SAS Webinar
“Water and Wind: Paleoenvironmental and Archaeological Correlations at Rimrock Draw Rockshelter”
by
Pat O’Grady, Archaeologist for University of Oregon
Monday, December 12, 2022
5:00 p.m. – 6:30 p.m. PDT

Rimrock Draw Rockshelter in Harney County, Oregon, has produced a number of artifacts, botanical remains, and sedimentary deposits indicative of both a nearby marsh and substantial stream. Crescentic stone tools are frequently associated with shallow desert lakes and plants like wapato, bulrush, and wada, are also found in similar settings. Massive rounded boulders in the channel adjacent to the rockshelter attest to long term and high energy stream flow. This presentation will focus on how the archaeology and sedimentology at the rockshelter guided us to search for and discover the ancient hydrologic system that made the site attractive between ca. 18,000 to 7,000 years ago.

Pat O’Grady is a staff archaeologist for the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History. He has taught classes at the University of Oregon campuses in Bend and Eugene, and summer field schools in Harney County for twenty years. O’Grady has been involved with SAS since 2016 when the Society first visited Rimrock Draw Rockshelter.