EDITORS NOTE: Tom Connolly can be reached Thursday through Saturday, Oct. 8—10, at the Great Basin Conference in Bend, Ore., by calling the conference message board at (800) 547-3928. Later, he can be reached at his UO office, (541) 346-3031. Images: Slides of the discovery site are available by calling Ross West, (541) 346-2060. Additional information on the site can be found on the Web at <http://oregon.uoregon.edu/~osma/newberry.html>.

EUGENE, Ore.–Understanding of the early native inhabitants of the New World has leapt forward with the discovery of the oldest house in western North America by University of Oregon archaeologists.

Radiocarbon dating tests of the house, which was about 14 to 18 feet in diameter (4—5 meters) indicate an age of 9,490 Before Present (bp), according to Thomas J. Connolly, archaeologist and research director for the UO Museum of Natural History who headed the investigation. Located in central Oregon, near Paulina Lake and the Newberry Crater, the ancient home site consists of structural posts, a fire hearth and tools, as well as plants used for basketry, floor and roof coverings, and clothing items.

"This find adds a great deal of detail to our understanding of how these people lived their lives," Connolly notes. "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."

From blood residue on tools, for example, it appears the dwellers hunted bison, rabbit, bear, sheep and deer or elk. From remnants in their hearth, it appears they ate chokecherries, hazelnuts, blackberries and other fruits and nuts. They also processed hardwood bark and bulrushes and other plants, used to make baskets, clothing, and floor and roof coverings. They kept warm and cooked with fires from lodgepole pine, ponderosa pine and sagebrush.

Connolly will present a paper describing some aspects of the find at the Great Basin Archaeological Conference being held Oct. 8—10 in Bend, Ore. A book due out in January 1999, titled "Newberry Crater: A 10,000 Year Record of Human Occupation and Environmental Change in the Basin-Plateau Borderlands," (University of Utah Press) will provide a more detailed treatment of the discovery.

The Paulina Lake site is about 25 miles from another site of major archaeological importance, Fort Rock Cave. In 1938, the late UO anthropologist Luther Cressman led an excavation to this site which uncovered about 70 pairs of sandals made of sagebrush bark and dating to the same period as the Paulina Lake site. That discovery altered theories anthropologists held about ancient North Americans, doubling estimates of how long ago the first humans lived in the Northwest.

Among the numerous researchers from many organizations who contributed to the research effort Connolly led were Dennis L. Jenkins, Guy L. Tasa, retiree Richard D. Cheatham and former associate Vivien J. Singer, all of the State Museum of Anthropology on the UO campus; R. Scott Byram, a UO graduate student in anthropology; and UO alumni Robert R. Musil of Heritage Research Associates, Eugene, and Dorothy E. Freidel, now at Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, Calif.

Others involved in the research were Craig E. Skinner of the Northwest Research Obsidian Studies Laboratory, Corvallis, Ore.; John L. Fagan and former associate Shirley Barr Williams, both of Archaeological Investigations Northwest, Portland, Ore.; William L. Cornett, a former Portland State University graduate student; Richard E. Hughes of Geochemical Research Laboratory, Portola Valley, Calif.; Linda Scott Cummings of PaleoResearch Laboratories, Golden, Colo.; and Nancy Stenholm of Botana Labs, Seattle, Wash.

As part of the Great Basin Archaeological Conference, Connolly will lead a tour of the ancient home site from noon to 5:30 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 10. Those interested in the tour should gather in the parking lot at the Riverhouse Hotel and Convention Center, 3075 N. Highway 97, Bend.

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