The Archaic Inhabitants of the Northern Colorado Plateau

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 47, 1979, No. 4

The Archaic Inhabitants of the Northern Colorado Plateau

BY ALAN R. SCHROEDL

FROM THE END OF THE BIG GAME HUNTING period about 9,000 years ago until the introduction of maize horticulture, the Archaic pattern of exploitation dominated much of the North American continent. The name Archaic is not meant to imply a backward or outmoded style of life; on the contrary, the Archaic lifeway was the most dynamic and flexible mode of adaptation that ever developed in the New World. Based on a pattern of regional specialization, it was the most persistent of all the known technological stages in North America.

The Archaic lifeway on the northern Colorado Plateau began more than 8,000 years ago and lasted for more than seven millennia until A.D. 500 when the presence of the bow and arrow, ceramics, and maize horticulture signaled an end to it. This lifeway was centered around a pattern of seasonal wandering, the hunting of animals, and the gathering of plants. The plants provided food and materials for the construction of textiles, while the animals provided not only meat but also bone for tools and hide for clothing.

In broad outline the general pattern of regional specialization for this continentwide lifeway is understood. In each area of North America numerous species of local flora and fauna were tapped as resources, not only as food but as raw material for a vast array of cultural items. Clothing and blankets were manufactured from hides and furs. Animal bones and shells provided workable material for more specialized objects such as pendants, awls, beads, punches, and needles. Cordage, sandals, netting, rope, and basketry were constructed from plant fibers, while wood was used to make knife handles, dart shafts, and digging sticks. In each area of the continent local resources were extensively utilized.

On the Atlantic seacoast a pattern of exploitation developed with an emphasis on fish and ocean mollusks. Bowls were carved out of steatite in this area and major tools were chipped out of stone; and where stone was not immediately available, shell was used. In the Southeast a riverine adaptation arose. Fresh-water mussels were harvested by the thousands; deer and turkey were also taken. The first pottery in North America, a thick fiber-tempered ware, is found among the rubbish of Archaic people in this area. In the Northeast a boreal adaptation dominated, and numerous specialized tools including the ax, the adze, and the gouge, were developed. Further west the woodlands of mid-America provided a wide range of locally available seeds and nuts, many of which, such as the hickory, the acorn, and the walnut, were intensively collected. Archaic populations in this area pursued deer, turkey, and migratory birds; further north the caribou was the preferred game animal. On the Great Plains the bison was the major source for both food and raw materials.

While other groups in the East were using stone tools, Archaic people in the Upper Great Lakes region were making and using copper tools and implements. Pure copper was collected or mined and then coldhammered into socketed spear points and other objects. The copper artifacts of these Archaic groups are the earliest evidence of metalworking in the New World.

West of the Rockies other patterns of exploitation evolved. In the Southwest, Archaic peoples adjusted to the semiarid environment by heavily utilizing plants and grasses as well as the small mammals and rodents of the desert and by frequently moving from place to place. In some areas a few permanent lakes and springs provided local oases around which a very specialized adaptation, a lacustrine form, occurred. At these locations the Archaic inhabitants hunted small mammals and migratory waterfowl, netted fish, and used lakeside plants to manufacture textiles. In the higher elevations the hunting of large animals was emphasized, while further west the acorn was a staple food resource. On the Pacific Coast a marine adaptation, similar to the Atlantic coastal form, developed. Salmon was the favored item on the northwest coast. Further south, sea mammals were extensively exploited.

This pattern of varied specialization and exploitation existed in each region of North America until the introduction of maize horticulture. But even horticulture was probably not a novel invention to these people who had been cropping wild plants and weeds for thousands of years. The archaeological evidence suggests that some Archaic people had taken at least rudimentary steps in domesticating a few of the many forbs and grasses they were harvesting, long before maize was introduced.

