What The Obsidian Still Carries

The stemmed biface from the Buhl burial — the large obsidian point that is the archaeologically most significant object from the grave — carries layers of meaning that the dating uncertainty does not erase.

It was made from obsidian sourced at a distance from the burial site.

The sourcing of obsidian through X-ray fluorescence was reported in the 1998 paper, linking the material to specific volcanic sources in the Pacific Northwest.

The specific source attribution matters because it documents geographic connectivity — whoever made or acquired this point had access to a material from sources that required travel or trade across at least some distance.