ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Coniferous Forest ◽  
Wild Plants ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
Pacific Northwest Coast ◽  
The North ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Eastern Washington

This chapter looks at three more regions of North America: the Columbia Plateau and adjacent areas of the Pacific Northwest Coast; the Great Basin; and California. It also focuses on three main themes: the development of new identities as many groups adapted aspects of the lifestyle and customs of those on the Plains and more coherent tribal entities emerged; raiding for captives; and raiding for horses. A fourth topic, which casts these into relief, is why some groups rejected the horse, or chose to adopt it very late in their history. The Great Basin was the first of the three areas to receive the horse. It is an arid region of desert, salt lakes, and mountains where rainfall is unpredictable and low, but increases eastward (Plate 15). Except for the Colorado along its southern edge and the headwaters in the rockies of streams draining towards the Missouri, none of its rivers reach the sea. Fremont farmers had once made a living across Utah, but by the 1600s cultivation was restricted to a few groups in the south and west. Elsewhere, the Basin’s inhabitants depended entirely on hunting and gathering, though strategies like burning enhanced the productivity of wild plants and game. Very broadly, two subsistence patterns were followed: one emphasized fish and waterfowl around wetlands, the other a more mobile, broadly based foraging economy in deserts and mountains in which pine nuts (piñons), grass seeds, rabbits, and larger game were important. Except for the Washoe near Lake Tahoe in eastern California, all the region’s historic inhabitants spoke Numic languages. Major groups included Utes in the southeast, Shoshones in the north and centre, and Paiutes in the west and southwest. To the north of the Great Basin lies the Plateau, centred on the Columbia River and its tributaries, which collectively send their waters into the Pacific Ocean (Plate 16). Coniferous forest covers its northern and eastern parts (including several ranges running parallel to but west of the Rockies), but the drier, hilly country of Oregon and eastern Washington is more steppe-like, with sagebrush common and trees more localized.

Gendered Places and Depositional Histories: Reconstructing a Menstrual Lodge in the Interior Northwest

2019 ◽  
Vol 84 (3) ◽  
pp. 400-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly Carney ◽  
Jade d'Alpoim Guedes ◽  
Kevin J. Lyons ◽  
Melissa Goodman Elgar
Keyword(s):  
Low Temperature ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Thin Section ◽  
Archaeological Record ◽  
Columbia Plateau ◽  
The North ◽  
Plant Remains ◽  
History Of ◽  
Experimental Firing ◽  
River Inundation

This project considered the deposition history of a burned structure located on the Kalispel Tribe of Indians ancestral lands at the Flying Goose site in northeastern Washington. Excavation of the structure revealed stratified deposits that do not conform to established Columbia Plateau architectural types. The small size, location, and absence of artifacts lead us to hypothesize that this site was once a non-domestic structure. We tested this hypothesis with paleoethnobotanical, bulk geoarchaeological, thin section, and experimental firing data to deduce the structural remains and the post-occupation sequence. The structure burned at a relatively low temperature, was buried soon afterward with imported rubified sediment, and was exposed to seasonal river inundation. Subsequently, a second fire consumed a unique assemblage of plant remains. Drawing on recent approaches to structured deposition and historic processes, we incorporate ethnography to argue that this structure was a menstrual lodge. These structures are common in ethnographic descriptions, although no menstrual lodges have been positively identified in the archaeological record of the North American Pacific Northwest. This interpretation is important to understanding the development and time depth of gendered practices of Interior Northwest groups.

Precise cosmogenic 10Be measurements in western North America: Support for a global Younger Dryas cooling event

Geology ◽  
1995 ◽  
Vol 23 (10) ◽  
pp. 877 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. C. Gosse ◽  
E. B. Evenson ◽  
J. Klein ◽  
B. Lawn ◽  
R. Middleton
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Younger Dryas ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Cosmogenic 10Be

scholarly journals Phylogeography of the pallid kangaroo mouse,Microdipodops pallidus: a sand-obligate endemic of the Great Basin, western North America

2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (11) ◽  
pp. 2102-2118 ◽  
Author(s):  
John C. Hafner ◽  
Nathan S. Upham ◽  
Emily Reddington ◽  
Candice W. Torres
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Western North America

North American rainfall patterns during past warm states: A proxy network-model comparison for the Last Interglacial and the mid-Holocene

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cameron de Wet ◽  
Jessica Oster ◽  
Daniel Ibarra ◽  
Bryce Belanger
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Pacific Northwest ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
North American ◽  
Last Interglacial ◽  
The North ◽  
Driving Mechanisms ◽  
Statistical Measures ◽  
Spatial Coverage ◽  
Rainfall Patterns