Although the spectrum of Archaic exploitation is generally understood for most of North America, there are many areas in which the Archaic stage is virtually unknown. Until recently the Colorado Plateau was one such area. The extent of knowledge about the Archaic on the Plateau consisted of a few scattered sites, most representing very short prehistoric occupancy and lacking a chronological sequence in which they could be placed. Since 1970 a number of stratified, well-dated Archaic sites have been excavated in the area (fig. 1). One of these, Sudden Shelter, has furnished not only a most detailed picture about the Archaic lifeway in the area but also provided the framework for developing a regional chronology of the Archaic.

Sudden Shelter, located in Ivie Creek Canyon on the western edge of the Colorado Plateau in central Utah, was reported during an archaeological survey in the 1950s but was not excavated until 1974 when the site appeared endangered by the construction of Interstate 70 through the narrow canyon. During the summer and fall of 1974 a crew from the University of Utah excavated most of the 30-meter-long rock shelter.

Preliminary testing of the rock shelter in the summer of 1974 showed that the cultural deposits were almost 4 meters deep. The prehistoric occupation of the site was apparently continuous, but the stratigraphy, alternating bands of soft dark fill with light sandy layers, was a result of unusual natural aggradational processes. During the occupancy of the site, colluvial slopewash from above was continuously transported down the runoff chutes into the site at varying rates depending on the amount of local precipitation. The short-term fluctuations in the rate of deposition were sufficient to cause marked fluctuation in the charcoal content of adjacent strata. The light sandy layers had very little charcoal and resulted from higher rates of deposition, while the soft dark fill with a high charcoal content accumulated at a much slower rate, hence the alternating bands observed by the excavators.

Twenty-two strata were identified and excavated, with a consistent series of ten radiocarbon determinations from the top to the bottom of the deposits showing a span of prehistoric habitation between 3,300 and 8,000 years ago. The five-thousand-year sequence of occupation at Sudden Shelter covers most of the Archaic time period on the Colorado Plateau.

At an elevation of 2,200 meters, Sudden Shelter is an upland site nestled under an overhang on the north side of the canyon (fig. 2). The rock shelter overlooks both the valley floor and Ivie Creek, a perennial stream that flows east eventually to join the Muddy River. The valley has changed drastically since prehistoric times due to climatic variation and recent arroyo cutting. Geomorphological analysis of the canyon shows that during the period of prehistoric occupation at the site, the water table was much higher and the valley floor was a lush meadow supporting a larger and more varied flora and fauna than is sustained in the area today. Since the upper reaches of the canyon are located in the transition zone from valley lowland to plateau upland vegetation (the pinyon/ juniper-montane ecotone), the inhabitants of Sudden Shelter could easily exploit resources in both zones.

Five kilometers to the west of the site and several hundred meters higher is Emigrant Pass, a narrow saddle that connects Salina Canyon of the Great Basin with Ivie Creek Canyon of the Colorado Plateau. The distance from the summit of this pass to either the Sevier River in the Great Basin or the San Rafael Swell on the Colorado Plateau is very short. Emigrant Pass is one of the most important passes between these two physiographic provinces. Thus, it is not surprising that Sudden Shelter contained a long span of Archaic occupation: not only was it an optimal location for exploiting various ecozones but it probably also acted as a way station for aboriginal passage between the Great Basin and the Colorado Plateau.

Judging from the number of projectile points recovered, over 400, hunting was by far the major activity carried on at the site. But Sudden Shelter was more than just a temporary hunting camp, since evidence of the full range of domestic activities was present throughout the span of occupation (fig. 3). Over 130 firepits, probably used as some type of cooking oven, were noted. In addition, another 150 open campfires were recorded; they may have been used to heat-treat stone or to generate hot embers for parching seeds. Numerous milling stones and handstones (metates and manos) attest to the significance of plant resources in the exploitation pattern at the rock shelter. Although punches, needles, and shuttles were present, bone awls believed to have been used in manufacturing of textiles were the dominant bone artifact (fig. 4). That the manufacturing and retouching of stone tools was also an important activity at the site is indicated by the presence of antler flakers, hammerstones, and hundreds of blanks, preforms, and cores, not to mention some 40,000 flakes of chipping debris recovered during the screening. Most of the 500 stone tools recovered were knives and scrapers of various kinds, probably used in the butchering of animals and the processing of hides. The importance of animal resources to the inhabitants of Sudden Shelter is demonstrated by the 170 kilograms of scrap bone, most of it unidentifiable splinters, that were collected off the screens.

