COLUMBIA PLATEAU PREHISTORY - CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND IMPINGING INFLUENCES

Excavations of the last decade have yielded much data which cannot be adequately handled by extant models of Plateau cultural development. The 15,000 years of pre-history revealed by these new data appear to break into seven distinct periods. For each cultural period we present a synthesis of elements, including varying trait-unit intrusions from both the Great Basin and the Canadian Plateau. Included in this examination are such important new factors as a pre-Old Cordilleran stemmed point tradition and a microblade tradition some 5,000 years in duration. Reanalysis also suggests that the emergence of Columbia Plateau culture (as ethnographically known) can be placed at about the time of Christ, instead of about A.D. 1200-1300 as previously hypothesized. © Society for American Archaeology 1969.