Archaeological Report
Harney County Oregon, Range Seeding Projects

This report presents a body of data collected from observations of a variety of people while surveying widespread tracts of large acreage. It is somewhat gratifying that the disparate collection of site reports could yield any data at all. Unfortunately, the lack of cohesion and absence of a goal-oriented research design preclude drawing any meaningful conclusions from the data. There are a number of suggestive observations made in the presentation of this information that may lead to useful avenues of research, but the data itself is not conclusive.

It is possible to compare this data to existing models however, to see if our information supports or contradicts them. There are not many models applicable to this area, but we will look at Fagan's (1974), Pettigrew's (1979), and Corliss' (1972) analyses in relation to our data.

The sites investigated by Fagan were divided into high elevation sites (5100-6000 feet) and low elevation sites (4200-4300 feet), and he interprets his data as supportive of Bedwell's hypothesis of a shift in occupation toward upland sites during the Altithermal. As discussed earlier in this report, the data presented by Fagan is based on too small of a sample to carry much weight. On the other hand, the data from these seeding projects is based on a relatively large sample, but unfortunately a sample that is seriously biased. Both Fagan and Bedwell use 5,000 feet in elevation as the approximte dividing line between low and high elevation sites in Southeast Oregon; all of the sites identified in these seeding projects lie below 5,000 feet, for the simple reason that all of the areas surveyed were below 5,000 feet in elevation. We would expect relatively few sites Altithermal in age to occur in the seeding areas, though as of yet we have no comparable data from higher elevations.

Fagan includes both Northern Side-notched and certain Elko-type points as chronological indicators of Altithermal occupation. Large corner-notched points (presumably Elko types) are also found in his post-Altithermal occupations (see Fagan, 1974:93), but it isn't clear if these two types are stylistically different or if they were assigned to different periods on the base of stratigraphic evidence. In the chronology developed by Hauck and Weder (1978) for this region, only Northern Side-notched are considered diagnostic of the time period corresponding to the Altithermal (see Table 1).

Of the 82 sites identified during the seeding surveys that contained diagnostic projectile points, 24 or 29% included Northern Side-notched points. Intuitively, this seems to be an extremely high proportion for an area that was not supposed to be heavily occupied during those times, but the evidence must be considered as only suggestive until comparative data for sites over 5,000 feet in elevation become available.

As discussed earlier, there are a number of internal inconsistencies and problems with Pettigrew's (1979) Stinkingwater Pass report. One of the questionable assumptions made by Pettigrew was that intensity of occupation could be estimated from the relative frequency of projectile points found on the surface. Figure 10 shows the relative frequency of projectile point types from Pettigrew and from the seeding projects. The Pettigrew points were classified in two different ways but yielded similar results. First, I classified 75 points from illustrations in the report by the same criteria used in this report. Secondly, I converted pettigrew's categories into their nearest parallel from this report. We can see that the distribution of point types is very similar between the two groups.

Most of the points from the seedings come from well-within Harney Basin, where pettigrew's model would predict a greater proportion of early point types. In fact, there is very little difference between the two distributions, except for the lack of Pinto-type points in the Stinkinpwater Pass material. Pinto points are defined from this report as large, shouldered, straight-stemmed points with indented bases. Their paucity in the Stinkingwater Pass material may be due either to sampling error or as yet unidentified micro-environmental factors, since they were found both north and south of the Pass area, in the Malheur drainage as well as Harney Basin.

Corliss (1972) examined the neck width of projectile points and postulated a bimodal distribution thought to correspond to dart and arrow points. He also examined the mean neck width for all points from various sites in Idaho and discerned what he considered a significant difference in means between Plateau and Great Basin cultural areas.

Figure 11 shows the distribution of 327 measureable projectile point neck widths from the seeding projects. There is a clear bimodal distribution with peaks near six and ten to twelve millimeters If one visualizes these peaks as representing the peaks of approximately bell-shaped curves, it becomes clear that the intermediate measures, say seven to nine millimeters, represent both the large extreme from the smaller sizes, and the small extreme from the larger sizes, so that they are actually over represented. Thus our data is even more supportive of Corliss' hypothesis than is apparent from the graph.

The mean neck width for all 327 measureable specimens is 10.07 millimeters, somewhat smaller than Corliss associates with the Great Basin. As discussed earlier though, a surface sample of projectile points can be expected to be biased in favor of later, that is smaller forms, so our sample cannot be taken as representative. Since these measurements were taken from drawings they may also be consistently off in one direction or another, although one would expect the sketches to be slightly larger than the points if they were off at all.

Overall then, this project provides a large data base from which comparisons can be drawn when subsequent work is done in the area. Generally, the data refutes Pettigrew's model for occupation of the Stinkingwater Pass area, provides suggestive information that this area may have been used as heavily during the Altithermal as at any other time, and supports Corliss' contention that projectile point notch widths are bimodal in distribution.