Sudden Shelter, then, was more than just a transient hunting camp; it was an intensively occupied base camp from which the inhabitants could efficiently exploit a wide array of resources. But summarizing five thousand years of occupation at the site as a static, unchanging subsistence pattern of hunting and gathering obscures the fact that the Archaic mode of adaptation was totally flexible and dynamic, continually adjusting and responding to various cultural, demographic, and environmental fluctuations. Adjustments to these factors are evident in the shifting use of plant and animal resources and by the changing of artifact types over time. These archaeological changes can be grouped into three distinct cultural components.

Component I, the first and earliest component at Sudden Shelter, includes strata 1 through 7 and spans a period of time from about 6000 B.c. to 4300 B.C. The total artifact assemblage associated with this component is an already highly developed Western Archaic form. Pinto and Elko series points are the diagnostic projectile points (fig. 5). Although the inhabitants were exploiting numerous plant resources, the abundance of faunal remains indicates that hunting was the predominant subsistence activity, far more so than in the later two components. Component I produced sixteen of the nineteen different genera of animal species identified at the site, representing four different orders, artiodactyls, lagomorphs, rodents, and carnivores.

More than half of the total amount of meat harvested at Sudden Shelter was taken during component I. Large game animals provided the bulk of this quantity; in decreasing order of importance, the major animals were mule deer, bison, bighorn sheep, and elk. Although many smaller animals such as cottontail rabbits, squirrels, porcupines, prairie dogs, and rock chucks were hunted during the occupancy of the site, the amount of dressed meat that these animals contributed to the total consumed was minimal.

In all three components the major prey was mule deer. An average deer would provide about a hundred pounds of meat in addition to hide, sinew, bone, and antler for tools and clothing. The presence of every major bone of the deer skeleton at the site indicates that after the deer was killed it was brought back to the shelter where all the butchering and processing took place. The occurrence of a few prenatal deer among the faunal remains implies that Sudden Shelter was occasionally occupied in the early spring before the does fawned.

Every major dietary species at Sudden Shelter, including deer, is best stalked by a solitary hunter. Other animal species that are only minimally represented at the site such as antelope and jack rabbit are gregarious animals that are most effectively hunted by communal drives and surrounds that depend on the cooperation of a large number of people. The faunal data suggests that at this site hunting was an individual activity rather than a communal enterprise.

Exactly what the inhabitants of Sudden Shelter looked like is unknown, but they were probably small judging from the skeleton of a human female recovered from component I. The woman had borne at least one child and had survived to an advanced age of fifty or fiftyfive in relatively good health with little evidence of nutritional deficiencies (fig. 6). Although her teeth were badly worn and she was afflicted with arthritis in her right knee and wrist joints (perhaps she was righthanded), she suffered very little from pathologies common to sedentary Fremont populations that inhabited much of the Colorado Plateau several thousand years later. That the Archaic people at Sudden Shelter were healthier than later sedentary populations probably resulted from a well-balanced diet. They certainly derived sufficient animal protein from the faunal resources, and many of the wild plants and seeds they were exploiting have a higher oil and protein content than many modern cereal grains.

Component II at Sudden Shelter ranges between 4300 B.C. and 2600 B.C. and includes strata 8 through 14. There appears to be a drastic shift in the pattern of exploitation in this component compared to the previous one. This shift is also coupled with a change in the cultural assemblage. Three projectile points are diagnostic of this component (fig. 7), two newly named types—the Rocker Base side-notched and the Sudden side-notched—and the Hawken side-notched, a point type named after a bison-kill site in Wyoming. Compared to component I, hunting had fallen off dramatically. With a decrease in the quantity of raw material the variety and number of bone tools declined as well. Although floral resources were important in all three components, the presence of vertical slab-lined firepits and a relative increase in the number of milling stones and handstones indicates that plant and seed utilization reached a significant peak during component II.

