Thesis
Lithic raw material procurement and the technological organization of Olympic Peninsula peoples
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
2010
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103575
Abstract
While the Olympic Peninsula’s littoral zone has a long, rich history of archaeological research, it wasn’t until the 1980s that survey expanded into the mountainous interior. Today, over 75% of all recorded sites lie deep in the Olympic Peninsula’s interior, yet exceptionally little is known about their role in prehistory. As archaeologists move out of the identification phase, what has become abundantly clear is the overwhelming dominance of a single lithic raw material type, dacite, which has been argued to be an exotic raw material transported by human agents. This thesis will present a combination of evidence derived from x-ray florescence (XRF) as well as lithic technological organization to show that the prehistoric peoples of the Olympic Peninsula procured dacite from a local secondary source. As was suggested by previous archaeologists, it is first hypothesized that the favored toolstone, dacite, is available to collect from glacial deposits on the northern Olympic Peninsula. Cobbles from glacial deposits are characterized through XRF and the results are compared against archaeological specimens to show that favored raw material type, Watts Point dacite, can be derived from a secondary local source. In addition, while radiocarbon dates from lithic scatters are scarce, XRF results from a Clovis point show that the same Watts Point dacite material was used for the last 12,000 years. A study of the lithic technological organization shows that the prehistoric stone tool makers did not necessarily conserve the use of Watts Point dacite, a practice that would occur if the raw material had been procured from its primary source in British Columbia. Indicators of increasing intensity of use including amount of dorsal cortex, dorsal flake count, and artifact size showed little to no changes when comparing sites where the raw material is available at hand versus those where travel was necessary to collect. Artifact attributes were analyzed in order to gain insight into the type of objective piece carried on the stone tool maker. Research from this thesis helps to create a foundation for further, more detailed, raw material characterization studies on the Olympic Peninsula and on the greater Northwest Coast.
Metrics
35 File views/ downloads
43 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Lithic raw material procurement and the technological organization of Olympic Peninsula peoples
- Creators
- Kimberly Catherine Kwarsick
- Contributors
- William Andrefsky (Degree Supervisor)
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- Anthropology, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; Pullman, Wash. :
- Identifiers
- 99900525197601842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis