“Paisley Caves is just a perfect situation, because there they found many, many samples. “The comparison with the Paisley Caves is just kind of inevitable,” Baker said. While those finds, too, remain controversial, both men acknowledge that the Paisley Cave samples gave scientists more to work with than what they have so far at Rimrock Draw.
Sites around the rockshelter have turned up other evidence of early human occupation, including these obsidian stone points, flakes, and hearths dating back as much as 12,000 years. “My take is that older points tend to be made of more often than obsidian.”įor archaeologists, this new discovery readily invites comparison with a similar find made nearby - at Oregon’s Paisley Caves, just 200 kilometers away, where in 2008 animal bones and human feces were found that dated to about 14,300 years ago. “It is much less common in eastern Oregon sites than obsidian,” he said of the agate. O’Grady agreed that the use of agate is unusual for the region, and potentially significant. “They’re fascinated with, how did this tool get here? Where did it come from? What did they use it for?”
“In that area, there’s a lot of obsidian, but they’d never seen this material in that area before. “It’s this bright orange agate,” Baker said. The archaeologists were also struck by the tool’s unusual material, he added. So, there are a couple of theories, but they think this is kind of a multi-purpose tool.” “One edge, they believe, was used for scraping animal hide, and another side that’s been worn down over the years they believe was used for carving wood or bone. “When they found it, they kind of joked that it was like an ancient swiss army knife,” he said. Helen’s tephra, in dense sandy clay sediment,” O’Grady said.īaker, of the BLM, said researchers quickly identified the object as a tool. “We found the stone tool 20 centimeters under the Mount St. (Courtesy University of Oregon Archaeological Field School)īeneath the debris, the team found large fragments of tooth enamel from an extinct species of camel.Īnd beneath those, they hit a sudden, even layer of volcanic ash and rock, called tephra.Įxperts from Washington State University analyzed the ash, and were able not only to radiocarbon date it to about 15,800 years ago, but were also able to isolate its source: Washington’s Mount St. Now sagebrush country, the terrain around Rimrock Draw Rockshelter was likely much wetter when the artifacts found there were originally used. “We wanted to break that material up and clear a path so we could continue excavating to the bedrock underneath.” “Our excavation units had reached a jumbled layer of rockfall that appeared to be the result of a collapse of portions of the rockshelter face,” O’Grady said in an interview. Patrick O’Grady of the University of Oregon, who has been leading the excavations, said that the discovery came about after his field school uncovered debris from an ancient rockfall near the cave. “Getting this bison residue further corroborated the idea that it was a tool, likely used for butchering,” Baker said.ĭr. The fact that it was found beneath - and was therefore presumably older than - the layer of ancient ash was “fascinating” in itself, Baker said.īut last week, a chemical analysis of the artifact revealed that it also contained traces of proteins from bison, confirming that it had been used as a tool. The hand-sized tool was first unearthed in 2012 by the University of Oregon’s archaeology field school, at a site in south-central Oregon known as Rimrock Draw Rockshelter, on BLM land. (Photo courtesy University of Oregon Archaeological Field School)
This orange agate stone tool, found buried beneath a layer of 15,800-year-old volcanic ash, may be the oldest artifact yet found in western North America, archaeologists say. “But of course there’s more research to do.” Bureau of Land Management, in an interview. “This is really exciting,” said Stephen Baker, spokesman for the Oregon office of the U.S.
If its age is confirmed, the tool would be nearly 3,000 years older than the widespread artifacts of the Clovis culture, once thought to be the continent’s earliest inhabitants. But this artifact was found even deeper in the region’s sandy clay, beneath a layer of volcanic ash that experts have found to be 15,800 years old.
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