The picture of plant utilization at Sudden Shelter is limited since the only perishable materials recovered were charred plant fragments and seeds retrieved by flotation techniques. From the carbonized macrofossils over 70 different plant varieties representing more than 20 families were identified. Over the whole span of occupation the significant flora represented by charred epidermal tissue were goosefoot, amaranth, wild rye and other grasses, salt brush, and cactus. In component II grasses were the most heavily exploited plant resource compared to goosefoot in component I.

Plant macrofossils, when they are completely preserved in a dry cave site such as Cowboy Cave in eastern Utah, can be very informative regarding patterns of plant exploitation by prehistoric populations. But it is highly speculative to discuss the range of floral utilization at Sudden Shelter based solely on carbonized plant remains since these probably represent only a small portion of the whole spectrum of plant resources exploited. Like many other Western Archaic groups, the inhabitants of Sudden Shelter probably used plants not only as food but also as raw material for manufacturing an assortment of textiles, tools, and other objects. However, such perishable artifacts are almost never found unless some accident of preservation occurs, an accident that happens too infrequently to suit archaeologists. It must also be remembered that these prehistoric people probably often ate raw such fleshy plant foods as berries, leaves, tubers, and roots, plant parts that need not have been cooked or parched. Evidence of these plant remains is usually totally lacking in an archaeological site unless the excavator recovers human feces for analysis.

The seasonality of the plant remains from Sudden Shelter suggests that the main period of occupancy was between April and September. Comparing this with the faunal data on seasonality, it seems that Sudden Shelter was occupied anytime from early spring to late fall when, at an elevation of 2,200 meters, the weather would be brisk. It is no surprise that the Archaic people chose this south-facing overhang for shelter. In the cooler seasons, a south-facing rock shelter would catch the first rays of the sun rising in the low southeastern sky and the last rays in the late afternoon. In summer, the warmest time of the year, the sun would be high overhead and the shelter would provide a maximum amount of shade throughout the day.

By the beginning of component III, which ranges between 2600 B.C. and 1300 B.C., the only sheltered area at the site was several square meters at the eastern end. Five thousand years of colluvial deposition had choked the western portion of the overhang so that the protected area had shrunk to less than a third its original size.

Grass exploitation decreased during component III with a concomitant rise in amaranth usage, which reached a peak in this component. Hunting remained at about the same level as in component II and was not nearly as significant as in component I (fig. 8). Although mule deer was still the major game animal, bighorn sheep comprised about 37 percent of the meat diet, steadily increasing since component I where they only accounted for about 7 percent of the total meat weight. Although bighorn sheep increased in importance, the number of animal genera exploited declined since component I, where 16 genera were present. In component II 14 were noted, and in component III only 12 out Of the 19 genera were recorded.

In the early part of component III the San Rafael side-notched, a newly identified point type, was the dominant projectile point, while later the Gypsum point was dominant. The Gypsum point was named after Gypsum Cave, a site in southern Nevada where this point was believed to be associated with the extinct ground sloth. Today it is known that the Gypsum point which is found at scattered sites throughout the West is not a Paleo-Indian point at all but a diagnostic artifact of the late Western Archaic. The Gypsum point is distinctive in that it is the first projectile point to be hafted with pitch rather than bound with sinew to a dart foreshaft.

Although their technology was similar in many respects, the size of the local group at Sudden Shelter appears to have been smaller than the average recorded for ethnographically known hunters and gatherers. The intersection of various pieces of information, including the extent of the sheltered area and the horizontal distribution of artifacts and firepits, indicates that the composition of the local group at the site may never have exceeded two or three domestic units, each of which may have consisted of an extended family: a man, a woman, their children, and perhaps an older relative or two.

