Summer on the Range: Excavations at a High Elevation Cattle Line Camp in Western Colorado

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)" , at the 2022 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In 2018 Alpine Archaeological Consultants, Inc. excavated a 1912 to 1933 historical cattle line camp site on the Dolores Plateau in northern Dolores County, Colorado. The line camp is part of the Bankston Spring site which is a large multiple component site that dates from the Archaic and into more recent history. The line camp is associated with the occupation by Joseph Tylee Bankston, a cattle rancher in the area. Historically, line camps were vital to the function of a rotational herding system utilized in western United States ranching operations. In Colorado, few line camps have been subjected to data recovery efforts. As a result, their historical contexts are generally unknown, making them poorly understood resources. Excavations at the Bankston Spring site revealed a variety of artifacts that can be placed into an appropriate context to help further our understanding of these types of resources.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SHA 2022 General Sessions   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2022

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology