What geographic areas are well covered by Northwest Research?
In general, our obsidian source coverage is restricted to the western United States and British Columbia, Canada (although there are a few exceptions), and the Western Mediterrean. Coverage for most regions of Oregon, California, Nevada, Washington, Idaho, Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico, and British Columbia is very good. Our source database for Arizona and Alaska is growing but is still patchy. We also occasionally work with volcanic glasses in other geographic areas including Mexico and the Western Mediterranean (good coverage here), the Far East, Russia, and several Pacific Islands. If you’re curious to see what geographic areas have been included in our more recent (1995 and on) reports, click here. If you’re not sure whether or not our source database is adequate for your artifacts, call or e-mail and we can provide more details and/or referrals to other labs. To see which specific sources that we use in correlating artifacts and sources, see our obsidian source reference database list