About 3,300 years ago environmental fluctuations upset the geomorphological equilibrium in the canyon; colluvial deposition ceased just before the sheltered area would have been totally engulfed. About the same time the Archaic inhabitants abandoned Sudden Shelter for good.

Archaic occupation on the Colorado Plateau continued intermittently for about 1,500 more years after the abandonment of Sudden Shelter. The evidence for this occupation comes from the upper units at Cowboy Cave, a dry cave site located on the edge of the Maze District in Canyonlands National Park in eastern Utah. This site was excavated by the University of Utah in 1975, a year after the excavation of Sudden Shelter.

Unit V at Cowboy Cave dates to around the time of Christ and postdates the final occupation at Sudden Shelter by about 1,200 years. This unit contains artifacts that are diagnostic of the Archaic in this area: Gypsum points and stick figurines, as well as corn and arrow points, artifacts that are generally associated with the Fremont Culture. This unit then can be considered as transitional from an Archaic hunting and gathering mode of subsistence to a more sedentary lifeway. The presence of the bow and arrow in cultural assemblages around A.D. 500 arbitrarily marks the end of the Archaic on the northern Colorado Plateau.

Although the prehistoric chronology on the Colorado Plateau is beginning to take form, archaeologists still have many questions about the Archaic in this area (fig. 9). Where and when did the Archaic on the Colorado Plateau originate? This question cannot yet be answered; there is not enough information. But the well-developed Archaic assemblages in the lowest levels at Cowboy Cave and Sudden Shelter make one thing certain: There are still earlier sites to be found and excavated on the Colorado Plateau.

Was the Colorado Plateau abandoned during the postulated hot-dry Altithermal period between 2500 B.C. and 5000 B.C.? This question was answered by the excavation of Sudden Shelter, and the answer is definitely not. Archaic people were living at Sudden Shelter throughout most of this period. Certainly the size of the population on the Colorado Plateau fluctuated with the amount of available resources. Ultimately the food resources, wild plants and animals, were affected by changes in the climate during this period. But the Archaic lifeway was flexible and resilient. The shifts in plant and animal utilization during components I and II at Sudden Shelter indicate that Archaic people could easily adapt to changing environmental conditions.

How far did these Archaic people wander on their annual round? Where did they go in winter? Again, these questions cannot be answered because of the lack of information. Most of what is known about Archaic populations on the Colorado Plateau has been derived from sites like Sudden Shelter and Cowboy Cave, sites that represent heavily utilized summer base camps that were probably occupied for long periods of time. What is needed are detailed analyses of transient camp sites coupled with intensive surveys designed to identify Archaic settlement patterns. Only when this data is actively collected will archaeologists be able to understand the full range of Archaic adaptation on the Colorado Plateau.

Archaeologists have recently turned their attention to the origins of the Fremont Culture in eastern Utah. Were sedentary Fremont people descendents of a local Archaic population or were they migrant farmers who moved into the area from a yet unidentified region? It is not conflicting data but rather a lack of data that fuels this controversy. As more sites are excavated, archaeologists will be able to answer this question one way or the other. The presence of the Gypsum point and stick figures in the latest Archaic (pre-Fremont) occupation at Cowboy Cave (unit V) offers a tantalizing clue to the roots of the Fremont Culture in this area. Both the Gypsum point and the stick figurine are unquestionably late Archaic artifact types that are found at a number of sites in the greater Southwest.

The Archaic lifeway on the Colorado Plateau was a highly successful mode of adaptation. It lasted for more than 5,000 years until the advent of maize horticulture. The introduction of maize into the subsistence pattern caused no immediate discernible shifts in the lifeway of these Archaic peoples. The transition from an Archaic subsistence mode to a more sedentary horticultural lifeway was a subtle, slow process that took several hundred years. But by A.D. 500 the change was almost complete. The Archaic lifeway was eclipsed by an agricultural mode of subsistence, a lifeway that eventually supported all the great prehistoric settlement complexes of the Southwest.

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