Prehistoric Quarries and Terranes: The Modena and Tempiute Obsidian Sources of the American Great Basin

Abstract

Prehistoric stone quarries are an understudied site type in North America. Reasons for this omission are myriad, but as Michael Shott points out in this book, they include the analytical challenges presented by their vast amounts of usually temporally mixed assemblages of flaking debris. Couple that with the apparent self-evident nature of site function, there is little incentive to examine ancient toolstone sources. In this volume, Shott addresses these issues head-on and demonstrates that, while not effortless in execution, stone quarries can be systematically studied with substantive results.