“Of approximately 35,000 recorded archaeological sites in Oregon, few - likely less than 25 - consist of biface caches,” he said. Such an arrangement provides exceedingly rare clues into how such tools were moved, made, and traded, Pouley noted. The find was made by a homeowner in an unspecified region of the valley in June 2015, when he was digging an irrigation ditch.Īfter finding one shaped piece of black glass, and then another, he contacted researchers from the Oregon State Historic Preservation Office to investigate.Īrchaeologists found that the unfinished tools had been stashed in a cache - a collection that had been intentionally hidden to be picked up later. “ archaeological site provides information on not only what prehistoric biface blanks brought into the Willamette Valley looked like, but also on the knappable properties of the stone, which may assist with developing hypotheses on their intended use.” “Unmodified trade items of any kind typically do not survive in the archaeological record,” said Assistant State Archaeologist John Pouley, in a press statement. The discovery of the obsidian cache has the potential to reveal crucial new insights into the economy of the Pacific Northwest, archaeologists say. Such unfinished tools were valuable trade goods in the pre-contact West, archaeologists say, where tool-makers would travel to natural quarries, collect the best rock, and fashion them into blanks, before trading the blanks to others who could finish them into bifaces, or use them to make smaller flake tools. (Photo courtesy Oregon Parks and Recreation) The blade was one of at least 15 that was uncovered in a cache, or hidden deposit, left by ancient hunter-traders. Volunteer archaeologist Megan Wonderly uncovered an obisidian biface blade in Willamette Valley, Oregon.
The craftsmen who made these artifacts had roughly hewn them into their general shape, but they hadn’t yet knapped the stones into their final, sharp-edged form. But the Willamette bifaces are extremely rare examples of a kind of tools known as blanks.
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