University of Utah Anthropological Paper No. 128

About 12,000 years ago, a major river ran from the Sevier Basin to the Great Salt Lake, feeding a wetland delta system and creating riparian habitat along its length. But after three thousand years the river dried up and the surrounding lands became more like what we see today. Because the Old River Bed Delta experienced less environmental and human disturbance than other areas, many of the Paleoarchaic sites found there have remained relatively intact—a rare find in the Great Basin. This book presents a comprehensive synthesis of a decade of investigations conducted by research teams working in different parts of the delta and explores questions about how the old riverbed was formed, how its distributary system changed through time, and how these changes affected early foragers. It concludes with an integrated summary and interpretation. Additional material from this study will be available online at UofUpress.com. 

Supplementary Material for The Paleoarchaic Occupation of the Old River Bed Delta

Chapter 3 - SDM Trench and Locality Descriptions November
Chapter 3 SDM Individual Channel Images November
Chapter 5 - SDM Additional Lithic Artifact Images
Chapter 6 - SDM Results of XRF and PXRF Analysis
Chapter 6 - SDM Source Assignment Tables

David B. Madsen is a research fellow at the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, the University of Texas at Austin; and an adjunct professor in the anthropology departments of both Texas A&M University and Texas State University. He is the author of Entering America: Northeast Asia and Beringia before the Last Glacial Maximum (University of Utah Press, 2004).

Dave N. Schmitt is a research scientist at the Desert Research Institute Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences and adjunct lecturer at Southern Methodist University. He is coauthor (with David Madsen) of Buzz-Cut Dune and Fremont Foraging at the Margin of Horticulture, UUAP No. 124, and of Camels Back Cave, UUAP No. 125 (both University of Utah Press, 2005).

David Page is an assistant research archaeologist at the Desert Research Institute Division of Earth and Ecosystem Sciences.