24 Years Down & 24 to Go: Lessons Learned and New Research Directions for the Gunnison Basin (CO)-based Rocky Mountain Paleoindian Research Program

Summary

This is an abstract from the "New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

From 1999 to 2013, members of the Rocky Mountain Paleoindian Research Program (RMPRP) conducted extensive survey and numerous test excavations of very ancient sites in the Gunnison Basin, southwestern Colorado. During that period, researchers learned much about the timing of initial human use of the Basin and how land-use changed between the first human forays into the region ca. 11,000 rcybp and the onset of the Archaic era ca. 8,000 rcybp. After a several-year hiatus to tie up research loose ends and to synthesize what the team learned in its initial two-dozen years of research, RMPRP personnel are preparing now to return to the field in summer 2019. This paper summarizes archaeological questions answered in its first two dozen years of work, then pivots to outline the many new questions that have arisen in that same time period—questions that will drive RMPRP field research going forward.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• New and Ongoing Research on the North American Plains and Rocky Mountains

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25001