The Bravo Creek site (35CU123) is located in the foothills of the Klamath Mountains approximately 7.5 km inland from the Pacific Ocean in Curry County, Oregon. Situated on a high terrace overlooking Bravo Creek, the site contains cultural deposits with a maximum depth of 80 cm within a total site area of less than 600 m2
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Archaeological investigations in 1992 included collection of artifacts from the surface and controlled excavation of 9.8 m3 of the cultural deposit within an area of 14 m2. This 2.3% sample was concentrated in the portion of the site where the densest cultural deposits were located.
A total of 175 tools and 19,339 pieces of lithic debitage were recovered. With the exception of a single clay pipe stem fragment, all of the artifacts are made of stone. The most common tools represented are bifaces, unifaces, cores, and hammerstones, indicating that this site functioned primarily as a lithic workshop. The predominance of tools and debitage made of chert indicates that the reduction of this locally-available lithic material was the primary activity undertaken at this site. A radiocarbon date of 2710 ± 60 B.P. obtained from charcoal collected during the excavations may relate to natural fires rather than to human activity. Obsidian hydration age estimates suggest occupation somewhat later between circa 1650 and 350 B.P. The small narrow-necked projectile points most common at this site are assignable to the Gunther Series, which has a known time range from late prehistoric times into the historic era.
The Bravo Creek site and other archaeological sites so far investigated in the Klamath Mountain foothills appear to represent an aspect of the settlement-subsistence system of prehistoric peoples who lived along the southern Oregon coast. On the basis of projectile point cross-dating and obsidian hydration measurements, this foothills aspect appears to have considerable antiquity, perhaps on the order of 4000-6000 years. The presence of Gunther Series projectile points indicates that the lithic workshop at the Bravo Creek site was related to the Gunther Pattern, previously defined on the basis of artifact assemblages recovered from villages and other settlements along the immediate coastal margin. The new information obtained from the Bravo Creek site and other inland localities suggests that the late prehistoric peoples of the southern Oregon coast made greater use of the Klamath Mountain foothills environment than has been previously recognized.