Upland Land Use and Intersite Lithic Assemblage Variation Across Two Rockshelter and Three Open-Air Archaeological Sites in Mount Rainier National Park

Two sites from the Late Holocene period, the Fryingpan and Berkeley Rockshelters, are analyzed using an evolutionary archaeology model to test hypotheses about site-type expectations. Under the existing theoretical model, rockshelter sites on the slopes of Mount Rainier were used for a more limited activity set than some open-air sites. Rockshelter sites are thought to be places of short-term occupancy consistent with hunting and/or overnight residence activities. Large open-air sites with relatively dense and materially diverse lithic artifacts are thought to be longer-term residential base camps. Technological and functional paradigmatic lithic classifications are used to measure how rockshelter and larger open-air sites vary. The analysis is reduced further to focus on how the two rockshelter sites vary independent to each other, compared to the open-air Sunrise Ridge Borrow Pit site. Non-random associations of data frequencies across technological variables exhibited by the lithic assemblages determined that rockshelter lithic assemblages are representative of a truncated range of variability compared to open-air site assemblages.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science (MS)

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Cultural and Environmental Resource Management

Year dc:date.available

2017

Author dc:creator

• Limberg, Caitlin

Contributors dc:contributor

• Patrick T. McCutcheon
• Patrick M. Lubinski
• Greg Burtchard

• paradigmatic classification
• lithic analysis
• upland landuse
• Anthropology
• Archaeological Anthropology
• Social and Behavioral Sciences

Language dc:language

English

Repository record dc:identifier

https://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/etd/709

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:digitalcommons.cwu.edu:etd-1721