PORTLAND, OREGON—Archaeologists have unearthed an unusual collection of obsidian tools after being tipped off by a landowner in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, according to a report from OPB. The landowner, a math and science teacher, came across 14 of the tools while digging out a spring on his property. He contacted state archaeologist John Pouley who identified them as bifaces that could be converted with some work into scrapers, spearpoints, or arrowheads. Pouley estimated that the tools dated back 1,000 to 4,000 years and came from the Santiam Band of the Kalapuya people. In a June excavation, attended by some of the landowner’s students, archaeologists found a fifteenth biface along with other stone tools. The artifacts were determined to have come from a quarry called Obsidian Cliffs 80 miles away in the Cascade Mountains. The bifaces did not have any flakes missing, so it appears that whoever transported them from the quarry was planning to sell them. “It seems likely that this was part of a trade network and these themselves were commodities,” said Pouley. For more on archaeology in Oregon, go to “Site of a Forgotten War.”
