The Goshen point is a medium-sized, lanceolate-shaped, Paleo-Indian projectile point with a straight or concave base. It exhibits characteristic fine flaking. [1]
The point was named in 1988 by George C. Frison after the discovery of specimens at the Hell Gap complex site in southeastern Wyoming. The projectile is so-named after the nearby Goshen Country. [1] [2]
The Mill Iron Site, located in Carter County, Montana and discovered in 1979, is a site belonging to the Goshen Complex. The site was excavated from 1984 to 1988. The excavation was also led by George C. Frison. 31 complete and broken Goshen points were found. 11 of these points were found in the campsite area, 12 were in the meat processing bed, and 7 were on the surface. This meat processing bed is thought to be a meat processing site rather than a kill site because it was a stack (4.5 meters in diameter) of single bison bones and other organized carcass parts. A large goshen point found in this meat processing bed is thought to have been used for ritual offerings rather than a weapon to kill animals. This is because of the carefully rounded tip, when typically a sharp point is made instead. Many other lithic blades were discovered in the Mill Iron Site in addition to the goshen points. [3]
Goshen complex, distinguished by the Goshen point, is similar to the Plainview complex. The Goshen complex, dated about 9,000 to 8,800 BCE, occurred between the Clovis culture and Folsom culture periods. [4] The Goshen Complex was first recognized at the Hell Gap Site in the 1960s. [5]
In archaeological terms, a projectile point is an object that was hafted to weapon that was capable of being thrown or projected, such as a spear, dart, or arrow, or perhaps used as a knife. They are thus different from weapons presumed to have been kept in the hand, such as axes and maces, and the stone mace or axe-heads often attached to them.
The Complex Folsom is a name given by archaeologists to a specific Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America. The term was first used in 1927 by Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Colorado Museum of Natural History.
The Plano cultures is a name given by archaeologists to a group of disparate hunter-gatherer communities that occupied the Great Plains area of North America during the Paleo-Indian or Archaic period.
The Red Ocher people were an indigenous people of North America. A series of archaeological sites located in the Upper Great Lakes, the Greater Illinois River Valley, and the Ohio River Valley in the American Midwest have been discovered to be a Red Ocher burial complex, dating from 1000 BC to 400 BC, the Terminal Archaic – Early Woodland period. Characterized as shallow burials located in sandy ridges along river valleys, covered in red ochre or hydrated iron oxide (FeH3O), they contain diagnostic artifacts that include caches of flint points, turkey-tails, and various forms of worked copper. Turkey-tails are large flint blades of a distinct type. It is believed that Red Ocher people spoke an ancestral form of the Algonquian languages.
George Carr Frison is an American archaeologist. He has been given the Society for American Archaeology's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Paleoarchaeologist of the Century Award, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was Wyoming’s first State Archaeologist, and was a founder of the University of Wyoming Anthropology Department.
The Phillips-Williams Fork Reservoir site (5GA1955) is a Paleoindian site located on the shore of the Williams Fork Reservoir, about 20 kilometers (12 mi) southeast of Kremmling at an elevation of 2400 m (7874 ft.) in Grand County, Colorado, near the center of Middle Park.
Folsom Site or Wild Horse Arroyo, designated by the Smithsonian trinomial 29CX1, is a major archaeological site about 8 miles (13 km) west of Folsom, New Mexico. It is the type site for the Folsom tradition, a Paleo-Indian cultural sequence dating to between 9000 BC and 8000 BC. The Folsom Site was excavated in 1926 and found to have been a marsh-side kill site or camp where 23 bison had been killed using distinctive tools, known as Folsom points. This site is significant because it was the first time that artifacts indisputably made by humans were found directly associated with faunal remains from an extinct form of bison from the Late Pleistocene. The information culled from this site was the first of a set of discoveries that would allow archaeologists to revise their estimations for the time of arrival of Native Americans on the North American continent.
Eden Points are a form of chipped stone projectile points associated with a sub-group of the larger Plano culture. Sometimes also called Yuma points, the first Eden points were discovered in washouts in Yuma County, Colorado. They were first discovered in situ at an ancient buffalo kill site near Eden, Wyoming by Harold J. Cook in 1941. The site, named after discoverer O. M. Finley, eventually yielded 24 projectile points, including eight Eden points, eight Scottsbluff points and one complete Cody point, both other sub-groups within the Plano group. Eden points are believed to have been used between 10,000 and 6,000 years ago by paleo-indian hunters in the western plains.
