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. [1] [2] [nb 1]
The Jones-Miller site is located in Yuma County, Colorado, 10 miles from the town of Laird in the Republican River basin. [3] The grassland site is located at a 18 inches (46 cm) deep draw that drains into an Arikaree River tributary. [4]
Within the Denver Basin, prehistoric time periods are traditionally identified as: Paleo-Indian, Archaic and Ceramic (Woodland) periods. [5] The Denver basin is a geological definition of a portion of the Colorado Piedmont from Colorado Springs to Wyoming and west to Kansas and Nebraska. The Palmer Divide, with elevations from 6,000 to 7,500, is a subsection of that area that separates the South Platte River watershed from that of the Arkansas River. [6] It runs perpendicular to the Rocky Mountains and divides the Denver metropolitan area from the southern Pikes Peak area. [7]
The period immediately preceding the first humans coming into Colorado was the Ice Age Summer of about 16,000 years ago. Large mammals, such as the mastodon, mammoth, camelops, giant sloths, cheetah, bison antiquus and horses roamed the land. There were a few Paleo-Indian cultures, distinctive by the size of the tools they used and the animals they hunted. People in the first Paleo-Indian period, the Clovis complex period, had large tools to hunt the megafauna animals. [8]
By 11,000 years ago (9,000 BC), the climate warmed and lakes and savannas receded. The land became drier, food became less abundant, and as a result of the giant animals became extinct. Receding and melting glaciers created the Plum and Monument Creeks, created the Castle Rock mesas and unburied the Rocky Mountains. [8] People adapted by hunting smaller mammals and gathering wild plants to supplement their diet. [9] A new cultural complex was born, the Folsom tradition, with smaller projectile points to hunt smaller animals. [8] [10] Aside from hunting smaller mammals, people adapted by gathering wild plants to supplement their diet. [9]
The Lindenmeier site, the largest known Paleo-Indian Folsom site, [11] contained artifacts of the Paleo-Indians who lived and hunted in the present Fort Collins area approximately 11,000 years ago. Some of the artifacts are identified from people of the Folsom tradition, named for the Folsom site in New Mexico, and identified as such by the Folsom points used for hunting the large, now extinct Bison antiquus. They likely also gathered food in the area, such as seeds, nuts and seasonal fruits. They were nomadic people, following the bison herds, and camping many places each year. [12] [13]
Robert Jones, Jr., a rancher in the Wray, Colorado area, found bones and projectile points near his home in 1972. Jack Miller, a local anthropologist, performed a test site excavation and found bones and Paleo-Indian artifacts. Dennis Stanford, an archaeologist at the Smithsonian Institution, was contacted and a full-scale excavation of the Jones Miller site was performed between 1973 and 1978 [14] of what is primarily a bison kill site. Waldo Rudolph Wedel said in 1986 that it was the "most carefully studied bison kill" site. [3]
Archaeologists learned how early native people may have hunted large prey from the artifacts at the 98 by 66 feet (30 by 20 m) Jones-Miller site. Remains of 300 bison were found in an arroyo, or draw, above the Arikaree River basin. It was believed that the bison were strategically driven into an area difficult for the bison to traverse and easier to kill on three occasions. Because many of the animals were nursing calves, it is estimated that the kills occurred in late fall or winter. [2] [14] [15] [nb 2] The bones from the bison kill were piled into many stacks, indicating that there were several butcher sites. [2]
Artifacts found at the site include Hell Gap complex projectile points and flakes, knives, scrapers and tools made of bone. [2] While there is little evidence to determine the extent to which Paleo-Indians practiced religion, artifacts grouped together at the Jones-Miller site are like that of historic northern Plains people's medicine post ceremony where, among the bison bones were placed a projectile point, dog remains and an antler flute. [15] The practice is similar to that of the Cree and Assiniboine people. The site is dated at 10,020 +/- 320 years before present, or about 8000 BC. It is the only Hell Gap (Wyoming) site in Colorado. [16]
The collection of artifacts from the Smithsonian Institution's excavation in the 1970s was donated to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science in 1997. The collection, called the "Jones-Miller Hell Gap Bison Kill Site Collection," contains bison bones, projectile points and stone tools. [17]
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.
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.
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.
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 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 Magic Mountain site is an Archaic and Woodland village site in Jefferson County, Colorado dating from 4999 BC to 1000 AD. The site was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.
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 Goshen point is a medium-sized, lanceolate-shaped, Paleo-Indian projectile point with a straight or concave base. It exhibits characteristic fine flaking.
The Dismal River culture refers to a set of cultural attributes first seen in the Dismal River area of Nebraska in the 1930s by archaeologists William Duncan Strong, Waldo Rudolph Wedel and A. T. Hill. Also known as Dismal River aspect and Dismal River complex, dated between 1650 and 1750 A.D., is different from other prehistoric Central Plains and Woodland traditions of the western Plains. The Dismal River people are believed to have spoken an Athabascan language and to have been part of the people later known to Europeans as the Apache.
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.
The Apishapa culture, or Apishapa Phase, a prehistoric culture from 1000 to 1400, was named based upon an archaeological site in the Lower Apishapa canyon in Colorado. The Apishapa River, a tributary of the Arkansas River, formed the Apishapa canyon. In 1976, there were 68 Apishapa sites on the Chaquaqua Plateau in southeastern Colorado.
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.
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.
The game drive system is a hunting strategy in which game are herded into confined or dangerous places where they can be more easily killed. It can also be used for animal capture as well as for hunting, such as for capturing mustangs. The use of the strategy dates back into prehistory. Once a site is identified or manipulated to be used as a game drive site, it may be repeatedly used over many years. Examples include buffalo jumps and desert kites.
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| Contemporary peoples native to Colorado |
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| Prehistoric cultures in Colorado |
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