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5113110w pit structures, though numerous small open camps and rock shelter sites are <br />• common. Sites are gener211y located on knolls, buttes, and on hill slopes above flood <br />plains. <br />A numbsr of Fremont viL'ages have been excavated, including several from <br />Dinosaur National1lcnument and Browns Hole in Colorado. Carbon 14 dates range from <br />i 500-1100 A.D. Some polemic surrounds these dates: some archaeologists tivould restrict <br />! Uinta-Fremont time spans to 1000-1200 A.D. (Ibid). <br />~ Uooer Reoublican. <br />I <br />~ In eastern Colorado and the Central Plains, the Plains Cdoodland tradition was <br />replaced by the Uooer Reoublican sometime after 1000 A.D. l1'hether or not ti~is Upper <br />Republican extended into the Colorado Piedmont has been in question (Nelson 1907), In <br />l:ansas and Nebraska, the tipper Republican occupation consists of small hamlets <br />' supported by the cultivation of maize, beans, squash, and sunflowers (1Vede1 1961). <br />Pottery was more plentiful than in preceding 1Voodland times. The Upper R°ptblican <br />' tradition disappeared around 1500 H.D., possibly due to the onset of drought, or the <br />• influx of Apache groups (FVedel 1961). <br />Historic Period <br />Three tribes of Indians occupied northwestern Colorado; the Ute, Arapai:o, and <br />Shoshoni, though the Ute and Arapaho were frequently in conflict over A:•^paho <br />utilization of traditionally Ute land (Athearn 1977). The Uinta Ute were the primary <br />occupants of north~,vest Colorado. Subsistence w•as based on a nomadic hunting and <br />gathering economy, summering in mountain parks and wintering in the Yampa or 1Vhite <br />River valleys (Athearn 1977). A site of probably Ute affiliation was excavated by the <br />Colorado Highway Department just outside of Steamboat Springs.* <br />The first known European entrance into northwestern Colorado was the <br />Dominguez-Escalante expedition in 1776. This expedition moved up the Douglas Creek <br />drainage to the 1Vhite River Valley and west to Utah, never approaching the study area. <br />1 1 <br />• *Personal communication, John Gooding, 111ay 1981. <br />a 6 <br />