Ever want to visit the location where North America's oldest shoes were found? Don't worry, these early versions of Nike are safely tucked away in a Eugene museum and you won't smell them.
Archaeologists from the University of Oregon will be returning to the site of the 1938 discovery of the oldest known footwear in the world.
Fort Rock Cave in northern Lake County is famous for dozens of approximately 10,000-year-old sagebrush bark woven sandals that were found there by the "Father of Oregon Archaeology," Luther S. Cressman, who was on the UO faculty from 1929 until his retirement in 1963.
Scheduled for Aug. 31-Sept. 4, archaeologists will follow up on Cressman's investigations. Fort Rock Cave should not be confused with Paisely Cave, another important archeological site nearby where UO researchers found 14,300-year-old coprolites (human feces).
Limited public access to the site will be provided by the Oregon Parks and Recreation Department in partnership with UO. If interested in visiting Fort Rock Cave during the archaeological excavation, contact OPRD staff at 541-923-7551 estension 21 to make arrangements. Fort Rock Cave became part of the Oregon park system in 2000 and is accessible only by guided tour.
(The blogger has been to the cave before, although not during an archeological dig. The setting felt like many other locations in Oregon's part of the Great Basin, but seeing the actual site where the sandals were found certainly sets the mind wandering.)
Cressman discovered the sandals beneath a layer of volcanic ash produced by the 7,600-year-old eruption of Mount Mazama, which created Crater Lake. The age of the sandals was confirmed in the 1950s through radio carbon dating. In 1966, Cressman returned to the site with graduate student Stephen Bedwell who uncovered a hearth in Pleistocene (Ice Age) gravels. Charcoal from the fire pit was radiocarbon dated to roughly 15,800 years before present, the oldest reputed hearth in Oregon.
"As important as the site is to the human story of North America, the archaeological work there was done more than half a century ago,'' said Tom Connolly, project leader and director of archaeological research for the UO Museum of Natural and Cultural History where the sandals are kept. "We still have important questions about the site that might be answered with recovery methods and analytical techniques that were not available to Cressman and his students.
"Our excavation will not be extensive,' he said in a statement released by the museum, "but will focus on the chronology and dating of the site deposits, and drawing critical samples for later analysis."
While in the area, visitors will want to seek out the myriad of geological oddities in the Fort Rock and Christmas valleys.
-- Terry Richard
trichard@oregonian.com
503-221-8222; @trichardpdx