How Researcher and Collector Collaboration Helped Document the First Clovis Points in the Upper Gunnison Basin, Colorado

Summary

This is an abstract from the "*A New Look at the Southern Rocky Mountains: Crossroads of Western North America" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Although Folsom and subsequent Paleoindian groups are well-represented in the intermountain basins of the Rocky Mountains' western slope, Clovis has sometimes eluded archaeologists in those resource-rich environments. The Upper Gunnison Basin (UGB) of Colorado’s southern Rocky Mountains is one such place where Clovis exists only in whispers and not in formal archaeological records. This paper presents the findings of a study of Paleoindian projectile points from private collections in UGB that suggests that this “absence” is not caused by a lack of Clovis artifacts but instead by archaeologists failing to leverage data contained in the display cases and shoe boxes of the residents most familiar with the landscape. Through collaboration with those residents, in the summer of 2024, I confirmed anecdotal reports of two Clovis points and established solid proveniences for them. In addition, I documented numerous later Paleoindian projectile points, most also with at least rudimentary proveniences. Although private collections are an often overlooked resource that can help address a broad range of research questions, they can also foster community and archaeologist collaboration, which provides archaeologists with an opportunity to encourage responsible cultural resource stewardship in a manner that is engaging and productive for all involved.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• *A New Look at the Southern Rocky Mountains: Crossroads of Western North America

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51988