Excavations at the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) revealed a long record of repeated human occupation extending from the late Pleistocene into the early Holocene (~16,000-10,000 cal BP) and have yielded unique insights into the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST), which includes. Several studies have focused on WST pit features encountered at...
Coastal stream basins are of great importance to efforts aimed at refining our understanding of the earliest populations that inhabited the ancient Oregon coast. However, geomorphic responses to post-glacial sea level rise in these settings has produced depositional environments that destroy or deeply bury late Pleistocene and early Holocene-age archaeological...
Excavation of pit feature 110 (F110) at the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) in central Idaho provides a unique snapshot of the domestic lifeways associated with the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST). Analysis was conducted of the F110 assemblage to better understand the function F110 served. The contents of F110 include Canis...
Textiles (including basketry, cordage, woven, knotted, or plaited products) make up a considerable portion of the perishable archaeological record in dry caves of the northern Great Basin region, much of which is created from plants and plant fibers. The archaeological study of precontact textiles greatly informs our understanding of how...
Advances in technology such as 3D digital scanning and spatial analysis software have provided archaeologists with novel data. Specifically, these methods increase the researcher's ability to measure artifact morphology and past networks of cultural transmission, to potentially track the movement of past peoples and ideas through space and time. This...
Archaeological investigations at the Cooper's Ferry site in Western Idaho have recovered cultural remains dating to 16,000 years ago, suggesting the oldest human occupation recorded in North America. However, many archaeologists have argued the initial peopling of North America occurred no earlier than the opening of an ice-free corridor between...
The archaeological record of the First Americans is known almost exclusively from interior sites located away from coastal margins. While archaeologists hypothesize that early peoples initially migrated into the Americas along the Pacific coast, environmental changes associated with postglacial sea level rise may have destroyed or obscured such early sites....
Investigations of the Pleistocene peopling of the New World require archaeologists to establish an understanding of the paleoenvironmental conditions that would have affected early foraging peoples. Other studies have focused on the timing and route of migration and the peopling of the Americas. This project contributes to the body of...
The incorporation of experimental archaeology into the study of lithic technologies has provided archaeologists with a framework to understand past behaviors. The analysis of stone tools has the potential to reveal morphologic characteristics unique to the manufacture, use, and maintenance of stone tools. The implementation of controlled experiments to identify...
Excavation of a pit feature designated as Feature 59 (F59) from the Cooper’s Ferry site (10IH73) in western Idaho offers a unique opportunity to explore more about the Western Stemmed Tradition (WST) and how people used pits in the Far West. In this thesis, an analysis is conducted on the...