Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter

The Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter (3NW79) is located in southeastern Newton County near the top of the Boston Mountains Escarpment within the drainage basin of the Buffalo River. It was used by Native Americans intermittently for thousands of years and has provided a wealth of artifacts.

The rock shelter formed in a sandstone member of the Bloyd Formation. It is crescent shaped, measures 207 meters long and and has a maximum width of ten meters wide. The shelter has an overall orientation of southwest-northeast. It is located on the property of the Ozark-St. Francis National Forests.

No professional or systematic excavations have been conducted at the site (3NW79), which was recorded in 1962. Uncontrolled extensive digging by looters and collecting by avocational archaeologists such as Louis and Thelma Gregoire occurred intermittently at the site from at least the late 1950s until the early 1970s. More than 1,500 chipped-stone artifacts from the Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter are held in the Gregoire Collection, which was donated to the Ozark-St. Francis National Forests in 1986 and is curated at Arkansas Tech University in Russellville (Pope County).

A study in 2017 sought to determine the diachronic use of chipped-stone resources at the Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter, but coatings of crystalline and amorphous (opal) silica on the surfaces of some artifacts hampered the identification of raw material types. Nevertheless, 1,219 chipped-stone artifacts were identified as to raw material type. The analyses revealed that the rock shelter was inhabited intermittently for more than 11,800 years, or from Late Paleoindian to Late Prehistoric times. Based on diagnostic projectile points, it appears that the Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter was occupied most frequently during the Early Archaic and Late Archaic periods and least frequently during the Early Woodland and Late Prehistoric periods.

The bulk of diagnostic projectile points and nondiagnostic artifacts (e.g., cores, flakes, and bifaces) were made from three local chert resources—Pitkin, Undifferentiated Osagean, and Reeds Spring. Most of the curated artifacts such as projectile points were made from Undifferentiated Osagean chert, while most of the nondiagnostic artifacts from 3NW79 are composed of Pitkin chert. These cores, flakes, and preforms indicate that the bulk of the raw material that was carried up to the rock shelter and reduced (knapped) on site was Pitkin. Several non-local (Pierson chert, Jefferson City chert, Jefferson City quartzite, Everton quartzite, and Atoka ironstone), and exotic (Arkansas novaculite and Johns Valley quartzite) chipped-stone resources are also represented in the collection.

An analysis of artifacts with cortical surfaces revealed that the vast majority of the local chert resources (Pitkin, Undifferentiated Osagean, and Reeds Spring) was procured from residual sources located on ridge slopes approximately 183–329 meters (600–1080 feet) below the Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter. Small quantities of Pitkin, Undifferentiated Osagean, and Reeds Spring cherts were also collected from redeposited cobbles in area waterways such as Big Creek, Left Fork of Big Creek, and the Buffalo River.

For additional information:
Ray, Jack H. “Chipped-Stone Artifacts in the Gregoire Collection from Rattlesnake Basket Rockshelter (3NW79) in Newton County, Arkansas.” Arkansas Archeologist 56 (2018).

Jack H. Ray
Missouri State University