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The earliest artifactual remains from Guana are charcoal from the cave site and a polished stone axehead, both 2,000–1,500 ybp. Gibbons regards these as later archaic from gatherers, not Saladoid. Righter got the first Saladoid ceramic remains indicating a small settlement on the flat adjacent to the beach at 1,600–1,500 ybp. A Gibbon writer wrote that there is a humor of a chert vein in the limestone of West End, Tortola, running on westward to Great Thatch Island. There is limited or no evidence of human activity on the arid islands of the BVI for almost 200 years. There is scant evidence that anyone lived in—or even visited—Guana Island after James Parke departed or died in 1759. After the Quaker experiment, the BVI settled back into the quiet backwaters of history for another century and more.

Domain 5 has mountains on the west aligned in broad arcs; in the eastern Klamath Mountains this arcuate pattern is not as evident. The outer arc curves from the triple junction of the California Coast Ranges, Great Valley, and Klamath Mountains in western Tehama County around through Del Norte County, where it is within a few kilometers of the Pacific Ocean, to Douglas County in Oregon. This western edge of the Klamath Mountains marks a boundary with the California Coast Ranges. The eastern edge of the Klamath Mountains forms a boundary with the Cascade Mountains. The southern, or southeast, boundary is where sediments of the Great Valley lap over the Klamath Mountains in Shasta and western Tehama counties. Serpentine rocks are more extensive in the Klamath Mountains than in any other domain or physiographic province in North America. Through the middle of the Tertiary, the Klamath Mountains were eroded to a nearly level plain called the Klamath peneplain (Diller 1902). According to Diller, the Klamath peneplain and the submerged coastal area that had been accumulating sediments were uplifted slightly during the Miocene, and erosion reduced the northern California Coast Ranges to a nearly level plain which he called the Bellsprings peneplain, noting that it is practically continuous with the Klamath peneplain. Subsequently discovered sediments of the Weaverville formation were deposited in a depression, or graben, in the Klamath Mountains during the Oligocene, indicating that uplift of the Klamath peneplain must have begun during the Paleogene, before the Miocene. Uplift was intermittent, allowing time for the erosion of broad valleys in less resistant rocks between episodes of uplift. Concordant summits, or mountains with summits of nearly equal elevation, are the evidence that led Diller (1902) to suspect a former peneplain. Although the mountain summits in any particular area are nearly equal or subequal, there is a general increase in summit elevation from the coast inland to 2.5–2.7 km. The altitude of Mt. Eddy on the eastern edge of the Klamath Mountains is 2751 m and that of Mt.

The Denali-Yukon domain occupies a broad arc that, in general, follows the path of the Denali Fault along the Alaska Range and southwestward into the Yukon Territory. An ophiolite in the northwestern corner of British Columbia that is northeast of the projected Denali fault is included in this locality. A projection of the Denali fault system southwestward from the Alaska Range passes through the southwestern part of the Ahklun Mountains physiographic province, as the province was defined by Wahrhaftig (1965), to Kuskokwim Bay between the mouth of the Kuskowim River and Cape Newenham. Three mafic–ultramafic complexes on the southwestern edge of the Ahklun Mountains province are included in this domain. Glaciers covered this entire domain during the Pleistocene, and mountain glaciers and ice caps are still present at the higher elevations. Permafrost is currently discontinuous. The highest mountain in North America (Mt. McKinley, 6194 m) is in the Alaska Range, but the ultramafic rocks are all at much lower elevations. The climate is very cold throughout the domain, with severe winters and short summers. The mean annual precipitation ranges from 45 to150 cm in the Ahklun Mountains, from 30 to 60 cm in the Alaska Range, and from 30 to 75 cm, or more, in the Atlin area of northwestern British Columbia, which is in the rain shadow of the Coast Mountains. The greatest precipitation is during summers, from June or July to September or October. The frostfree period is on the order of 60–90 days, or shorter, but it may be longer in some of the Atlin area of British Columbia. Localities 9-1 through 9-3 are from Cape Newenham northeastward in the Ahklun Mountains. The ultramafic rocks in the Cape Newenham area were accreted to North America by north directed thrust faults during the Late Triassic and Middle Jurassic time. Localities 9-4 through 9-7 are in the Alaska Range. Locality 9-8 is along a projection of the Denali fault to the eastern edge of the Coast Ranges in British Columbia.

