Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

Seventeen known and four unknown sources among 90 obsidian artifacts were identified from the Lost Dune and McCoy Creek sites on the east side of Blitzen Valley, Harney County, Oregon. Changing distributions and abundances of obsidian sources identified in four prehistoric periods (3,500-2,000 B.P, 2,000-500 B.P., A.D. 1400s and A.D. 1500s) suggest eastern Blitzen Valley people used a limited resource area in the middle two periods. For the period from 2,000 to 500 B.P, obsidian was identified only from sources in and adjacent to Harney Basin and in the northern Catlow Valley—the "western Malheur/Catlow" area. Then, briefly in the A.D. 1500s, pottery-using visitors brought to Lost Dune ample obsidian from sources well east of Harney Basin in the Owyhee River drainage.