Archaeological Research Facility

The analysis here of 51 Paleoarchaic bifaces (49 obsidian) from the North American Great Basin indicates a very diverse provenance assemblage derived throughout western North America. The XRF analysis and most of the source assignments was performed at the Geoarchaeological XRF Laboratory in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and some of the source assignments, mainly from Oregon sources, was performed by Craig Skinner, former Director of the Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laboratory, Bend, Oregon. The Skinner/Shackley database of 261 North American obsidian source data was mainly used to assign to source.