Laserfiche WebLink
episode is derived from excavations conducted in the Alkali Creek Basin (located just north <br />of the Gunnison Basin) and reported by Markgraf and Scott (1981). Their study indicates <br />the presence of a montane pine forest at an elevation of 9,000 feet until ca. 3250 BC. The <br />environmental model prepared for Battlement Mesa Community shows an accumulation of <br />windblown silts ca. 3250 BC (at the end of an extended, increasingly dry episode of the <br />Neoglacial period) and again ca. 600 BC. <br />Between 2850 BC and 2550 BC, the increased moisture allowed the pinyon pine to <br />expand northward from New Mexico into central Colorado and eastern Utah, and it become <br />a major component of the La Plata Mountains in southwestern Colorado. By about 1700 BC, <br />pinyon/juniper forest is present in the canyon bottoms and washes of the Colorado Plateau. <br />This period exhibits stabilization of dune fields and reversion to sagebrush steppe of much <br />of the area covered in desert shrub communities. Consequently, increased game populations <br />and a wider variety of edible plants were available to the human populations at lower <br />elevations. <br />The Middle Archaic is distinguished on the basis of increased variability in material <br />culture. Reed and Metcalf (1999:79) also suggest that this period is characterized by less <br />sedentisim in settlement patterns and perhaps greater seasonality in the use of higher <br />elevations. Archaeological evidence for this patterned seasonal transhumance is found in <br />the remains of shallow basin structures and their associated artifacts identified from this <br />period at the Indian Creek Site near Whitewater (Horn et al. 1987) and in the Gunnison <br />Basin at Curecanti Reservoir (Euler and Stiger 1981; Jones 1986). <br />There also appears to have been sporadic contact with Middle Plains Archaic groups <br />as defined by Frison (1978) and evidenced by diagnostic artifacts associated with the <br />McKean Techno-complex. Again, such finds indicate that there was frontier contact in <br />northwest Colorado between highly mobile bands of hunters and gatherers during the <br />Middle Archaic Period due to improved climatic conditions, which provided opportunities <br />for exploration. It may well be that there are no fixed or well-defined boundaries present <br />and that all the groups are generally operating in an open, free interaction zone within the <br />region. <br />The Late Archaic (1500 BC - 300 AD) is a time of apparent stress on settlement <br />systems. Drought-like conditions coupled with population packing caused adaptive <br />strategies to reach a pinnacle of intensification. Such intensification is reflected in <br />heightened processing of seeds and other lower rate-of-return resources, cultigen <br />manipulation, and evidence of a shift to the bow and arrow. The Archaic lifeway likely <br />continued as a survival strategy for hunter-gatherer groups through the end of the Formative <br />period. <br />The initial portion of the Late Archaic Period appears to consist primarily of climatic <br />conditions somewhat similar to the present with periodic fluctuations between cooler and <br />wetter, cooler and drier, or hotter and drier conditions, depending upon geographic location. <br />The same seasonal patterns of floral and faunal exploitation probably continued much as <br />22