October 8, 1998
BEND, Ore. -- A hearth and the remains of five posts unearthed in central Oregon date back nearly 10,000 years and are believed to be part of the oldest home site ever found in western North America
University of Oregon researchers said Thursday that the ancient home site was a teepee-like structure covered with bundles of grass, bullrushes or cattails, where hunter-gatherers lived while stalking bison and elk.
It is more than 4,000 years older than home sites previously found, predating the Mount Mazama eruption that created Crater Lake and covered the Northwest and parts of the Great Plains with a layer of ash.
"We found below the Mazama ash ... a hearth 150 centimeters below the surface. The radiocarbon date came back 10,000 years," said archaeologist Dennis Jenkins.
"Around that hearth we found five posts that had been stuck in the ground. These are the remains of a burned structure, a superstructure, probably lodgepole pine that would have been tied in the middle, something like a teepee."
Jenkins said the structure, near Paulina Lake about 20 miles south of Bend, was first discovered in 1992 but not publicized until researchers were sure of what they had.
It is the oldest such structure found in the Great Basin, which covers a large portion of Utah, Nevada, southern Idaho, eastern Oregon and eastern California, on the eastern slopes of the Sierras.
"We've found pit houses with dates of about 5,000 to 5,500 years old. Those are pretty much the earliest that I've been aware of," Jenkins said. "So, this was a pretty exciting discovery."
The people who lived at Newberry Crater collected hazelnuts, blackberries and chokecherries. Remnants of these foods were found in their hearth. Crude tools made of obsidian were also found.
The environment at the time, before a deep layer of Mazama ash made the soil coarse, was lush. There were more grasses and plants to collect.
"The soil below the marker is more fine-grained, more developed and the pollen indicates the environment was much more productive than it is today," Jenkins said.
These hunter-gatherers moved in small bands, following their food source.
"We had blood residue analysis done and identified rabbits and bears, elk, bison. So it looks like this was a seasonal camp, a place where people came to spend the summer time hunting and collecting in the lower area," he said.
The site, at 6,300 feet elevation, was not used in the winter, he said, noting that snow already has begun falling in the area.
The site is about 25 miles from Fort Rock Cave, where the late Luther Cressman discovered about 70 pairs of sandals, made of sagebrush bark and dating to the same period as the Paulina Lake site.
The Fort Rock discovery, in 1938, altered anthropologists' theories about how long people had lived in the Northwest.