Who Were Those Guys? A Shadows on the Trail Adventure

Who Were Those Guys?

A Shadows on the Trail Adventure

by John Bradford Branney

Figure One - The red arrow indicates the location where I found a 1.8-inch-long  
Washita arrow point. Prehistoric rockshelter in the background.   

The northeastern Colorado ranch is located in a large bowl-shaped basin. A small intermittent creek drains the basin to the southeast. The creek is fed cool water from several natural springs along its route. The creek was quite prolific in the past, meandering and braiding its way tens of miles until joining the South Platte River. Over the last hundred years, agricultural use caused a few of the creek's water sources to dry up.

The headwaters of the creek butt up against sandstone bluffs of the Oligocene-Miocene geological age. In the past, finding extinct mammal fossils was as easy as pie; it is not so easy these days. It was also easy to find prehistoric artifacts a few decades back, but now I have to work for every artifact. In the past, I found chipping debris galore, fire-blackened rocks eroding out of embankments, and several artifacts on any given day. Over the past forty years of hunting the ranch, I have discovered everything from Clovis to historical Indian artifacts and every prehistoric culture between. It would be a shorter list for me to name the High Plains projectile point types I have not discovered on the ranch versus listing the projectile point types that I have discovered. But over the last decade, my artifact finds have dwindled. I still hunt the ranch two or three times a year, and occasionally I land a nice artifact, but the glory days of artifact hunting are gone. However, I still have a few stories about artifact hunting on the ranch.        

In September 2003, I returned to the High Plains from my home in Texas to hunt artifacts. Originally, I was not scheduled to hunt the ranch because I wanted to let natural erosion catch up with my artifact-hunting pressure. However, I found an extra day in my schedule with nothing planned so I told myself, “Why not hunt that ranch?” And I am glad I did. I found a couple of beautiful end scrapers, several broken projectile points, a mano, several other worked pieces, and the "prize of the day." This story is about that "prize of the day" and the people who probably made it.    

Figure Two - In situ photograph of the 1.8-inch-long
Washita arrow point.

The "prize of the day" was a beautiful 1.8-inch-long Washita arrow point eroding from an embankment approximately twenty to thirty meters down the hill from the prehistoric rockshelter in Figure One. To this day, it is one of the finest Washita points that I have ever found (Figures Two and Three).  

Figure Three - 1.8-inch-long Washita arrow point made
from what I believe is Smoky Hills Jasper out of Kansas.    

The prehistoric humans who made that projectile point used a raw material called jasper. Prehistoric people liked jasper, and based on this jasper's yellowish tone, the projectile point's raw material might be Smoky Hills Jasper out of Kansas but I cannot be sure.

  

Central Plains Tradition

From around A.D. 900 to A.D. 1000, the people of the Missouri River areas of Kansas, Nebraska, and South Dakota, in what archaeologists call the Central Plains tradition, were influenced by the prolific Mississippian culture to the east. The people of the Central Plains tradition shared similar technologies, subsistence patterns, and socio-economic systems across a wide geographical area. Archaeologists have traced the Arikara, Mandan, Pawnee, and other historical Indian tribes along the Missouri River Basin to the Central Plains tradition. 

The Republican River is a small tributary of the Missouri River with its headwaters originating in eastern Colorado. The river flows from its headwaters in Colorado across northwestern Kansas into southwestern Nebraska and then back into north central Kansas before joining with the Kansas River, which ultimately joins the Missouri River.

The discovery by archaeologists of prehistoric hamlets in central and eastern Nebraska and Kansas gave rise to a phase within the Central Plains tradition called Upper Republican (Strong 1934). Based on radiocarbon dating, the Upper Republican phase began around A.D. 1000 and lasted until around A.D. 1400. There are various hypotheses as to what happened to the people of the Upper Republican phase but that topic is outside the scope of this article. 

Horticulture, hunting, and gathering drove the Upper Republican economy and lifestyle. Archaeological evidence indicates that the Upper Republican people grew maize, gourds, squash, beans, and sunflowers. They cultivated their crops with hoes made from the scapula bones of bison. Evidence shows that the Upper Republican people on the Central Plains supplemented their farming and hunting with wild plant harvesting, fishing, and mussel gathering.

The Upper Republican phase on the Central Plains was characterized by substantial earth-lodge dwellings (Wedel 1961:94). The people lived in rectangular to semi-rectangular lodges built slightly below the ground surface. The lodges ranged from 500 to 1200 square feet with covered entrances facing south or east, away from the prevailing winter winds. A central fire pit and one or more subterranean cache pits were located within each lodge. Posts outlined the perimeters of each lodge with four or more postholes found in the middle for roof support. The lodges were randomly placed along mostly stream terraces and exhibited little or no central planning. (Steinacher and Carlson 1998).

