A small hill at the edge of a glacial lake, at the south end of the Las Vegas Range

Let me tell you my story about going to Nevada. It is not rock pile related although, in truth, there were rock piles on top of each of the only three prominences I got to. No, I went to find arrowheads. I didn't find any but I did see an awful lot of thought provoking archeology. I am sure the place I visited is not particularly special and there must be many, many places like this. But in some ways it was special and, at the end of this story, I will show why I believe this may be one of the more densely occupied sites in the valley. It is called "Hidden Valley" and is just north of Las Vegas on I15, on NV93.

For the last three or more years of the Covid pandemic, I have been sitting at home dreaming about visiting the southwest desert. And looking at maps and pictures. For a long time I was looking at cheap real estate pictures from near Saint Johns, AZ but no one in my family seemed very warm to the idea of buying land there. Then, more recently, I became crazed about finding arrowheads. So I was watching YouTube's about people finding long stemmed points around glacial lakes in the Great Basin - and I thought maybe I could give it a try.  

One video was about excavating Haskett points in Great Salt Lake and it said that the best place to look for archeology was where fresh water entered the lake, when the climate was beginning to dry out after the ice age. It also gave clues as to what the old water courses would have looked like in satellite images. So I am looking at satellite images and topo maps and locating the glacial lakes near Las Vegas. One problem that suggested itself, is that many of the lakeshores from the late ice age appear to be completely buried under a deep outwash from the adjacent hills (called the "bajada", according to my friend Dave). It occurred to me that small hills at the edge of the lakeshore, even if surrounded by the bajada, might retain original surface and not be covered with silt. So I spotted something on the topo map that looked just right: near Las Vegas, edge of glacial lake, small hill within the lake AND not in a National Park where it could be illegal to pick up even "just a rock" items. I thought I was being quite clever to spot this place and plan to visit:

You may have to click in to see it but the crosshair is along NV93 at a place where a dirt road heads west for a couple of kilometers, where it stops at the back side of a small hill that met all my criteria. 

So I planned a trip out there and finally arrived. This is the drive, the next day in passing the place:

I tried to drive in on the indicated dirt road but came to a washout. Don't get me started on the experience of 4WD and dirt roads. It is not my idea of fun but I had rented a Toyota Highlander - a fine vehicle - and took no chances. I walked in the final 1/4 mile.

You can hear a bit of wistfulness in my voice here. I went through a lot to get to this spot - now what? I have come a long way to take a chance on this place and am a bit scared of the desert. You have to force yourself to get out.

In the second half of the video, I am looking at the scatter of flakes and debitage on the ground. It was really only when I got back home when I realized this ground could not have been underwater when people broke rocks here. Which is one of many different factors contributing to my overall confusion about the date of the site(s) on this hill and its flat surroundings. I spent two days exploring this hill in the desert, wishing I could find a glacial lakeshore. And that is exactly where I was the whole time!

I saw lots of nice pieces of broken rock and collected a few stone tools. I'll do them more justice later. Here is the most exiting thing I found. 

The idea that I might find something like this - unbroken - has me wanting to go back and try again. Even half a day of exploring exhausts the neurons and you can see why - a very intense 'needle in a haystack' situation. Maybe next year. 

So I walked around for one day. The next day I went north, then east on NV168 to a dirt road into Arrow Canyon. This was a different kind of place and perhaps of more interest to NEARA members than to arrowhead hunters. Some of the archeology up on the cap rock there seemed stunningly old, compared to everything else I have seen. More later on that.

The third day, I had company from my friend Dave. We tried the little hill on the east side of NV93 and then spent most of the day back at the little hill. I did not find any more nice suggestive blades but we had a lovely chat. 

The trips out and the trip back were exhausting. I got home, unpacked my finds, took a shower and went right to bed. Two days later I am still hydrating, napping, and thinking about it all. The worst moment on the way back was when the lady in front of me went through security and had to have her bag searched. She was asked: "Is there anything sharp in your bag?". When I heard that, I started thinking about the stone axes I had in each coat pocket. I was not going to let them take those away at the airport! I put on a cheerful face and they overlooked the possibility of sharp objects in a coat pocket. 

I should mention that the bedrock here, north of Las Vegas, is volcanic [or marine?]; with layers of ash and nodules of chert. Sometimes the chert is in complete layers with colors ranging brown to reddish. Exposed to the air, it becomes increasingly black with desert varnish. There is a an earlier post about the material. What turned out to be quite lucky was that the little hill I picked from here in Massachusetts, happened to be made of one of the chert layers. Now that I am back in Massachusetts I am realizing that the hill itself was a good source of material for making stone tools. 

I was thinking some more about those patches of chert debitage, black from desert varnish. And it occurred to me that perhaps they might be visible in the satellite images. They are (and here I am going to tell you one key to unlocking desert archeology. If you've read this far, then you deserve to know this:) You can see every site in the entire valley by spotting the darker patches of lithic debris in the satellite images. What do you know?! My little hill has the darkest patch of all. But I can see some other places that have concentrations. 

Here, then, are some things we can learn.

The hill is shown from above as a darker brown oblong running from south-southeast to north-northwest. It is a chert outcrop. There is a stone 'U' and a rock piles on the southern and northern summits. Let's notice the game trails from left to right. These cross the hill at a slight saddle between its summits. I was thinking: why would an animal not go around this hill? [Stubbornly it insists on going straight towards whatever destination it has in mind but - poor animal - when it crosses the hill, going downwind, it is likely to encounter hunters on the downwind side.] Look how the hunters have left a black crescent of debitage around the southern foot of the hill. Look how they left concentrations just next to the game trail outlet. This is fascinating: the debitage is a heat map. It is a guide to the whole valley. 

Now I am at home, looking at my finds. It was a very stimulating trip. I wish I had some graduate students to help with some of the obvious experiments. There were many different tool types and even differences in how little micro-blades were retouched or not, before use. I would think equating desert varnish color could be calibrated to OSL dates and that rather than the different styles and ages and locations forming an entire cacophony [what I am calling it] that, instead, we could start teasing it apart. Meanwhile, I keep thinking about butchering a camel.

If you want to hear me get carried away with the subject of lithic analysis, see here.