2007 Nevada Field School
Week 3, cont'd.
Badlands Quarry
The goal of our field trip, in addition to visiting Bonneville Estates Rockshelter, was to make collections of raw material at several stone tool “quarries.” Here, Rachel, Caitlin and Lisa are at the Badlands andesite source, near Ibapah, Utah. This badland terrain is formed by the erosion of soft volcanic ash--the white rocks in the background--that was laid down during a period of volcanism some 20-30 million years ago. Lying on top of the ash is a boulder lag made up of resistant rock. Among these boulders are a few that are very fine grained and which can be flaked into stone tools. Pete is “assaying” a boulder to evaluate its quality. We made collections of tool-quality rocks while at this source and later this summer Lisa will be analyzing the samples to establish their chemical signature. These data, in turn, will be compared to artifacts to determine if Paleoarchaic folk who used the Badlands source carried the tools of this material as far as our field sites, some 100-200 km to the southwest. Such information help us to map the size and shape of the territories of these mobile people.
Blue Mass
We spent the night at Blue Mass, which lies in the Kern Mountains near the Utah border. Our camping spot featured massive granite outcrops, forming loaves, spires, crags and pyramids. Almost before we parked the trucks, the students were dashing in every direction to be the first up one of these outcrops.
Blue Mass
Moister and a little higher than our camp in Jakes Valley, Blue Mass contains fir and aspen trees along with mountain flowers.
Despite the spectacular beauty of Blue Mass, our own campsite has its attractions. This photo was taken from the ridge to the north of our camp and looks over Jakes Valley where we have been conducting some of our work. This is a classic pinyon-juniper woodland.
Newark Valley
This is a typical scene from the valley bottom where we’re doing most of our survey and test excavation.
Newark Valley 
