Presenter: Jordan Pratt
Mentor: Patrick O’Grady, Museum of Natural and Cultural History
Poster: 53
Major: Anthropology
Climate change dramatically transforms the ecological zones that humans call home. Historically there have been many global warming periods, including the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, during which humans were forced to adapt to a loss of water and biotic diversity. The northern Great Basin region of eastern Oregon, provides an ideal case in which to study human adaptation to climate change. In this region, the Pleistocene-Holocene transition was followed by multiple smaller shifts in climate. The early middle Holocene of around 8,000 calendar years before present provided one of these warming periods, in which the local environment became much drier and more arid. Northern Side-notched points, a type of dart point, date to ca 7,000-4,000 cal. BP, and are one of the few pieces of material culture that have reliably been dated to the early middle Holocene in the northern Great Basin. Analysis of Northern Side-notched points collected by the Burn’s Bureau of Land Management District and UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History’s Archaeological Field School will be used to establish a more concrete means of classification for these projectile points, especially those being found in eastern Oregon. Then ArcGIS will be used to geospatially analyze the distribution of the projectile points throughout the Burn’s BLM District compared to known obsidian sources. By analyzing the distribution of projectile points and movement of materials across the landscape, insights can be made into prehistoric trade mobility and settlement patterns which may indicate human adaptions to environmental change.