2016-01-14_REVISION - M1983194 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

cultural materials from the Folsom Tradition are also probably deeply buried. Three Midland points are also reported in the region. In Mesa County, they have been reported at two sites and as one isolated find (5ME281, 5ME1313, and 5ME5327). These projectile points very much resemble unfluted Folsom points and may possibly represent groups which lost, or never acquired, the fluting technology, or they may represent an intermediate step in the manufacturing sequence. They generally overlap, but make their initial appear appearance later than the Folsom points, and range in age from approximately 10,000 BC to 9000 BC. The three resource elevations range from 5,600 feet to 8,700 feet. It appears that the gradually drying climatic conditions may possibly have forced the megafauna and the people to concentrate around and near the more permanent water sources in the lowlands, followed by a dispersed migration to refugia at the higher elevations. As Pitblado (1993) observes, the Clovis and Folsom Tradition peoples occupying the region may have followed a more generalist approach to hunting and gathering rather than specifically focusing on the hunting of megafauna. Notably, the fluted point tradition was coincident with the Western Stemmed Point Complex in the Great Basin and northwest Colorado Plateau, and paralleled its occurrence in the greater Southwest and High Plains regions. The Clovis and Folsom Traditions are followed by a variety of stemmed and/or shouldered Plano Tradition projectile points which may have been contemporaneous with Archaic Stage occupations in the Great Basin. Plano Tradition About 9200 BC, wetter environmental conditions again prevailed and timberline was lower in the La Plata Mountains located to the south of the Resource Management Plan Project Area (RMPPA). Dunal areas began to stabilize and the sage brush began to replace the desert shrubs. However, around 9000 BC another change occurred and the environment became drier. Between then and about 4300 BC the timberline in the San Juan Mountains gradually retreated to higher elevations than at present. Somewhere around 8250 BC the monsoon pattern appears to have shifted southward. As a result, the drying climatic conditions in the more northerly lowlands caused forage production to drop and affected the distribution of the faunal populations in the eastern Great Basin and Wyoming Basin. However, such conditions would have increased the occurrence of cool season tubers. By about 6900 BC, pinyon trees were well established in northwestern New Mexico (Eckerle 1992). These changing forage conditions may have helped spur a shift toward an increase in gathering in the lower elevations, along with a movement of animals and people to the relatively moister and higher elevations of the foothills and mountains. The Plano Tradition, which includes the Foothill-Mountain Complex of the Middle and Southern Rocky Mountains and the Cody Complex of the Plains and Mountains, is generally coeval with the early Western Stemmed Pluvial Lakes Complexes of the Western Great Basin. Within the region, projectile points representing the Plains complexes of Agate Basin, Hell Gap, Scottsbluff/Eden, James Allen, and Cody have been recovered from surface contexts of about 30 sites. Again, the Plano sites' elevations mirror the general 16