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NICKENS and ASSOCIATES <br />P.O. Box 727 <br />Montrose, Colorado 81401 <br />Phone: (303) 249-3411 <br />April 28, 1981 <br />Arthur C. Townsend <br />Slate Historic Preservation Officer <br />The Colorado Heritage Center <br />1300 Broadway <br />Denver, Colorado 80203 <br />Dear Mr. Townsend: <br />S :(.tip r~ ''~^L I-•1 <br />~ " I j ~ <br />I <br />I~... ~.Fr ' ~r' ~ <br />~ ~~ !„`~I '~!i <br />'i. .............:~ i I~ <br />I am taking this opportunity to respond in detail to your letter to <br />Tom Wainwright dated February 27, 1981, in which you requested that I <br />address five concerns about my report on archaeological site 5RT139. <br />I shall discuss each of these concerns in order. <br />1. Subsequent to the receipt of your letter, I met with Linda <br />• Gregonius and 0. D. Hand of your office on 3/6/81 to compare the <br />assemblages of artifacts recovered from 5RT139 by WORM and myself, <br />respectively. It is my opinion (and I think Linda and 0. D. would <br />agree with me) that my heat treated materials are distinctly different <br />from the McKean-like biface and the Paleo-Indian pieces recovered by <br />WORM. As my Table 8 attests, almost all of [he material types from <br />[he excavation units are either chert (23 pieces) or chalcedony (9 <br />pieces), and many are white in color. The debitage recovered by WCRM <br />is similar to mine but the tools are strikingly similar to materials <br />recovered from southwestern Wyoming that are fashioned from a brown, <br />algalitic chert. The "McKean-like" biface is too fragmentary to make <br />any firm conclusions as to its significance. <br />2. This question requires a lengthy answer since it appears to <br />me to be the major difficulty In this matter. I was dismayed somewhat <br />with [he plurality of modern dates obtained from the group of charcoal <br />samples that I submitted for radiocarbon determination. I suggested <br />in my report that those samples with modern dates may have been con- <br />taminated by a recent surface burn. Since I had been very careful to <br />obtain samples from within recognizable cultural features or away from <br />any burned root material, [his seemed to be the most likely reason for <br />these results. I have written (4/4/81) to Mr. Charles S. Tucek of <br />Radiocarbon, Ltd., for his opinion on this matter since he made the <br />original radiocarbon determinations. His response (4/11/81), a copy <br />of which I include with this letter, corroborates (paragraph 3) the <br />• contamination theory for at least two samples (RL-1426 and 1429). I <br />think his fourth paragraph is also germane to this particular issue. <br />