Idaho National Laboratory Cultural Resource Management Plan

Research Question—Do fluted points always occur in large game hunting contexts or are small
game and/or vegetable foods also part of Paleo-Indian subsistence?
Paleo-Indian residential base sites should contain evidence of the range of utilized food resources and
of the tools needed for harvesting and processing those resources. Presently, we only know about the use
of mammoth, but many other species of megafauna that resided on the Snake River Plain may have been
utilized, as suggested by the wide variety of species recovered during the excavation of Jaguar Cave. A
variety of smaller animals were also present that may have been utilized, and plant foods should have
been relatively abundant. Determining the range of resources utilized by the Pleistocene inhabitants will
require the excavation of several sites.
Data Requirements: Any site that may have sealed subsurface deposits that occur in an area where
points of this age are found. Sites that have high potential for aggrading deposits, such as in the lee of
pressure ridges and in lava tubes in flows older than 10,000 years, should be considered to always have
this potential.
Research Question—What tool types and food resources occur in association with Paleo-Indian
lanceolate and stemmed points?
Paleo-Indian lanceolate and stemmed points have been associated in other parts of the Desert West
with a highly specialized adaptation to the lacustrine environment surrounding late Pleistocene pluvial
lakes. In the Snake River Plain, these point styles have been found in association with the remains of an
extinct form of bison. Whether these point styles represent a continuation of the big game hunting
tradition, a lacustrine focus, or perhaps both, in the upper Snake River Basin is not known; nor is it
known if the same groups that made the fluted points for the hunting of megafauna also made stemmed
points for harvesting lacustrine resources (if it turns out that they are contemporary).
Data Requirements: Any site suspected of having sealed subsurface deposits that occur in the area
where point styles diagnostic of this period are known, including all of INL).
Research Question—Is there a direct spatial relationship between the Paleo-Indian stemmed
points and extinct lacustrine systems?
This question addresses the same objective as the preceding one. If all sites associated with this
tradition can be shown to be directly associated with lake shores or marshes that date to the late
Pleistocene, the argument for a specialized lacustrine adaptation gains support.
Data Requirements: Two types of localities are needed to address this question: (1) archaeological
sites that contain diagnostic materials of this period where the surface of origin for those artifacts can be
defined, and (2) selected nonarchaeological locations where extinct lacustrine features (e.g., shore lines
and marshes) can be excavated for datable materials. Based on a limited number of excavations, the ages
of various exposed surfaces could be determined and their spatial extent mapped. Correlating this with
archaeological site distribution would either support or challenge the lacustrine specialization hypothesis.
Research Topic: Archaic Occupations. If the prevailing interpretation of the Archaic lifeway is
valid, then the shift in adaptation at the end of the Pleistocene at about 8000 years ago should be
accompanied by a broadening of the diet to include many smaller and more expensive food items (in
terms of pursuit and processing time relative to caloric returns). Small game and plant foods, along with
the technology to acquire and process them, should have become an integral part of the lifeway. However,
there is argument (Butler 1978: 68) for the continuation of a big game hunting lifeway without any
perceptible broadening of the diet. This suggests that adequate numbers of big game animals continued to
be available after the loss of the Pleistocene megafauna. It was not until the altithermal (7500 B.P.) that
ground stone becomes a consistent element in artifact inventories. This pattern may be inaccurate because
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