Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Comparing Random and Nonrandom Spatial Patterns of Artifacts within Lithostratigraphic Unit 3 at Cooper’s Ferry, Idaho

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https://ir.library.oregonstate.edu/concern/graduate_thesis_or_dissertations/pc289r56q

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  • 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 Cordilleran and Laurentide Ice Sheets ~14,800 years ago. This study aims to address concerns that the cultural remains at Cooper's Ferry do not resemble cultural occupations but, instead, are a random distribution of artifacts resulting from post-depositional site transformations. In this study, post-depositional site transformations refer to the unintentional movement of artifacts by biological forces such as fauna or flora and geological processes such as sediment deposition and erosion. To test the hypothesis that the artifacts in LU3 do not resemble human occupation, the artifacts are separated into five distinct archaeological components representing different site activities and organizations. Then, spatio-temporal statistics Ripley's K; Pair Correlation Function; Cross-Correlation) and a K-means analysis test for complete spatial randomness on each component by quantifying and visualizing the extent of artifact distributions. Then, these distributions are compared to currently accepted, culturally intact archaeological assemblages to compare the spatial distribution of artifacts in similar contexts. The results show that each archaeological component contains at least one nonrandom spatial extent and, the components dating from 16,000-14,800 years ago resemble accepted, culturally intact artifact distributions. These results refute the hypothesis that the oldest recorded artifacts at Cooper's Ferry are randomly distributed and do not resemble current models of what human occupation looks like within similar site contexts. On this basis, there is no present reason to reject that Cooper's Ferry captures the oldest human occupation in North America.
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