Nevada: Browns Bench

Location of recorded outcrops of Browns Bench obsidian

NAME	BROWNS BENCH
LOCATION	Elko County, Nevada, and Twin Falls and Cassia counties, south-central Idaho.
CHEMICAL SOURCE(S)	Browns Bench.
DESCRIPTION	Obsidian nodules correlated with the geochemically-variable Browns Bench (AKA Brown's Bench) source are reported from in excess of a 2,000 square kilometer area in southwestern Idaho and extreme northeastern Nevada. Glass from the source is typically opaque and may be quite variable in color. Although prehistoric use of the Browns Bench source material is known primarily from sites in northeastern and eastcentral Nevada and southern Idaho, an obsidian artifact from this source has been identified as far away as the Seattle area of Washington. Obsidian Hydration: Due to the extreme opacity of the glass, it if often difficult to impossible to measure hydration rims on artifacts from this source.
REFERENCES	Bailey 1992 Beck and Jones 1990, 1994 Ekren et al. 1984 Hughes 1990 Hughes and Smith 1993 Jones and Beck 1990, 1992 Jones at al. 2003 Nelson 1984 Sappington 1981
CREDITS	--

Last Updated: 02/22/2004