Recently recovered FarShores file
Archaeologists at the University of Oregon say they have discovered the oldest house ever found in western North America. Evidence of the ancient structure, radiocarbon-dated to be about 9,400 years old, is in Central Oregon near Paulina Lake in Newberry Crater, said Thomas J. Connolly, a UO archaeologist who directed the investigation. The remains of the house are beneath a layer of ash spewed by the massive eruption of Mount Mazama -- the volcano that formed Crater Lake -- about 7,600 years ago. Researchers say the discovery will provide new insight about Oregon's early inhabitants.
"This find adds a great deal of detail to our understanding of how these people lived their lives," said Connolly, research director for the UO Museum of Natural History. "Our ideas previously were based on small bits of information gathered here and there -- a kind of conjectural view. Now we have lots of solid evidence that really paints a much more detailed picture."
The archaeological site is near Paulina Lakes outlet, where Paulina Creek flows over the Newberry caldera's rim and drains into the Deschutes River. The excavation uncovered a central fire hearth and tools, five lodgepole pine support posts and plants used for roof and floor coverings. The site was excavated from 1990 to 1992, but Connolly said no effort was made to publicize the discovery because "we wanted to get all the analyses in line, to make sure we had what we thought we had."
Connolly will present a paper about aspects of the discovery at the three-day Great Basin Archaeological Conference, which began Thursday in Bend. He also will provide more details in a book to be published by the University of Utah Press in January titled Newberry Crater: A 10,000 Year Record of Human Occupation and Environmental Change in the Basin-Plateau Borderlands.
Connolly said the house was probably a wickiup about 14 feet wide and 16 feet long. He said it probably served as a summer home and may have been one of several domestic structures that were built for a family or several families. The site probably served as a staging area on Paulina Lakes shores for food gathering and hunting. Analyses of remnants from the hearth found that its inhabitants ate hazelnuts, blackberries, chokeberries and other fruits and nuts. Lodgepole and ponderosa pine were used for fuel, along with sagebrush wood. The sagebrush bark was used for rope, matting and clothing. The early Oregonians also processed hardwood bark, bulrushes and other plants to make coverings for the structures floor and roof.
"We don't really know what the roof covering was like," Connolly said. "The evidence suggests plants were possibly used, but it also could have had a hide covering." Blood residue found on tools indicated that rabbits may have been butchered within the house near the hearth, while bear, bison, sheep and deer or elk were butchered outside the dwelling. Several of the house's perimeter posts were charred, indicating the structure had burned.
Research shows the environment in Newberry Crater at the time was an open pine forest with a meadow and shrub-steppe understory. Studies found no evidence for human habitation in the caldera in the thousand years after the Mazama eruption. The cataclysmic blast, along with eruptions within the Newberry Volcano, changed the forested area into a pumice desert. Connolly said he and his colleagues knew the site had to be at least 7,600 years old when they excavated it because of the layer of Mazama ash. The radiocarbon dates confirmed it was a lot older.
Kenneth M. Ames, a professor of anthropology at Portland State University, said: "This is a significant site. There's a couple of houses found in Washington that are 7,500 years old and one in Wyoming about 6,700. This is by far and away the oldest domestic structure that I know of." Ames, a specialist in prehistoric houses, said evidence indicates the early native people were extremely mobile because there was no food storage. He speculated that the house would have been a sturdy, light-framed structure.
The house site is about 25 miles north of Fort Rock Cave, the most famous of Oregon's archaeological sites. Luther S. Cressman, a UO anthropology professor, found about 70 pairs of sandals made of sagebrush bark in 1938. When radiocarbon dating was later developed, one of the sandals was found to be about 9,000 years old. The discovery more than doubled scientists' estimates of how long ago the first humans were in the Northwest.
"One of the fascinating things about this finding is that the house is contemporary with that occupation of Fort Rock Cave," Connolly said. "From these discoveries, we can better piece together the story of human habitation in Oregon." Other archaeological evidence suggests that people have been in Oregon at least for 11,000 years and possibly as long as 13,000 years.
