Old Cordilleran Culture

A late Pleistocene cultural tradition based on the hunting of small game and the collection of wild foods in the mountain and plateau region of western North America, especially Oregon and Washington, between c 9000-5000 BC (or later). The diagnostic tool is the leaf-shaped Cascade point, a distinctive bipointed lanceolate point. It was usually accompanied by scraping tools (chopper tools, bolas) and occasionally by milling stones (burins). The type site is Five Mile Rapids, Oregon (9800 BP). They may have been contemporaneous with Big Game Hunting tradition. The tradition has a terminal date of c 7000 BP and it may have cultural ties to the San Dieguito.

Late Pleistocene culture which pursued a generalized hunting and gathering way of life in the high ground of the Pacific Cordilleran Mountains. The characteristic artefact is a leaf-shaped bifacial projectile point (Cascade point) which was first identified from sites in the Cascade Mountains of Washington and Oregon, USA; it has been found as far north as the Fraser River Valley as well as down into South America. Radiocarbon dates from these sites fall between 9000 and 5000 be with many clustering in the middle of this period. See Table 9, page 552.