The ultramafic rocks in this domain are in the western part of the Brooks Range, the interior Alaska lowlands of the Koyukuk–Yukon Basin, the interior Alaska highlands of the Tanana–Yukon Upland, and the Kuskokwim Mountains. This domain extends east to the Seventymile River, a tributary of the Yukon River that is near the Canadian border, and presumably to the Clinton Creek area in the Yukon Territory. Although the highest elevations in the Brook Range are near 2700 m, those in the western mountains of the range are mostly <1400 m. Flatlands, hills, and low mountains dominate the Koyukuk–Yukon Basin and Tanana–Yukon Uplands, Elevations in the Kuskokwim Mountains are mostly <1000 m. Some of the mountains in uplands of the Tanana–Yukon Uplands are higher than 1600 m. Although the Brooks Range was glaciated during the Pleistocene, there was no glaciation in the Koyukuk–Yukon Basin, and only the higher elevations in the Tanana-Yukon Upland were glaciated during the Quaternary. Today, permafrost prevails throughout the Brooks Range, but it is discontinuous in the Koyukuk–Yukon Basin and Tanana–Yukon Upland and in the Kuskokwim Mountains (Ferrians 1965). Loess is extensive in the basins of interior Alaska and at lower elevations in the Kuskokwim Mountains, with some deposits >60 m thick (Péwé 1975). The climate is very cold throughout the domain, with severe winters and relatively short summers, although mean maximum summer (July) temperatures are >20°C (up to 24°C or 25°C) in the interior basins. With latitudes from 61°N to 68°N, days are very long during summers and very short during winters. The mean annual precipitation is 15–45 cm, with the greatest precipitation during summers. Even though the precipitation is low, the climate is not arid because evapotranspiration is limited by short and relatively cool summers. The freeze-free period is on the order of 60–90 days. The northern and interior Alaska ultramafics (serpentine) consist of Paleozoic and Mesozoic thrust slices emplaced onto Precambrian and Paleozoic marine sediments. They all belong to well-defined belts and are related to low-angle thrust faults or to later high strike–slip faults.

The most direct legacy that we can leave to future geology is that of our own mortal remains. Today, in reconstructing the long-vanished Jurassic landscapes, we put the mighty, charismatic dinosaurs square in the foreground. This focus we have—well-nigh a fixation—seems to us almost self-evident. Were they not the rulers of their empire, just as we are of ours, literally bestriding their domain as colossi of scale and blood and bone? Their skeletons, avidly sought, intensely studied, painstakingly reconstructed in museum displays, are the symbols of those times, iconic, mesmerizing. Might we not hope for similar awe and reverence from our future excavators? There is no guarantee, of course, that these as yet unborn explorers of a future Earth will share this perspective. Perhaps their focus will be on what, among all the diverse living inhabitants of this planet, is most important in preserving this living tapestry. They may well regard the myriad tiny invertebrates, or the bacteria, of the world as much more important to that (in planetary terms) rare phenomenon, a stable, functional, complex ecosystem. If these future explorers took this view, at the risk of off ending what little there might then remain of our amour propre, they would have a point. Take away the top predator dinosaurs, and the Jurassic ecosystems would have been a little different, to be sure, but no less functional. Take away humans, and the present world will also function quite happily, as it did two hundred thousand years ago, before our species appeared. Take away worms and insects, and things would start seriously to fall apart. Take away bacteria and their yet more ancient cousins, the archaea, and the viruses too, and the world would die. But, let us imagine our excavators as being, in true science fiction style, just as obsessed with their relative position in the food chain as we are. Let us assume that, in their excavation of the Earth’s history, they will be looking for the power brokers of the ancient past, that they will be digging for bones and bodies.

The northern provinces encompass all of California north of the Transverse Ranges, which dissect the state in an east-west fashion just north of the Los Angeles Basin. This chapter deals with the discoveries of Mesozoic reptiles in the Klamath Mountains Province, Sierra Nevada, Great Valley Province, and the Coast Ranges Province. The Klamath Mountains Province is the geological northern extension of the Sierra Nevada. It is in this province where more than two hundred Triassic reptile fossils have been found. The first discovery of reptilian fossils in the Sierra was made in 1954 and the remains were those of a plesiosaur. In the Great Valley Province, a multitude of discoveries has yielded a rich trove of Late Jurassic and Cretaceous dinosaurs and marine reptiles. Three specimens of Mesozoic reptile remains from the Coast Range rocks were discovered. Two of them were found in radiolarian cherts: highly contorted, thinly layered beds originally deposited in the deep ocean well offshore from the continent. The third specimen is the first evidence of a Jurassic plesiosaur discovered west of the Rockies. The fossil came from a limestone concretion weathered out of the so-called Franciscan-Knoxville shales.

Located in a Pleistocene terrace on the Savannah River, evidence for a Pre-Clovis occupation of the Topper site is presented including radiocarbon and OSL dating of the Pleistocene sediments. Topper is a core and flake technology with numerous examples of small tools such as bend breaks, unifaces, small blades, and abundant lithic debris from chert quarrying. It has been named the Clariant complex. Pre-Clovis at Topper is pre-LGM and one of the oldest sites in the Western Hemisphere.

