Prehistoric quarrying at South Paint Rock Chert Quarries, Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming| An assessment of lithic procurement and reduction strategies

An Assessment of Lithic Procurement and Reduction StrategiesThe ongoing goal of the archaeological investigations at South Paint Rock Chert Quarries, located in the Bighorn Mountains of northern Wyoming, is to investigate the role of prehistoric quarrying in the northwestern Plains by examining any evidence as to the role of lithic technological organization, and to study high altitude land-use systems utilized by prehistoric Native Americans of the Northwestern Plains and the Rocky Mountains.This project was designed to further our knowledge of (1) lithic quarry site formation processes and lithic tool production sites; (2) develop a better understanding of technological organization of lithic procurement in hunter-gatherer economies; and (3) to aid in the understanding of Great Plains and intermontain hunter-gatherer cultures.The significance of the chert quarries at South Paint Rock (SPRCQ) is that they contain sizable stratified deposits allowing an unusual opportunity to study prehistoric quarrying variation through time.This rare chance allows us to take a closer look at any possible changes in procurement strategies utilized by prehistoric northwestern Plains huntergatherers, as well as examine how these people exploited chert as a raw material for tool manufacture.Relevant questions to these processes are: (1) are quarry pits the result of single episode events or more commonly associated with multiple independent events; (2) if multiple quarrying events contributed to the formation of the archaeological record of SPRCQ, can these events be divided from the stratigraphic record of the quarry pits and associated berms;(3) do lithic reduction assemblages reflect in situ activities or are they the result of specific quarrying activities such as cleanup, natural deposition or erosion, or other processes; (4) what lithic reduction activities took place in context with the quarry pits and how does this differ from other areas of the SPRCQ site; and (6) what tool production, use and discard strategies were in place during the different occupations of the site.