Gypsum Cave holds important glimpses of the past
When he excavated Gypsum Cave in the 1930s, archeologist Mark Harrington concluded that humans and Late Pleistocene animals used the cave around the same time.
It was an astounding theory, because it would have made the cave, which is in the Frenchman Mountains east of Las Vegas, one of the oldest human habitation sites in North America.
More recently technology indicates the humans came much later than Harrington supposed, but the cave is still an important archeological and paleontological site, members of Friends of Gold Butte heard last Tuesday,
Amy Gilreath of Far West Anthropological Research Group spoke to the group about the research she and colleague D. Craig Young carried out in 2004.
Gypsum Cave is about 10 miles east of Las Vegas, and a popular site. It is also adjacent to a utility corridor. When another power line was proposed through the area, the Bureau of Land Management required an assessment of the cave’s value and the risk posed by increased traffic.
The cave, divided into several rooms, is 300 feet long and 120 feet wide. The front part of the cave contained rich evidence of being occupied by humans and prehistoric animals.
Harrington and a small crew of Pit River Indians spent about a year excavating the cave in 1930-31. The archeologist mapped the strata of the cave and found various ages of occupation by people and animals.
One of the prominent features of the cave is a thick layer of ground sloth dung. Harrington found claws and other remains of the ground sloth, as well as evidence of prehistoric horses and camels. Gilreath said the material found in the cave was remarkably well preserved.
Harrington’s surprise discovery was darts and other human artifacts below the ground sloth layer. Since the Shasta ground sloth became extinct about 9,000 years ago, the evidence seemed to indicate human habitation before that,
But Gilreath said when radiocarbon dating technology became available, tests showed the human evidence was not much older than 4,000 years. When she and her colleagues were studying the cave, they noticed a number of packrats scurrying through the jumbled rock, and concluded the rodents moved material from the upper layers to lower layers.
http://www.thespectrum.com/article/20090526/DVTONLINE01/90525008/1053/DVTONLINE
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