Archaeological
Cultural Timeline
Alison T. Stenger, Ph.D.
Institute for Archaeological Studies.
Two areas in McMinnville have yielded evidence of ancient people. This evidence is in the form of stone tools, called lithics. Several different styles are represented among the spear points and other stone tools that have been documented, and several different types of stone have been used.
Some types of stone tools have been identified as belonging to specific times and locations. These are considered “Cultural Phases”, or time periods of manufacture. As radiocarbon dating is not useful for non-organic materials such as rock, the shapes and types of tool making scars can often help to date stone implements.
At McMinnville, at least four very old cultural periods have been identified. These include Haskett and Windust, Cascade Phase, and Frenchman Springs. A late prehistoric component is also occasionally suggested by side notch and other variants. The early material (Haskett and Windust) date stylistically to approximately 11,000-9,000 BP (before present). The next style dates to about 8,000-6,000 BP (Cascade Phase). The final very old sequence is about 6,000-4,000 BP (Frenchman Springs). The more recent material begins about 2500 BP and continues into the late prehistoric period, or a few hundred years ago.
The mineral (lithic) materials selected for use include an agate like material, known as cryptocrystalline silicate, as well as some fine grained basalt and probable dacite. All of the tools are worked on the front and back. Some of the Cascade Phase tools are not serrated, indicating a different use for these spear point looking implements. These may have been used for actions such as slicing.
The above information was generously provided, initially, by Drs. Leland Gilsen, David Rice, Michael Southard.
Cultural Material from the Yamhill River Basin
Various Tables of Cultural Periods have been created to classify Cultural Materials, based on chronology, geographic location, environmental factors, glacial periods, etc. For the sake of simplicity, we have chosen to list paleo-archaeological finds chronologically, emphasizing the Paleo through Early Archaic spans which form the focus for the Project:
Paleo………………………………………………….14,000 – 11,000 B.P.
Late Paleo…………………………………………..12,000 – 10,000 B.P.
Transitional Paleo………………………………..11,000 – 9,000 B.P.
Early Archaic………………………………………10,000 – 7000 B.P.
Middle Archaic through Historic…………….7,000 – Recent
B.P. refers to “Before Present” in the table, and all ages for these Cultural Periods are approximations.
Middle Archaic through Historic
Native American artifacts from the most recent cultural periods are quite common throughout the Willamette Valley. Projectile points, fish hooks and stone weights, mortars & pestles, and beads representing the Kalapuya and related cultures, which began approximately 2500 years ago and continued well into historic times, are by far the most common. Fields plowed in the spring often turn up rich evidence of this culture, and every stream in the Yamhill River Basin has eroded out material from these cultures. They give evidence of a wide distribution of artifacts and settlement sites at surface level or just below as well as an oral history and a rich cultural presence which continues to this day. It does not, however, stretch back as far as the late Pleistocene to early Holocene and as such does not constitute the focus of our investigations.
Early Archaic
Cultural Material is commonly classified as “Paleo”, referring to the Prehistoric era of the Late Pleistocene; “Transitional”, indicating the period of transition from the Late Pleistocene to the Early Holocene; the “Early Holocene”