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storage of food for at least part of the year; and 2) organization of food procurement groups. <br />Limitations to this orientation would be that long-term stays at residential camps would <br />result in predation pressure on the higher ranked flora and fauna in adjacent areas, which <br />would have increased the number of species being exploited, increased the travel distance <br />for procurement, and lead to the expansion of a dietary regime to include lower-ranked <br />plants and animals (Kennett et al. 2006:135). Such a situation would have also opened <br />Archaic populations to the acceptance of domesticated plants. <br />Archaic Chronology <br />Evidence of the Paleoarchaic transition period (ca. 7500-5500 BC) is found in the <br />surface finds of diagnostic artifacts that indicate three traditions appear to be operating in <br />the region: the Plano Tradition of the Late Paleoindian Period with links to the Great Plains, <br />a Stemmed Point Complex with links to the Great Basin, and the Foothill-Mountain <br />Complex--possible precursor to the Mountain Tradition extant in the southern Rocky <br />Mountains. Three periods follow that are defined by cultural changes and punctuated by <br />climatic episodes: Early Archaic (ca. 5500-3750 BC), Middle Archaic (ca. 3750-1250 BC), <br />and Late Archaic (ca. 1250 BC -1300 AD). <br />The Paleoarchaic period (7500-5500 BC) witnessed a deterioration of regional <br />climates accompanied by higher average temperatures and less effective moisture. Climatic <br />warming caused a reorganization of the resource base. Biota retreated to the more <br />conducive climates of high altitudes and low altitudes adapted to desert-like conditions. The <br />volatility of the environment initiated cultural change which resulted in the transformation <br />of a highly mobile, big-game hunting lifestyle into a semi-sedentary hunting and gathering <br />lifestyle. <br />This subsistence pattern reflected a combination of considerations regarding <br />resource availability, predictability, and productivity. The Archaic foragers focused their <br />subsistence activities on species with higher caloric return rates when available and, when <br />unavailable, shifted to resources with lower rates. Intra-regional differences in the <br />distribution, density, and seasonal availability of significant dietary plants and animal <br />species would have affected settlement strategies. Some high priority resources were more <br />abundant in or restricted to certain areas, for example, pinyon pine in the Colorado Plateau <br />uplands. In northwest Colorado, the lowland deserts and grasslands and the upland forests <br />occur in relative close proximity and were likely exploited via base camps along their <br />ecotones. <br />Based on the dry climatic conditions, this period was one when the early Uto- <br />Aztecan speaking foraging bands of the west-central Great Basin migrated to its <br />southwestern edge. Decreasing effective moisture in subsequent centuries probably <br />motivated these hunter-gatherers to abandon the lowlands of this region in favor of <br />better-watered middle Holocene refuges. Migration destinations likely included areas east <br />of the Colorado River with movement onto the Colorado Plateau and also southward to the <br />northern Sierra Madre Occidental. Climatological factors may also have encouraged some <br />20