UO Archaeologists Exposing Pre-Mazama Human Occupation on the North Umpqua
By Brian O’Neill (PhD UO 1989)
Senior Research Associate, UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History
The eruption of Mount Mazama around 7600 years ago, which resulted in the Crater Lake caldera, also deposited a thick layer of pumice and ash across the central Oregon landscape and in the headwater regions of the Umpqua, Rogue, and Klamath rivers. Archaeological investigations in the upper North Umpqua River drainage have uncovered evidence in several locations of human occupation buried beneath this ash.
In spring 2008, UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History archaeologists working at the confluence of Williams Creek and the North Umpqua River in the narrow North Umpqua River canyon in Douglas County discovered a dense layer of stone tools and tool-making debris beneath nearly three meters of volcanic ash. Charcoal collected near the top of this layer is radiocarbon-dated to 7700 years ago. The field crew, directed by Dr. Brian O’Neill, included UO graduates Drs. Paul Baxter and Richard Bland, Jaime Dexter, Dustin Kennedy, Julia Knowles, and Kaylon McAlister.
This past summer, the Museum partnered with the Umpqua National Forest in a Passport In Time (PIT) Project, and returned to the site to excavate a larger sample of the pre-Mazama cultural deposits that will help address questions regarding the site’s maximum age and the activities of its original inhabitants. Its setting suggests that the people who lived there took advantage of seasonally abundant salmon runs. Because the acidic forest soils quickly break down animal bone, this type of evidence was not recovered. Of particular interest, then, is whether the stone tools recovered from the pre-Mazama deposits retain protein residue, and if salmon protein might be identified.
The PIT project, directed by Dr. O’Neill, attracted over 35 volunteers from the Pacific Northwest and across the US—all with a passion for ancient human history, and the tedious work required to retrieve the many bits of information from which the archaeological record is composed. In addition to the volunteers, assistance also came from Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management archaeologists, and members of the Cow Creek Band of Umpqua Tribe of Indians. Molly Casperson (UO anthropology graduate student) served as field assistant. The project was interrupted in its third week; the Williams Creek Fire forced the evacuation of the volunteers and temporary abandonment of the site. O’Neill and a group of experienced volunteers returned in November to finish excavations under cold and rainy conditions. Included among the November volunteers were Dr. Tom Connolly (UO-Museum of Natural and Cultural History), and Mark Swisher and Bob Boettcher—both UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History volunteers.
The collected artifacts, charcoal, and soil samples will be analyzed over the winter and spring by O’Neill and a group of UO students, and a report of the findings written. Funding for the technical analyses—such as radiocarbon dating, obsidian studies, residue analysis, and soil chemistry—is being provided by the Umpqua National Forest. Even at this early stage in the analysis it is thought that the site may represent the oldest recorded human occupation in the Umpqua drainage; O’Neill and Umpqua National Forest archaeologist Debra Barner are in the early stages of planning a return to the site in two years’ time.