Great Basin of central Oregon, at Wenatchee, and along the Columbia and Snake rivers, demonstrating that the hunters lived throughout the area. In the Pacific Northwest, the Manis Mastodon site near Sequim, Washington, on the Olympic Peninsula, is a kill and butchering site of these early people. Radiocarbon dates indicate that the mastodon dismembered here was killed more than eleven thousand years ago.
From these sites and others elsewhere in the West, we know that Clovis people were highly successful mammoth and mastodon hunters who had a variety of tools suited to performing the many different activities needed for living in this wild land. Dates for these sites are uniformly between ten thousand five hundred and twelve thousand years ago. Although their mammoth-hunting contemporaries in Europe and central Asia had a well developed artistic tradition that included both portable art and the world-famous cave paintings of France and Spain, the Clovis hunters apparently left no evidence in North America that they made rock art or portable sculptures.
Windust Phase
Following the Clovis hunters’ initial immigration into the New World, a period of relative cultural stability lasted for almost three thousand years, although many of the large game animals, such as mammoth, camel, and giant bison, became extinct by ten thousand years ago. On the Columbia Plateau, projectile points show slight stylistic changes during this period. The characteristic Clovis fluted spear point gave way to a series of leaf-shaped and stemmed points called Windust. Named after a rock shelter in eastern Washington, where they were discovered, Windust points are radiocarbon dated to between approximately eight thousand and ten thousand five hundred years ago (8,500–6,000 B.C.). Living in the numerous rock shelters throughout the central Columbia Plateau, and in open campsites elsewhere, the Windust people, also nomadic hunters, preyed on deer, elk, birds, and small mammals. Salmon bones in the Five Mile Rapid site near The Dalles, dating about eighty-five hundred years ago, are evidence that salmon fishing was added near the end of this period.
Excavated materials from Windust Cave, Wildcat Canyon, Marmes Rockshelter, Lind Coulee, Five Mile Rapid, and other sites show that these early hunters had tool kits fully adapted to their seminomadic life style. Chipped stone tools included projectile points, knives, scrapers, choppers, and drills. Bone and antler artifacts included awls, eyed needles, fleshing tools, barbed points, beads, hammers, flakers, wedges, and atlatls.
Old Cordilleran Culture
After the Clovis and Windust period comes the Old Cordilleran culture (Cascade phase), dating from approximately eight thousand to sixty-five hundred years ago (6,000–4,500 B.C.) and demonstrating stylistic changes in artifact types. The characteristic bipointed Cascade spearpoint and edge-ground cobbles used for food processing best identify this period. Other chipped stone and bone tools remained essentially the same as in the Windust period; hunting and fishing continued to be the primary mode of subsistence, although ground stone tools also indicate the use of plant foods. Old Cordilleran people hunted deer, elk, antelope, mountain sheep, and birds; took salmon and fresh-water mollusks from the rivers; and collected and processed berries and tuberous plants such as camas.
2. A generalized chronology of cultures on the Columbia Plateau, with associated artifacts and rock art motifs.
The Cascade phase provides the earliest reliable evidence for the presence of art on the Columbia Plateau. In Bernard Creek Rockshelter, along the Snake River in Hells Canyon, a pigment-covered spall from the roof was recovered from a level dating to this period, and in south-central Oregon a petroglyph with abstract line designs was found partially buried by a deposit containing ash laid down sixty-seven hundred years ago by the eruption of Mount Mazama (Cannon and Ricks 1986; Randolph and Dahlstrom 1977). These two occurrences clearly indicate that Old Cordilleran people made rock art in the Pacific Northwest.
Cold Springs Phase
Following the Old Cordilleran culture comes a three-thousand-year period of significant change on the Columbia Plateau that archaeologists have named the Cold Springs phase. The earliest Cold Springs phase sites immediately postdate the eruption of Mount Mazama. Archaeological evidence throughout the three-thousand-year span (4,500–1,500 B.C.) indicates that the western United States was somewhat hotter and drier than before or since. Archaeologists refer to this climatic maximum as the Altithermal period.
On the Columbia Plateau, the Cold Springs phase is marked by the appearance of various large, side-notched, projectile points and of microblades in the northern portion of the region. Both of these technological innovations facilitated hunting and butchering. Notched projectile points could be made smaller than lanceolate points, and thus could be more securely fastened to the short spears that were used with the atlatl, the throwing stick that greatly increased a hunter’s power and range. Microblades produced significantly more usable cutting edge for each piece of stone that was flaked.
Archaeologists have characterized this period’s cultural adaptation as one of increased trade and contact among local groups, with a corresponding elaboration of tools used for catching and storing fish, and gathering, processing, and storing wild roots and other plant foods. Sinkers, gorges, hooks, and fishing spears occur in Cold Springs sites, and for plant food processing the more efficient mortar and pestle largely replace the edge-ground cobble tools of the Old Cordilleran culture. Subterranean, rock-lined ovens for roasting camas were first used during this time. Recent archaeological excavations at several sites in the region have shown that people first began to live in pit house villages along major rivers during this period. Likely these villages, and the sedentism they imply, result from increased reliance on camas gathering and fishing as the major means of subsistence.
Although, for dating purposes, examples of portable art objects similar to rock art have yet to be found in Cold Springs phase sites, some of the petroglyphs in the region quite likely date to this period. Elsewhere in the western United States rock art flourished at this time. In the Coso Range of California, thousands of petroglyphs, dated between three thousand and five thousand years ago, show atlatl-using hunters and dogs chasing mountain sheep. Rock art of approximately the same age and similar style occurs throughout the Great Basin, even into south-central Oregon. On the Great Plains to the east, in Wyoming and South Dakota, petroglyphs showing hunting scenes with men pursuing bison and deer herds are called the early hunting style and are thought to be older than three thousand years. Given the widespread occurrence throughout the western United States of pecked, hunting-style petroglyphs that were made more than three thousand years ago, it is likely that some of the mountain-sheep hunting scenes along the Columbia and Snake rivers also date to this period.
Early Riverine Phase
Beginning about thirty-five hundred years ago (1,500 B.C.) and lasting until the time of Christ is a period archaeologists call the Early Riverine phase. During this time, pit house villages became commonplace; roots, salmon, and shellfish were the primary food sources for Columbia Plateau groups. Increased use of adzes, whetstones, gouges, wedges, graving tools, and stone mauls used to make wood and bone items is evidence that wood and bone working became very important in Early Riverine villages. Corresponding to this technology is the occurrence in archaeological sites of portable art objects and the definition of localized art styles. A variety of large, corner-notched, and stemmed dart points dominate the chipped-stone tool assemblages from Early Riverine sites, indicating that hunting with spears and atlatls continued as an important activity.
Long-distance trade, begun in the earlier Cold Springs phase, became increasingly important during the Early Riverine period. Artifacts recovered from sites near The Dalles show that galena and slate were brought from west of the Cascades, obsidian was obtained from south-central Oregon, and nephrite for adze blades was brought from British Columbia. Apparently, even at this early date The Dalles area was an important trade center, as it was situated on the main access route between the Pacific Coast and the interior Columbia Plateau.
