Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Searching for Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene-age Deposits in the Paleo-Tahkenitch Stream Basin: A Geoarchaeological Investigation in Douglas County, Oregon

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/bv73c7821

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  • 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 sites. Geoarchaeological investigations utilizing radiocarbon dating and Geoprobe coring to characterize and date the stratigraphy in coastal stream basins on the Oregon coast have proven successful in identifying where late Pleistocene and early Holocene-age deposits carrying the potential to contain early sites are held within these landscapes. While these deposits are rarely identified in coastal stream basins at a depth that can be tested using traditional archaeological excavation methods, geoarchaeological investigations at the Tahkenitch Landing site (35DO130) have managed to identify late Pleistocene-age deposits that do not share these barriers to access. This study builds upon previous work carried out at Tahkenitch Landing to identify late Pleistocene and early Holocene-age deposits, or ‘dirt-of-the-right-age’ (DORA), by providing a thorough characterization of the stratigraphy in a landform directly south of the original Tahkenitch Landing site (35DO130). While DORA was not directly dated within this new study area, the combination of Geoprobe coring and intensive radiocarbon dating at the Crown Zellerbach study area did manage to identify an 80 cm thick section of the stratigraphy where DORA is most likely to be located if it is in fact preserved at this location. Furthermore, these deposits are consistently located above the modern water table at a depth that can be accessed using traditional archaeological excavation methods, thus making it one of a very small number of practical targets for DORA on the Oregon coast located in a lowland setting.
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