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• Frison's scenario also offers a plausible explanation for the ~bble <br />layers that surround many of the hearths. These wnoentrations alm~t <br />surely represent the materials that were cleaned out of the hearths. <br />Those features without surrounding nibbles may represent those hearths <br />that were abandoned and not cleaned out. This latter observation is <br />further substantiated by the realization that the two hearths with <br />closely similar radiocarbon dates, Hearths 6 and 21, also lads a <br />surrounding nibble layer (see Table 7). <br />A supplementary use of these firehearths might have been as a heat <br />source far treatment of lithic materials to improve their flaking <br />chazacteristics, as O'Neil (1980) suggested might have occurred at <br />SKfll. Both 511P11 and 5KP139 contained substantial amounts of thermally <br />altered lithic materials, priunarily debitage. <br />It would appear fran the data presented so far that the features exposed <br />• at SKP139 were used for either food preparation, lithic manufacture, or <br />both. One must ask, of course, if food was being prepared at these loci, <br />what was this food? The projectile points that were revered during <br />survey and testing clearly suggest that some food was procured through <br />hunting and extrapolation frun the modern faunal evidence indicates that <br />large game, viz. deer, elk, and possibly bison, was the primary objective <br />of this hunting. The abundance of tools exhibiting evidence of utiliza- <br />tion in cutting or scraping tasks bolsters a supposition that butchering <br />and piroc~ssing of these an;malc probably occurred at this locale. The <br />total paucity of bone fragments (other than modern sheep) fran any ~n- <br />text at the site has at least two implications: the meat was butchered <br />at the site and cooked in a hide or fiber bag but later transported to a <br />more permanent base camp; prehistoric occupation of SKP139 was task <br />specific, i.e. the procurement of meat. <br />The occurrence of various edible plants on, or in the vicinity of, site <br />SIZC139 suggests the possibility that these resources might have been <br />• exploited by the prehistoric occupants. Lacking direct evidence of such <br />activities--grinding stones, microfloral or macrofloral rF~na;,,a-such a <br />51 <br />