Bald Mountain Mine

A Peek Inside PaleoWest’s Data Recovery Project at Eastern Nevada’s Bald Mountain Mine

Nov 4, 2021

PaleoWest recently completed archaeological investigations in support of Kinross’s Bald Mountain Mine in White Pine County, Nevada. Our team carried out data recovery at 20 individual archaeological sites during the summer field season.

This culturally rich area is part of the Maverick Archaeological District—considered eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places (NRHP)—and contains hundreds of prehistoric archaeological sites, despite the scarcity of permanent water sources in the area. The diversity of resources here is impressive—the area contains rock shelters, campsites, and lithic tool manufacturing sites. The range of artifacts documented by PaleoWest includes projectile points, bifaces, scrapers, and associated tool-making debris.

PaleoWest experts even recovered bifacial stone tools, ceramics, ground stone, worked bone beads, charcoal, and the remnants of what was likely once a subsurface hearth within one of the rock shelters.  

With fieldwork concluded, our experts will now complete laboratory analysis and document their findings in technical reports over the winter months.

PaleoWest is honored to have assisted the Bald Mountain Mine with this important work.