Theses and Dissertations Collection

In 1976, two archaeologists from University of Idaho went to Bernard Creek Rockshelter in Hells Canyon National Recreational Area, Idaho to survey the damage done by people who were illegally mining the site for artifacts. Since the original excavation in 1976, very little academic work has been done on the site's collection that was recovered at a time pivotal to the understanding of lithic debitage. My main research questions are: is there any correlation between lithic typology and environmental changes, what was the function of the site, did site function change over time, and is there a change in lithic raw material that suggests a more curated or expedient behavior? The importance of the findings will be to help archaeologists better understand behavior of the Cascade archaeological phase and realize the importance environment had on a lithic system through the use of correlations.