Event review: Introduction to Paleoamerican Lithic Technology at the University of Oregon Archaeological Field School, Rimrock Draw Rockshelter, Oregon, U.S.A.
1. Museum of Natural and Cultural History, University of
Oregon. 1224 University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, 97403-1224 USA. Email: pogrady@uoregon.edu
2. Rondeau Archaeological. 251 Rockmont Circle, Sacramento, CA, 95835, USA.
Email: mikerondo@yahoo.com
Over the past five years, the University of Oregon Archaeological Field School has hosted a Paleoamerican lithic technology workshop taught by Michael F. Rondeau, a noted lithics expert specializing in western North American fluted projectile points and their related technology. The course has been taught at the field camp adjacent to Rimrock Draw Rockshelter (35HA3855), a Paleoamerican site dominated by Western Stemmed projectile points. The site also produces artifacts associated with fluted point lithic reduction practices. The two-day workshop is traditionally offered during the first week of the six-week field school, tailored for our students who require a good working knowledge of late Pleistocene-early Holocene lithic attributes to better understand the significance of their finds. The workshop provided training in basic lithic technology which can cover such subjects as flake attributes, cobble core types, percussion blade or microblade manufacture, bipolar percussion, percussion biface flaking, flaked stone tool types, impact damage and repair, and use wear and edge damage. The course also covered the diagnostic qualities of overshot flaking techniques and their relationship to biface production and consequent chipping waste. Evidence of overshot reduction techniques has been found regularly in the course of our excavations and as a result of surface surveys. Modules incorporated into the program have also focused specifically on Clovis technological attributes. Depending on student enrollment, serious students and researchers who were not enrolled in the field school have been considered specifically for this workshop.
One unique aspect of the workshop has been the post-instruction site surveys, which have been instrumental in boosting Paleoamerican artifact counts at the site. After each full day of training in the lab setting, Rondeau led students to the nearby rockshelter where they have had the opportunity to explore the dense surface scatter surrounding it for examples of the technological variants they learned about during the workshop. In the past, students have identified and collected Parman (Types 1 and 2), Haskett, Windust, Black Rock Concave Base, Cody, and Great Basin Transverse points. In addition, overshot flakes, bifaces with overshot flake scars, fluted bifaces and an occasional fluting flake were recovered from a concentration near the site. The opportunity to explore a Paleoamerican site and contribute to its significance with each new find has always had a unanimous appeal among the students, cementing newly learned skills and preparing them for artifacts they were to encounter within the rockshelter deposits during the weeks ahead.
The University of Oregon Archaeological Field School always begins in the last week of June and runs through July. Rondeau’s workshop takes place during the first week and frequently requires two sessions to keep class sizes manageable and accommodate the high numbers of students this field school attracts. For more information on past and future workshops, please contact Patrick O’Grady at pogrady@uoregon.edu, or visit our website at http://pages.uoregon.edu/ftrock/ for additional details about the lithic workshop and other course offerings.
Figure 1. Michael Rondeau instructing students on flake attribute analysis. (Photo by Patrick O’Grady.)
Figure 2. A sampling of the diagnostic projectile points recovered through surface collections and excavation at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter. (Photo by Katrina Lancaster.)