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Diane Teeman
Anthropology / Philosophy

Dennis Jenkins, Mentor

A Trail through Time: Obsidian Procurement Patterns in the Northern Great Basin of Oregon

In 1958, linguist Sydney Lamb published his Numic expansion hypothesis arguing that Numic speaking peoples from southeastern California migrated into the Great Basin, rapidly repopulating it as recently as 1000 years ago. Whether a population expansion is evident in the archeological record is determinable by mapping the obsidian procurement patterns of the Great Basin populations utilizing such methods as well-established projectile point typologies, obsidian hydration, and x-ray fluorescence analysis. The results will challenge or clarify Lamb’s still controversial hypothesis.