Laura L. Scheiber

OBSIDIAN SOURCE USE IN THE GREATER YELLOWSTONE AREA, WYOMING BASIN, AND CENTRAL ROCKY MOUNTAINS

Using x-ray fluorescence (XRF) analysis from nearly 2,300 sourced obsidian artifacts in western Wyoming, southwestern Montana, and eastern Idaho, we demonstrate regional diachronic changes in access to and preference for particular obsidian sources throughout the West. We focus on both (I) long-term patterns of obsidian use that may inform us about the timing of precontact migrations of Numic (Shoshone) speakers into the Rocky Mountains and (2) the extent to which later contact among Native inhabitants and European immigrants was a mechanism for reducing elements of precontact mobility and exchange in the postcontact era. We view indigenous responses to contact in the study area as an active, strategic process with measurable material consequences. Despite a well-documented increase in mobility among local Native groups as a result of the introduction of the horse, our study demonstrates a restriction and reduction in Historic period source use in western Wyoming. We propose that changes in obsidian source use are a reflection of ethnogenesis and development of ethnographic bands as a response to culture contact among indigenous inhabitants and with Europeans.

Domestic campsites and cyber landscapes in the Rocky Mountains

The dwellings of prehistoric Native North Americans are amongst the hardest archaeological structures to find and characterise – they leave only a shallow ring of stones. But the authors show that, when recorded to modern levels of precision, these tipi-stances contain a wealth of information. The stone rings are mapped in detail by hand, and located by GPS, their hearths are located by fluxgate survey and sampled for radiocarbon dating, and the results displayed in layered maps on GIS. Different social groups had different floor plans, so that, even where artefacts are missing, the movement of peoples can be dated and mapped. The results also bring to the fore the great cultural value of these, the dominant monument types of Bighorn Canyon National Recreational Area.

The Donovan Site (5LO204): An Upper Republican Animal Processing Camp on the High Plains

Abstract The Donovan site (5LO204) is a Late Prehistoric animal processing campsite located in northeastern Colorado. The site has been extensively excavated by the University of Wyoming High Plains Archaeology Project since 1992. Containing at least 11 stratified occupation surfaces dating between about A.D. 1000 and 1300, Donovan represents a frequently visited western expansion of the Upper Republican phase of the Central Plains tradition. Material culture includes thousands of fragmented bison bones, lithic debitage, diagnostic ceramics, side-notched projectile points, and bifacial knives. Long thought to represent the activities of either indigenous High Plains occupants or central Plains hunting parties, this site and others on the western High Plains provide evidence for the complex interactions between foraging and farming communities on the Plains.