Laserfiche WebLink
power was insufficient to erode the gravel and most drainages initiated a cycle of channel <br />widening. Away from drainages, the middle Holocene loess accumulated. Pithouses were in <br />wide use in the Rocky Mountains, Wyoming Basin, and Colorado Plateau in the interval, <br />suggesting more sedentary populations; Yarmony Site in Eagle County and site 5ME 16789 <br />near Battlement Mesa are local examples. McKean Complex is well represented in western <br />Colorado during the latter part of the interval and the period of transition to warmer climates <br />that followed. After about 3100 BC*, warming temperatures led to erosion of the loess by <br />2500 to 1850 BC* and the deposition of the middle Holocene alluvium. <br />Droughts in the late Holocene are best dated by periods of erosion, i.e., lacunas, <br />identified by unconformities in loess deposits. Erosion in loess took place between 1850 and <br />950 BC*, 275 BC* and 165 AD*, and 1050 and 1350 AD*, and again in the last 150 years or <br />so. The first interval coincides with the Middle to Late Archaic transition and the third <br />interval coincides with the Medieval Warming Period in Europe. In the alluvial system, <br />deposition of the middle alluvium ended after the first and interval, by 650 BC*. The first of <br />Lightning equivalent alluvium is deposited during the second and interval, at some time after <br />650 BC*. As the suggested dates imply, the two deposits are nearly continuous and appear <br />this way in sediment choked drainages, but on other ephemeral and small perennial streams, <br />the deposits are more easily separated. <br />CULTURAL HISTORY <br />Overviews of prehistory and history of the region, and more locally within the Little <br />Snake Field Office, can be found in the following contexts: "Colorado Prehistory: A Context <br />for the Northern Colorado River Basin" (Reed and Metcalf 1999), "An Overview of the <br />Prehistoric Cultural Resources" (LaPoint 1987), "Regional Class I Overview of Cultural <br />Resources " (McDonald and Metcalf 2006), "Colorado History: A Context for Historical <br />Archaeology" (Church et al. 2007), "An Isolated Empire: A History of Northwest Colorado' <br />(Athearn 1977), "Plateau Country Historic Context" (Husband 1984), and "Synthesis of <br />Archaeological Data Compiled for the Piceance Basin Expansion, Rockies Express Pipeline, <br />and Uinta Basin Lateral Projects in Moffat and Rio Blanco Counties, Colorado, and <br />Sweetwater, County, Wyoming" (Reed and Metcalf 2009). <br />Prehistoric Background <br />The following provides a brief discussion of each of the major prehistoric cultural/ <br />temporal eras occurring during the past 12,000 years. <br />Paleoindian Era <br />Paleoindian finds include Clovis tradition (11,500-10,500 BC), Goshen tradition <br />(11,000-10,700 BC), Folsom tradition (10,800-9,500 BC), and Plano/Foothill Mountain <br />rd <br />