<p>The Last Interglacial (LIG) period (~129,000–116,000 years BP) and the mid-Holocene (MH) (~6,000 years BP) are the two most recent intervals with temperatures comparable to low emissions scenarios for the end of the 21<sup>st</sup> century. During the LIG and the MH differences in the seasonal and latitudinal distribution of insolation led to enhanced northern hemisphere high-latitude warmth relative to the pre-industrial, despite similar greenhouse gas concentrations, marking these intervals as potentially useful analogs for future change in regions like North America. Further, the inclusion of both LIG (127 ka) and MH (6 ka) experiments in the CMIP6-PMIP4 effort provides an opportunity to better understand the regional hydroclimate responses to radiative forcing during these two intervals. The dense coverage of paleoclimate proxy records for North America during the MH (N=260 sites) reveals a pattern of relative aridity in the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada and wetness in the southern Great Basin and Mexico. However, the seasonality and driving mechanisms of rainfall patterns across the continent remain poorly understood. Our understanding of terrestrial hydroclimate in North America during the LIG is more limited (N=39 sites), largely because the LIG is beyond the range of radiocarbon dating.</p><p>Here we present spatial comparisons between output from 14 PMIP4 global circulation models and LIG and MH networks of moisture-sensitive proxies compiled for the North American continent. We utilize two statistical measures of agreement – weighted Cohen’s Kappa and Gwet’s AC2 – to assess the degree of categorical agreement between moisture patterns produced by the models and the proxy networks for each time-slice. PMIP4 models produce variable precipitation anomalies relative to the pre-industrial for both the LIG and MH experiments, often disagreeing on both the sign and magnitude of precipitation changes across much of North America. The models showing the best agreement with the proxy network are similar but not identical for the two measures, with Gwet’s AC2 values tending to be larger than Cohen’s Kappa values for all models. This pattern is enhanced for the much larger MH proxy network and is likely related to the fact that Gwet’s AC2 is a more predictable statistic in the presence of high agreement. Overall agreement is lower for the mid-Holocene than for the LIG, reflecting smaller MH rainfall anomalies in the models. The models with the highest agreement scores during the LIG produce aridity in the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Northwest and wetness in Alaska, the Yukon, the Great Basin, and parts of the Mid-West and Eastern US, although spatial coverage of the proxies in these latter two regions is poor. The models with the highest agreement score for the mid-Holocene tend to produce aridity across Canada and the northern US with dry conditions extending down the US Pacific coast and increased wetness in the American Southeast and across the North American Monsoon region. Our analyses help elucidate the driving mechanisms of rainfall patterns during past warm states and can inform which models may be the most useful for predictions of near-future hydroclimate change across North America.</p>

scholarly journals The Role of Basketry in Early Holocene Small Seed Exploitation: Implications of a Ca. 9,000 Year-Old Basket from Cowboy Cave, Utah

2008 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Phil R. Geib ◽  
Edward A. Jolie
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Processing Technique ◽  
Early Holocene ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Seed Processing ◽  
Small Seed ◽  
Food Exploitation ◽  
The Continuum

Despite ranking at the low end of the continuum in net caloric benefit relative to other foods, small seeds assumed great dietary importance in many parts of the world, including western North America. In a series of publications, Adovasio (1970a, 1974, 1980, 1986) argued that coiled basketry technology was invented in the eastern Great Basin during the early Holocene as a specialized food-processing technique. Coiled baskets are indeed useful for collecting and processing seeds, but it does not necessarily follow that they were originally designed for this purpose. A whole basket recently discovered at Cowboy Cave in southeastern Utah returned an AMS radiocarbon assay of 7960 ± 50 B.P., making it currently the earliest directly dated coiled basket from the Americas. This basket is not a parching tray and likely had nothing to do with harvesting seeds. We discuss the implications of this find with regard to tracking the temporal spread of coiled basketry technology in western North America and the role of coiled and twined forms in the initiation of small seed exploitation. Coiled and twined baskets for small seed processing may result from reconfiguration of existing technologies to create novel forms suited to a new food exploitation strategy.

Impact of Alien Plants on Grant Basin Rangelands

1996 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 384-391 ◽  
Author(s):  
James A. Young ◽  
William S. Longland
Keyword(s):  
North America ◽  
Great Basin ◽  
Alien Plants ◽  
Western North America ◽  
Biological Functions ◽  
Annual Species ◽  
Weed Species ◽  
Model Ecosystem ◽  
Alien Weed ◽  
The Impact

Our purpose is to discuss the impact of alien plants on rangeland ecosystems of the Great Basin in terms of their effects on biological functions. The sagebrush/bunchgrass ranges of western North America are used as a model ecosystem for the impact of alien plants. Alien weed species have been introduced in successive waves, with the success of each new introduction dependent on how well adapted to the environment and how competitive the new weed is with those previously introduced. Annual species have been successful across extensive areas of Great Basin rangelands. Biennial and short- and long-lived perennial introductions have been restricted to much more specific habitats. Alien plants impact rangelands through stand renewal and successional processes. Alien weeds can cause such processes to be accelerated and/or truncated depending on the species and range site.

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.

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