On Friday I attended a lecture given by Todd Surovell about Ice Age houses in the Rocky Mountains. The houses were found by Middle Park, CO in a place called Barger Gulch. The people who lived here called the Folsum people and were around about 12,000 years ago. The landscape now looks like a prairie and is filled with sagebrush. The archeologists have reason to believe that back when the Folsum people lived here they landscape may have been different and included trees. The archeologists worked on this site from 1997 to 2007 and recovered over 75,000 artifacts.
It was no surprise that the Folsum people lived in houses because they had to have some sort of shelter since they lived during the ice age. The archeologists located three different Folsum houses on the site. Houses and structures are able to give us insight about the culture such as economics, demography, organization, activities etc. Therefore, houses are a very important to find because they can answer so many questions about the culture through the many artifacts. The only downside is it can be very difficult to locate structures.
As this lecture pointed out, artifacts are a crucial part of learning about a culture. Most of the artifacts found at the Folsum site were smaller then a pinky nail but still the archeologists were able to gather information. They recovered over 75,000 artifacts from the site and Todd said that this was a lot of stuff one site! Typically hunter and gather types travel a lot so that their sources remain abundant therefore they do not leave a lot of stuff in one place. But the Folsum people were able to winter on their land because animals would move down from the mountains in the winter and onto their land so that had an abundance of food. Overall, this was an excellent lecture and I learned a lot about working at an archeological site. There were quite a few unfamiliar words about digging etc. but I still enjoyed learning about the lifestyle of the Folsum people.
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This reminds me of a lecture that I attended by Ted Goebel entitled The Beringian Origins of the First Americans
Ted Goebel’s lecture had the main purpose of addressing the main scientific concerns archeologists have of early Americans. The lecture questioned the origins, culture, and migration period of the Paleo-Indians. Dr. Goebel draws from three major scientific fields to express both modern views and theories concerning the earliest American as well as his own personal beliefs. These fields are molecular genetics, human paleontology, and classic archaeology.
Goebel discussed how evidence strongly suggests that Homo sapiens from the late Pleistocene era came from the Lake Baikal region of Southern Siberia, and crossed the dry land mass of Beringia, through the Bering Land Bridge. The early Americans are expected to have eventually settled in various Alaskan locations. Although most genetic evidence comes from modern Native Americans, skeletal remains have been found of two Homo sapiens from the migratory period being studied. One set of remains dates before the glacial maximum and the other dating after. These two time periods are the two most likely migration periods. The first ranges from 32,000-20,000 YA and the other is after 17,000 YA. More DNA is needed for concrete findings.
The second field Goebel draws from is from human paleontology. Connections were made between the appearance of the Ainu people from Japan and Native Americans, however, the connection discounted through DNA testing.
The last field of science is classic archeological excavation. The Yana RHS (Rhinoceros Horn Site), found in the Baikal Lake region, resulted in the discovery of many ancient stone tools and bones. The carbon dating of these artifacts dated the site at 13,000 YA, which makes it the oldest known site within the Arctic Circle. Other sites that were excavated were found around Alaska and helped to define the Denali and Nenana cultures through biface and microblade testing and analysis. Layered sites also resulted in the discovery of a third Ushki culture. There is a theory in which the Denalis and Nenanas are the same people but inhabit sites at different times depending on the season. This theory may be insufficiently supported by evidence.
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