Archaeological Research Facility

The analysis here of 18 obsidian artifacts from two sites, Wallace Ruin and Greenstone Pueblo (5MT6970, same site number for both sites), indicates a diverse source provenance assemblage with artifacts produced from the following sources in western North America: Jemez Lineament sources in northern New Mexico, Cerro Toledo Rhyolite, Valles Rhyolite (Cerro del Medio), El Rechuelos Rhyolite in the Jemez volcanic field, and Grants Ridge in the Mount Taylor volcanic field; northern Arizona, Government Mountain in the San Francisco volcanic field (see Shackley 2005), and sources in southeastern Idaho (Malad), and Wild Horse Canyon of southwestern Utah (Skinner/Shackley North American Obsidian Database; see Table 1 and Figure 1).  Both Wild Horse Canyon and Government Mountain have been recovered from sites examined by Crow Canyon Archaeological Center (Shackley 2014, 2017).  The Malad, Idaho source (over 600 km north of these sites) is not uncommonly recovered in Paleoindian and Archaic context throughout the West, particularly in the Southwest (Beck and Jones 2011).  In this region it is even more common than Obsidian Cliff in Yellowstone, one of the most commonly exchanged and recorded sources in North America (Beck and Jones 2011; Davis et al. 1995; Scheiber and Finley 2011).  While the sample is small, the obsidian from Greenstone Pueblo was the most diverse with all the sources from outside northern New Mexico, and indeed outside the Southwest.  Whether this is a real pattern or sampling error is impossible to know (see Table 1 and Figures 1, 2 and 3)