ON THE HOLOCENE HISTORY OF ELK (CERVUS-ELAPHUS) IN EASTERN WASHINGTON

Historically, North American elk (Cervus elaphus) were thought to have been absent from the arid steppe habitats of the Columbia Basin of ea stern Washington. McCorquodale (1985, Northwest Science) used zooarcha eological data to show elk had been present there during the Holocene. Presently available zooarchaeological data indicate elk were present during each 1000 yr increment of the last 5000 years, hut those data a re not sufficiently robust to allow detection of changes in the range or abundance of elk. Limited data suggest that the introduction of Eur oamerican technology and horses to Native American peoples may have in itiated local extirpation of late prehistoric-early historic elk, and that some late-prehistoric elk in the Pacific Northwest were larger th an modem elk.