Walking the Footwear Landscape on the Western Plains Margin: The Implications of 3,500 Years of Footwear from Franktown Cave, Colorado

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Approaches to Archaeological Footwear" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Franktown Cave (5DA272) on the Palmer Divide south of Denver contains an assemblage of perishable artifacts unrivaled on the western Great Plains, and among these perishables is footwear from occupations dated 3300 BC–AD 1280. The footwear has proven to be the most useful for determining regional and cultural associations. Most of the analysis of perishable artifacts to date has focused on the AD 1180–1280 Promontory phase occupation containing Subarctic-style moccasins indistinguishable from those found at the Promontory Caves in Utah. Occupations in both regions are interpreted as way-stops during the initial migration of proto-Apacheans from the Dene homeland to the Southwest using Intermountain and Plains margin migration routes. Much less studied but just as remarkable is the small assemblage of plain weave sandals and other artifacts (including coiled basketry and pieces of a rabbit-hide blanket) dated to the transitional Early–Middle Archaic periods (3310–2490 BC). Unlike the moccasins, these perishable artifacts (and projectile points recovered from the site) suggest only general cultural affinities to archaeological cultures of adjacent regions such as the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. The dates and technological details of the fiber artifacts do not, however, have clear ties to any individual sites or cultures.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Approaches to Archaeological Footwear   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36653.0