FORT ROCK BASIN : PREHISTORY AND ENVIRONMENT; Fireward by L.S. Cressman

Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Books, 1973. First Edition. Hardcover. Very Good Plus / Very Good Plus. Small Quarto, 10.25 in. x 6.75 in. , pp. xiv, 189. Illustrated with many photographs, maps, and diagrams. Red cloth boards with light green title, arrowhead design and frame on brown background to front. Dark brown title on white spine. Very light rubbing to extremities. Red and dark brown arrowhead design to endpapers. Unmarked interior. Light sunning and very light edgwear to dustjacket. The author was newly launched on a teaching career when he was kiled in a boating accident in May 1972. At the time of his death he was an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Wisconsin at Oshkosh. His extensive archaeological investigation as a grad student is "a landmark in the study of Great Basin prehistory." (from the dustjacket)

"In 1938, University of Oregon archaeologist Luther Cressman excavated at Fort Rock Cave, where he and his crew found dozens of sandals below a layer of volcanic ash, subsequently determined to have come from the 7,600-year-old eruption of Mount Mazama.

"In 1966 and 1967, Cressman and his graduate student Stephen Bedwell returned to Fort Rock Cave and several other sites in the Fort Rock Basin. By that time, the interior of the cave had been effectively cleaned out by artifact hunters, and the only undisturbed deposits were under large rock-fall boulders near the cave entry, which were removed with dynamite and a tractor. Bedwell recovered sandal fragments, but his most significant finding was a small set of tools, including a handheld grinding stone, chipped stone scrapers, and a stemmed projectile point which appeared to be associated with a small hearth that produced a radiocarbon age calibrating to more than 15,000 years old. Most archaeologists dismissed this age, citing uncertainty about the association between the artifacts and the dated charcoal and what was considered to be an unreasonably early age for human occupation in the Americas. Although the question of association remains clouded, the confirmed presence of human occupation at the nearby Paisley Caves to nearly 15,000 years ago provides a context that makes the outright dismissal of the early Fort Rock age ill advised." (from Oregon Encyclopedia).