Frustrated to be stuck at home, I have taken to exploring via Google Earth, and leveraging the fact that debris from stone tool making ("debitage", "lithic debris", ..., "black gold") is visible from satellite views of the Nevada desert. There are places at the edges of an ancient river or lake where humans have left a "bathtub ring" of lithic debris you can see from the air. Southern Nevada is bone dry and the archaeology goes all the way back. Lithic debris is deep and abundant.
I am going back to Las Vegas in February. The more I look at pictures, the more I learn about several different topographies where you can detect lithic debris. I cannot wait to go back. I have been making videos and, to some extent, keeping my planned destinations secret. But there is such abundance, why not let everyone participate in the information? It reminds me of finding rock piles sites and struggling with whether to publicize their locations.
So here is one video about lithic debris, in general, and two videos examining hunting sites south of Las Vegas. I am excited to learn what game "funnels" look like and I started noticing what look like fence post alignments connected to the concentrations of lithic debris. One starts to understand how to trap mountain sheep.
Video 1 - General Discussion [23 minutes]
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