Chipped stone crescents from America’s Far West

Abstract

Chipped stone crescents, Terminal Pleistocene and Early Holocene artifacts from North America’s Far West, are often found in surficial contexts as isolated finds, with many currently residing in private or museum collections with limited provenience information. Such collections have the potential to reveal metric and morphological data, and contribute to our understanding of the distribution and material source locations for this unique artifact type. We describe 43 chipped stone crescentic artifacts from two collections curated at the University of Oregon’s Museum of Natural and Cultural History. The Calvin Schmidt Collection contains crescents recovered from southeast Oregon and northwest Nevada, and the Alvord Basin Survey Collection contains crescents from southeast Oregon. We provide detailed descriptions, including material type and extensive metrical measurements, to define the shape and form of these crescentic artifacts. Seven obsidian crescents were quantitatively analyzed using x-ray fluorescence to identify their geological sources. We discuss general morphological characteristics of crescents in the region and compare the trace element signatures of the obsidian artifacts to known sources.