Recent excavations by the Ancient Southwest Texas Project of Texas State University sampled a previously undocumented Younger Dryas component from Eagle Cave in the Lower Pecos Canyonlands of Texas. This stratified assemblage consists of bison (Bison antiquus) bones in association with lithic artifacts and a hearth. Bayesian modeling yields an age of 12,660–12,480 cal BP, and analyses indicate behaviors associated with the processing of a juvenile bison and the manufacture and maintenance of lithic tools. This article presents spatial, faunal, macrobotanical, chronometric, geoarchaeological, and lithic analyses relating to the Younger Dryas component within Eagle Cave. The identification of the Younger Dryas occupation in Eagle Cave should encourage archaeologists to revisit previously excavated rockshelter sites in the Lower Pecos and beyond to evaluate deposits for unrecognized, older occupations.

Cougar Mountain Cave is located in Oregon's Fort Rock Basin. In 1958, avocationalist John Cowles excavated most of the cave's deposits and recovered abundant fiber, lithic, wood, and osseous artifacts. A crew from the University of California, Davis returned to the site in 1966 to evaluate the potential for further research, collecting additional lithic and fiber artifacts from disturbed deposits and in situ charcoal from apparently undisturbed deposits. Because Cowles took few notes or photographs, the Cougar Mountain Cave collection—most of which is housed at the Favell Museum in Klamath Falls, Oregon—has largely gone unstudied even though it contains diagnostic artifacts spanning the Holocene and, potentially, the terminal Pleistocene. We recently submitted charcoal and basketry from the site for radiocarbon dating, providing the first reliable sense of when Cougar Mountain Cave was first occupied. Our results indicate at least a Younger Dryas age for initial occupation. The directly dated basketry has provided new information about the age ranges and spatial distributions of diagnostic textile types in the northwestern Great Basin.