The quarry cluster approach developed for Florida chert sources in the 1980s has continued to be a robust and reliable method of sourcing artifacts. Provenance is based on visually observable textural and paleontologic attributes. Some improvements have been developed using Weights of Evidence Bayesian analysis and Portable X-ray Fluorescence (pXRF).

Terrestrial, wetland, and underwater sediment types are the focus of chapter 2, and no consideration of stratigraphy would be complete without their examination. Archaeological research has reached the point now that inundated sites are as much a part of the archaeological vocabulary as land sites have been. It is important to realize, for example, that the territorial extent of the Floridan Aquifer in the Southeast Coastal Plain also encompasses one of the major concentrations of Paleoindian sites in the Southeast. This aquifer, an important potable water source, is held in Tertiary limestones that are also chert bearing, making them an important toolmaking resource. Unlike land sites in the Southeast, which typically do not present preserved organic materials, wetland and submerged sites frequently offer preserved bone and organic materials, including plant seeds and wood. Sedimentation in karst rivers is most often neutral to slightly alkaline, whereas most upland sites lie buried in acidic sand. Lake and channel-fill deposits are important receptacles of preservation and will be the focus of future investigations. The rivers and lakes in Florida and the extreme Southeast are of great significance because they do not have their headwaters emanating from mountains and therefore provide us with an excellent record of late Pleistocene environments.

This chapter presents the results of the artifact analysis which consists almost exclusively of some 1,110 chipped stone tools and cores and several thousand pieces of stone debitage. Morphological and technological criteria were used to classify the assemblage into bifaces, unifaces, cores, hammerstones, and abraders. Toolstone appears to have been acquired locally from the abundant limestone replaced cherts available in the vicinity of Tampa Bay. An exception to this is the presence of four rather amorphous shaped “exotic” metamorphic rocks—presumably acquired from outside the state. The function of these artifacts is unclear but given their size and shape, three of them could have functioned as planes or abraders. The fourth specimen is too large to be hand-held but could have functioned as an anvil. The presence of these artifacts in the assemblage is an enigma, and it is speculated the stone arrived via interband exchange.

This chapter examines, in detail, the Geoarchaeological methods for both predicting and interpreting sites subjected to anthropogenic activities and taphonomic processes specific to inundated contexts. Garrison and Hale show that sediment particle-size, grain-size, and point-count studies coupled with debitage/micro-debitage analyses isolate middens deposits from those of natural origin. Chemical, faunal (primarily vertebrate), and floral proxies for anthropogenic activities were lacking, but they related the nature on inundated sites in a marine environment. The authors discuss how sea-level rise is coupled with these factors.

Both chemical and mechanical weathering can heavily alter lithic artifacts from prehistoric sites. One interesting finding in the Ray Hole Spring assemblage was the use of a so-called non-traditional tool stone (dolomitized arkosic rock) in place of chert. The Douglas Beach artifact (a lanceolate point) was also a chert object that, like the Ray Hole materials, was heavily corroded. This chapter describes the battery of instrumental techniques—SEM, XRF, XRD and EMPA—that the authors used and discusses the results of these analyses. The authors then propose a protocol for evaluating corroded lithics.

This chapter examines regional and long-distance trade in several types of lithic artifacts, both chert and obsidian, among communities on Corozal Bay (southern Chetumal Bay), particularly Santa Rita Corozal and Cerro Maya, and interior northern Belize. In this region, there is substantial evidence for trade in stone tools made in northern Belize as well as exchange in imported obsidian. Although trade in stone tools was a long-standing tradition on the bay, this chapter focuses on the Late Preclassic period. During this era, communities around Corozal Bay participated in a vibrant commerce between sites on the Caribbean coast of Yucatán and settlements further inland, particularly Colha, a commercial scale stone tool production center situated on an outcrop of high quality chert. During the Late Preclassic, tranchet adzes, stemmed macroblades, and oval bifaces were exported from Colha in massive quantity.

This chapter presents a case study of a previously excavated lithic sample from Santa Rita Corozal, considering stone tool production at two structures, 216 and 218. Both exhibit a higher number of Postclassic chert and chalcedony lithic artifacts than other contemporary structures excavated at the site. The authors use debitage analysis to reveal how two households crafted formal tools locally and visual sourcing analysis to better understand how these tools articulated with broader traditions of lithic craft production in a regional exchange network. In contrast to the commercial level of production exhibited at Colha, Belize, these households used a variety of source materials and produced a less standardized tool kit on a much smaller scale.