Over the Hills and Far Away: Evaluating Competing Models for Early Ceramic Period Mobility in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The transition from the Late Archaic (1200 B.C. to A.D. 150) to the Early Ceramic (A.D. 150 – A.D. 1150) in northern Colorado and southern Wyoming is characterized by decreasing mobility, a trend reflected by the adoption of ceramic technology, limited stone architecture, and longer site occupation. Contrasted against this shift to longer occupations is concurrent evidence for increased seasonal transhumance between the Colorado Piedmont and Rocky Mountain foothills, intermountain parks, and high mountains. Though multiple models have been proposed to explain these patterns, the best known is the rotary system first proposed by Benedict (1992), which examined lithic raw material conveyance from lowland and upland sources to reconstruct an extensive seasonal round covering hundreds of miles across the Colorado Front Range and Medicine Bow Mountains. To clarify the role of these mobility strategies in a period of emerging sedentism, this study employs a GIS-based least cost paths analysis, ethnographic analogy, and theoretical perspectives on forager mobility to assess competing models for Early Ceramic transhumance. Examination of Early Ceramic mobility allows better understanding of the seeming contradictions in a system defined by seasonal mobility both greater and lesser than the previous Late Archaic period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2023: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36944.0