Where the Crooked River Rises: A High Desert Home by Ellen Waterston

Largeseed dodder is the most troublesome weed in alfalfa fields in the high desert of Southern California. Preemergence treatment with trifluralin controls dodder early in the season, but, as the season progresses, control declines. A method was needed to control attached dodder plants that escaped preemergence treatment. Flail mowing was compared to burning with a handheld propane-fueled weed burner. These methods were equally effective for controlling attached dodder, but flail mowing was more economical, and less injurious to alfalfa yield and stand density. Burning dodder patches at the end of the season reduced dodder seed viability by an average of 99%. Thus, we propose the use of a three tiered integrated approach consisting of PRE herbicide treatment followed by flail mowing in mid-season to control escaped dodder and burning at the end of the season to reduce dodder seed.

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Eyed Bone Needles from a Younger Dryas Paleoindian Component at Tule Lake Rock Shelter, Northern California

American Antiquity ◽

10.7183/0002-7316.79.4.776 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 79 (4) ◽

pp. 776-781 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Jon M. Erlandson ◽

Douglas J. Kennett ◽

Brendan J. Culleton ◽

Ted Goebel ◽

Greg C. Nelson ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Younger Dryas ◽

Northern California ◽

Cold Event ◽

Rock Shelter ◽

Terminal Pleistocene ◽

Klamath Basin ◽

High Desert ◽

Tule Lake ◽

Basin Area ◽

Small Bone

AbstractThe geographic and chronological distribution of eyed bone needles in North American Paleoindian sites led Osborn (2014) to propose that these distinctive artifacts date primarily to the Terminal Pleistocene Younger Dryas Cold Event and were essential to making close-fitting clothes needed to survive frigid winter conditions. Our study of a museum collection from Tule Lake Rock Shelter (CA-SIS-218A) in the high Klamath Basin area supports Osborn’s argument. We present nine high-precision accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) radiocarbon assays from a 2.5 m deep cultural sequence, demonstrating that Paleoindians occupied the site primarily during the Younger Dryas. Although only about .5 m3of the Paleoindian deposits at CA-SIS-218A were excavated, fragments of four small bone needles were recovered, three of which contain whole or partial eyes. Two fragments of large mammal cortical bone from the same levels contain remnants of “groove and snap” fractures that may be related to the production of needle blanks. The bone needles from Tule Lake Rock Shelter extend the geographic range of these distinctive Paleoindian artifacts into the high desert region of Northern California.

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