The main chipped stone tool assemblages of the Upper Republican phase were associated with hunting, butchering, and animal hide processing. Artifact assemblages included bifaces of various sizes and shapes for cutting and chopping, end scrapers, engravers, and drill forms. The projectile points associated with the Upper Republican phase were usually small and triangular, with side-notches and tri-notches. When found on the High Plains, artifact hunters like myself classify those small triangular side-notched and tri-notched projectile points as Washita and Harrell arrow points. Figure Four is a photograph of examples of Washita and Harrell arrow points that the author surface found in northeastern Colorado. The centerpiece is the Washita point photographed in Figures Two and Three.     

Figure Four - Examples of side-notched and tri-notched arrow points surface
recovered on the High Plains of northeastern Colorado. The author assumes 
these points originated in the High Plains Upper Republican phase.  
Is that a good assumption?    

Upper Republican ground stone tools included pipes, abraders, hammerstones, spheres, manos and metates, nutting stones, and disks. Bone implements included bison scapula hoes, splinter awls, eyed needles, fishhooks, beads, tubes, and shaft wrenches. Less dominant bone tools included engraved bison bone toes, eagle bone whistles, and in one case an engraved human skull fragment (Steinacher and Carlson 1998; Wedel 1986:108). I have found examples of some of those ground stone tool types on the High Plains but since other prehistoric cultures used them as well, I cannot attribute my surface finds to the Upper Republican phase.   

Figure Five - from Cassell (1997:214)

A thinner-walled, globular ceramic pottery design from the Upper Republican phase replaced the thicker-walled, conoidal ceramic pottery design from the earlier Plains Woodland tradition (Figure Five). According to Ellwood (2002:34), Upper Republican people constructed ceramic pottery using a lump or patch accretion method. Then they finished by rolling a cord-wrapped, dowel-like instrument along the surface to seal the junctures. Raw materials for the vessels consisted of locally derived crushed sedimentary rock, clay, and granite. Upper Republican ceramic pottery was jar- to pot-sized and exhibited high shoulders with narrow necks and collared or braced rim mouths (Wedel 1986:106). 

The Upper Republican potters often decorated the collars with two to eight incised horizontal lines, repeated triangles, or excised nodes. The surface finish exhibited short, choppy cord marks, with obliteration or smoothing of the cord marks, especially near the bottom of the pot. Handles or lugs were rare on Upper Republican ceramic pottery. 

Wedel (1986) proposed that Upper Republican ceramic pottery might have been used to boil meat or vegetables, such as maize, beans, and wild tubers; or for dry storage; or as water containers. The Upper Republican ceramic pottery design from the Central Plains carried over onto High Plains sites which I discuss in the next section.       

Figure Six - Upper Republican potsherds from eastern Colorado. Bottom row left
to right: Weld County, Lincoln County, Lincoln County. Top row: Weld County.   

Sigstad (1969:18-19) identified two classes of Upper Republican ceramic pottery. Class I  Frontier Ware exhibited collared rims while Class II Cambridge Ware exhibited flared rims. Figure Six exhibits Upper Republican potsherds which I surface recovered on the High Plains. On July 6, 1986, I found the rim fragments in the center and right of the lower row. I discovered them near a north-facing rock shelter on private land near Cedar Point in eastern Colorado. Note the incised horizontal lines near the bottom of each fragment. Both pieces appear to have originated from the same ceramic pot. I recovered the other two rim fragments from multicultural sites in Weld County, Colorado. Those rim fragments fall within Sigstad’s Class II Cambridge Ware category also. 

I have found hundreds of potsherds while surface hunting for artifacts in northeastern Colorado and southeastern Wyoming. The potsherds are usually small, measuring one inch by one inch or smaller. On that scale, it is nearly impossible for me to tell whether the potsherd originated from an Upper Republican or Plains Woodland ceramic pot. Identification of the culture is much easier if the potsherd is from a distinctive rim or is large enough to see the curvature of the original pot. 

Elwood (2002:40) suggested Upper Republican and Plains Woodland ceramic pottery can be differentiated using form and surface finish. While Plains Woodland vessels were conoidal in shape, Upper Republican vessels were globular in shape (Figure Five). That only helps if the potsherds are large enough to determine the curvature of the original pot. Elwood stated that while Plains Woodland exhibited clear and deep cord marks, Upper Republican cord marks were often choppy, smoothed over, or partially obliterated. Figure Seven shows a few potsherds I found in northeastern Colorado. Note the clear and deep cord marks on most of the pieces. I believe all of the potsherds in the figure originated as Plains Woodland pottery except perhaps the bottom pieces on the left which could be Upper Republican.  

