Investigating a Projectile Point Typology for the Uncompahgre Plateau in West Central Colorado

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Uncompahgre Plateau has been utilized by humans for at least the last 10,000 year, based on dates from excavated sites in the region. Projectile point styles that have formally been defined and named from type sites throughout the Great Basin occur on the Plateau. However, many that have not been formally defined or named also occur on the Plateau. Previously, Buckles (1972) used points from his excavations to develop a general projectile point chronology, and Berry (2019) obtained radiocarbon dates and used eighty projectile points from recorded sites to refine the chronology and define eight projectile point styles for the area.

Our investigation currently utilizes nearly 1000 projectile points from excavated sites and private collectors to define styles that occur on the Plateau. As expected, this has increased the number of definable styles to over 30. The radiocarbon dates and the associated points (Berry, 2019) allow some of our newly defined styles to be associated with a temporal period, but only about half. In addition, a grid of USGS 1:24000 topo maps containing the Plateau are being used to identify any statistically significant differences in spatial occurrences of the styles.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32795