Folsom points are projectile points associated with the Folsom tradition of North America. The style of tool-making was named after the Folsom site located in Folsom, New Mexico, where the first sample was found in 1908 by George McJunkin within the bone structure of an extinct bison, Bison antiquus, an animal hunted by the Folsom people. The Folsom point was identified as a unique style of projectile point in 1926. The Folsom point found in association with the extinct bison bones proved to the scientific community that humans had lived in the Americas thousands of years longer than many had previously believed.
The Folsom tradition is a Paleo-Indian archaeological culture that occupied much of central North America from c. 10800 BCE to c. 10200 BCE. The term was first used in 1927 by Jesse Dade Figgins, director of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. The discovery by archaeologists of projectile points in association with the bones of extinct Bison antiquus, especially at the Folsom site near Folsom, New Mexico, established much greater antiquity for human residence in the Americas than the previous scholarly opinion that humans in the Americas dated back only 3,000 years. The findings at the Folsom site have been called the "discovery that changed American archaeology."
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.
Bison antiquus, the antique bison or ancient bison, is an extinct species of bison that lived in Late Pleistocene North America until around 10,000 years ago. It was one of the most common large herbivores on the North American continent during the late Pleistocene, and is a direct ancestor of the living American bison along with Bison occidentalis.
The Stanfield-Worley Bluff Shelter, located on private property in Colbert County in northwestern Alabama, United States, is one of the most important prehistoric sites excavated in the state due to the archeological evidence deposited by the Paleo-Indians who once occupied the rock shelter. Lying in Sanderson Cove along a tributary of Cane Creek approximately seven miles (11 km) south of the Tennessee Valley, the shelter and the high bluffs of the surrounding valley provided a well-protected environment for the Native American occupants.
The Lindenmeier site is a stratified multi-component archaeological site most famous for its Folsom component. The former Lindenmeier Ranch is in the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, in northeastern Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The site contains the most extensive Folsom culture campsite yet found with calibrated radiocarbon dates of c. 12,300 B.P.. Artifacts were also found from subsequent Archaic and Late pre-historic periods.
The Cooper Bison Kill Site is an archaeological site near Fort Supply in Harper County, Oklahoma, United States. Located along the Beaver River, it was explored in 1993 and 1994 and found to contain artifacts of the Folsom tradition, dated at c.10800 BCE to c. 10,200 BCE in calibrated radiocarbon years. Findings include projectile points, the bow and arrow not yet being in use at this date. The projectile points are the results of hunters killing bison in an arroyo. The hunters of this culture found the site continuously useful; the known artifacts are believed to be the results of three different hunts.
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 11000 BC and 10000 BC. The Folsom site was excavated in 1926 and found to have been a marsh-side kill site or camp where 32 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.
Joe Ben Wheat (1916–1997) was an American archaeologist, curator, teacher, and author known for his expertise on blanket weavings and textiles of the Navajo and other Indians in Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. His research focused on Mogollon, Anasazi, Great Plains Paleo-Indian, and African Paleolithic archaeology.
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 LoDaisKa site is a prominent archaeological site in the U.S. state of Colorado, located within a rockshelter near Morrison. The rockshelter was first inhabited by people of the Archaic through the Middle Ceramic period, generally spanning 3000 BC to 1000 AD.
The Olsen–Chubbuck Bison kill site is a Paleo-Indian site that dates to an estimated 8000–6500 B.C. and provides evidence for bison hunting and using a game drive system, long before the use of the bow and arrow or horses. The site holds a bone bed of nearly 200 bison that were killed, butchered, and consumed by Paleo-Indian hunters. The site is located 16 miles southeast of Kit Carson, Colorado. The site was named after archaeologists, Sigurd Olsen and Gerald Chubbuck, who discovered the bone bed in 1957. In 1958, the excavation of the Olsen-Chubbuck site was then turned over to the University of Colorado Museum of Natural History, a team led by Joe Ben Wheat, an anthropologist employed by the museum.
In the classification of Archaeological cultures of North America, the term Plainview points refer to Paleoindian projectile points dated between 10,000 and 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.
Franktown Cave is located 25 miles (40 km) south of Denver, Colorado on the north edge of the Palmer Divide. It is the largest rock shelter documented on the Palmer Divide, which contains artifacts from many prehistoric cultures. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers occupied Franktown Cave intermittently for 8,000 years beginning about 6400 BC The site held remarkable lithic and ceramic artifacts, but it is better known for its perishable artifacts, including animal hides, wood, fiber and corn. Material goods were produced for their comfort, task-simplification and religious celebration. There is evidence of the site being a campsite or dwelling as recently as AD 1725.
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.
Lamb Spring is a pre-Clovis prehistoric Paleo-Indian archaeological site located in Douglas County, Colorado with the largest collection of Columbian mammoth bones in the state. Lamb Spring also provides evidence of Paleo-Indian hunting in a later period by the Cody culture complex group. Lamb Spring was listed in 1997 on the National Register of Historic Places.
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.
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-gathering, semi-permanent village dwelling, and residing in pueblos.
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.
Hannah Marie Wormington was an American archaeologist known for her writings and fieldwork on southwestern and Paleo-Indians archaeology over a long career that lasted almost sixty years.