Prehistory of Colorado provides an overview of the activities that occurred prior to Colorado's recorded history. Colorado experienced cataclysmic geological events over billions of years, which shaped the land and resulted in diverse ecosystems. The ecosystems included several ice ages, tropical oceans, and a massive volcanic eruption. Then, ancient layers of earth rose to become the Rocky Mountains.
The Olsen–Chubbuck Bison kill site is located 16 miles (26 km) southeast of Kit Carson, Colorado. The Paleo-Indian site dates to an estimated 8000–6500 B.C. and provides evidence for bison hunting, using a game drive system, long before the use of the bow and arrow or horses. The site was named Olsen–Chubbuck after the amateur archaeologists who discovered the bone bed, Sigurd Olsen and Gerald Chubbuck. The Olsen–Chubbuck site was excavated between 1958 and 1960 by Joe Ben Wheat, an anthropologist employed through the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History. The site contains a bone-bed of almost 200 bison that were killed and processed by Paleo-Indian hunters.
In the classification of Archaeological cultures of North America, the term Plainview points refer to Paleoindian projectile points dated between 10,000–9,000 Before Present. The point was named in 1947 after the discovery of a large cache of unfluted, lanceolate spear tips with concave bases that were found in a Bison antiquus kill site along the Running Water Draw river, near the town of Plainview in Texas, United States. The point is found primarily throughout the South Plains, however, this range may sometimes be misidentified, as "Plainview" was previously used as a general term to describe unfluted lanceolate points throughout the entirety of the Plains, as well as the eastern Upper Mississippi Valley.
The Jones-Miller Bison Kill Site, located in northeast Colorado, was a Paleo-Indian site where Bison antiquus were killed using a game drive system and butchered. Hell Gap complex bones and tools artifacts at the site are carbon dated from about ca. 8000-8050 BC.
The Jurgens Site is a Paleo-Indian site located near Greeley in Weld County, Colorado. While the site was used primarily to hunt and butcher bison antiquus, there is evidence that the Paleo-Indians also gathered plants and seeds for food about 7,000 to 7,500 BC.
The Trinchera Cave Archeological District (5LA9555) is an archaeological site in Las Animas County, Colorado with artifacts primarily dating from 1000 BC to AD 1749, although there were some Archaic period artifacts found. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001 and is located on State Trust Lands.
The Cody complex is a Paleo-Indian culture group first identified at a bison antiquus kill site near Cody, Wyoming in 1951. Points possessing characteristics of Cody Complex flaking have been found all across North America from Canada to as far south as Oklahoma and Texas.
Apex complex is a cultural tradition of the Middle Archaic period. Apex complex artifacts, dated from about 3000 to 500 BC, first appeared in the Magic Mountain Site near Apex Creek in Colorado.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the prehistoric people of Colorado, which covers the period of when Native Americans lived in Colorado prior to contact with the Domínguez–Escalante expedition in 1776. People's lifestyles included nomadic hunter-gatherering, semi-permanent village dwelling, and residing in pueblos.
Hell Gap complex is a Plano culture from 10,060 to 9,600 before present. It is named after the Hell Gap archaeological site, in Goshen County, Wyoming.
Domebo Canyon, Oklahoma is a Paleo-Indian archaeological site: the site of a mammoth kill in the prairie of southwestern Oklahoma. The Domebo archaeological site features deposits of both incomplete and partially articulated mammoth skeletal remains. Also found at the site were two complete and one fragmentary projectile point, along with three un-worked tool flakes made by prehistoric hunters who lived during the Pleistocene Epoch.
Hell Gap is a deeply stratified archaeological site located in the Great Plains of eastern Wyoming, approximately thirteen miles north of Guernsey, where an abundant amount of Paleoindian and Archaic artifacts have been found and excavated since 1959. This site has had an important impact on North American archaeology because of the large quantity and breadth of prehistoric Paleoindian and Archaic period artifacts and cultures it encompasses. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2016.
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