History of the Field School
The University of Oregon summer archaeological field school was established in 1937 by Luther S. Cressman, who is known as the father of Oregon archaeology. In 1938 the field school, excavating in Fort Rock Cave in the Northern Great Basin of Central Oregon, recovered many sagebrush bark sandals from below a layer of volcanic ash. The ash was laid down nearly 7000 radiocarbon years ago by the climatic eruption of Mount Mazama that created Crater Lake in the southern Cascades. The Fort Rock type sagebrush sandal have since proved through radiocarbon dating to be more than 10,000 years old.
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| Sagebrush bark sandals Fort Rock Cave Photo by Steve Bodini |
This evidence, and other data gathered in pioneering applications of multidisciplinary research in archaeology, allowed Cressman to demonstrate that human occupancy in the Great Basin was much older than previously thought. Since Cressman's time the UO has maintained an active program of research and training in archaeology.
For the past 20 years, the University of Oregon field school has returned annually to the Northern Great Basin to resume Cressman's earlier research there. The ongoing research of the field school's Northern Great Basin Prehistory Project emphasizes reconstruction of past lifeways, paleoclimatic investigations, and human responses to changing environmental conditions.