Geoarchaeology and Paleoenvironmental Context of Magic Mountain (5JF223): A Stratified Site on the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains, North-Central Colorado

Summary

This is an abstract from the "American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Magic Mountain site (5JF223) in Golden, Colorado, has long been recognized as one the most important stratified archaeological sites on the Front Range of the Southern Rocky Mountains. Although Archaic artifacts have been recorded there, the site’s richest and most extensive cultural deposits represent multiple Early Ceramic occupations dating to ca. 1800–800 cal BP. In this paper, the soil-stratigraphy of the site is described, and results of δ13C analysis of soil organic matter (SOM) are used to infer bioclimatic change for the period of record. At 5JF223, a buried landscape marked by a prominent paleosol in alluvium occurs beneath nearly 2 m colluvium. Temporally undiagnostic artifacts occur on and within the paleosol. The paleosol was buried by colluvium soon after 9000 cal BP, and sedimentation ended soon after ca. 800 cal BP. The δ13C record at 5JF223 indicates that C4 grasses became an increasingly more significant component of the plant community from ca. 8900–6800 cal BP, suggesting that a warming trend (Altithermal) occurred then, and peaked around 6800 cal BP. After 6800 cal BP, a mixed C3/C4 plant community was in place, though the amount of SOM contributed by C3 plants increased during the Early Ceramic occupations.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• American Foragers: Human-Environmental Interactions across the Continents   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 40451.0