Figure Seven - Surface found potsherds from northeastern Colorado.
Did these come from Plains Woodland or Upper Republican?  

    The High Plains Upper Republican Phase

At the same time that Upper Republican people were inhabiting small hamlets in central Kansas and Nebraska, a similar-aged culture existed along the grasslands of western Kansas and Nebraska, eastern Colorado, the panhandle of Nebraska, and southeastern Wyoming. I will refer to that similar-aged culture as High Plains Upper Republican even though I believe its relationship to the original Upper Republican phase on the Central Plains is unknown. Archaeological evidence suggests that High Plains Upper Republican people occupied sites along the escarpment ridge flanking the Colorado Piedmont, (Irwin and Irwin 1957; Wood 1967), the northern and southern tributaries of the South Platte River, and the Arikara-Republican drainage system (Withers 1954).

High Plains collectors and professionals discovered artifacts in rock shelters, on buttes and bluffs, and along stream terraces similar to those documented at the Upper Republican hamlets in central Kansas and Nebraska. The rock shelter sites were quite small and occupation zones consisted of diffused middens containing chipping debris, animal bone fragments, hearths, and ashy soil. The butte and bluff campsites offered excellent views but meant hauling water upslope and those sites did not offer protection from cold northerly winds.  

Archaeologists investigated and documented several High Plains Upper Republican campsites in eastern Colorado including the Peavy, Smiley, Agate Bluff, and Happy Hollow rock shelters and the Buick, Kasper, Biggs, and Donovan open campsites. Radiocarbon dating suggested occupations between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1400 (Wood 1990). 

In comparing the original Upper Republican sites in central Kansas and Nebraska with the High Plains Upper Republican sites to the west, Laura L. Scheiber (2006:135) wrote, "These western sites are known more for what they lack (houses, hoes, and corn) than for what they possess." The Upper Republican people on the Central Plains held different lifestyles than those on the High Plains. To the east, the Upper Republican people placed heavy emphasis on horticulture and permanent dwellings while in the west there was little or no horticulture and permanent dwellings. Thus far, the only evidence of any horticulture for the High Plains sites was a single maize kernel buried four and a half feet deep at the Agate Bluff site in northeastern Colorado. Cassell (1997) also noted that bison scapula hoes, prominent on the Upper Republican sites on the Central Plains were completely absent on the High Plains sites. During my research, the closest I found for permanent dwellings on High Plains Upper Republican sites were the pit houses archaeologists investigated at Cedar Point Village (Wood 1971:55-56). Wood (1971:81) suggested that "Cedar Point pit houses are not comparable to any of the five-post foundation structures reported by Gunnerson for Dismal River."

Scheiber (2006:135) stated above what was missing from the High Plains sites, so what did the High Plains sites have in common with the original Upper Republican sites on the Central Plains? Based on radiocarbon dating, sites on the Central Plains and High Plains existed contemporaneously from around A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1400. Archaeologists have also identified the same styles of ceramic pottery and projectile points on the High Plains and Central Plains sites. 

Figure Eight - Washita-lookalike arrow point surface recovered on
private land in southwestern Wyoming on 9/3/2013. I cataloged
this arrow point as a Plains Side-Notched.      

When I surface recover a Washita or Harrell projectile point in eastern Colorado or southeastern Wyoming, I assume the High Plains Upper Republican people made that point. Is that a good assumption? Probably not since I find Washita and Harrell lookalikes outside the known geographical range for High Plains Upper Republican. Figure Eight is such an example. I discovered that 1.1-inch long Washita lookalike point on September 3, 2013, on a private ranch west of Baggs in southwestern Wyoming. It looks like a Washita arrow point in every aspect but I found it well outside the geographical range for High Plains Upper Republican. In southwestern Wyoming, that type of projectile point is not called a Washita, it is called a Plains Side-Notched.   

The side-notched point in Figure Eight is not an anomaly. I have found many Washita and Harrell lookalikes across the High Plains. Washita and Harrell point lookalikes are found all across Wyoming, Montana, and the Dakotas to the north, and as far south as Oklahoma and Texas. Similar point types are found in the Southwest and across the Great Plains. Collectors and archaeologists have christened them with names such as Plains Side-Notched, Plains Tri-Notched, Billings, Desert Sierra, Desert Delta, Reed, Peno, Cahokia, Irvine, and Emigrant, just to name a few.  

Were those projectile point designs a convergent technology developed independently from the Upper Republican phase? Did those projectile point designs originate in the Central Plains and spread from there or did those designs originate someplace else? Does the lack of High Plains sites underestimate the geographical range of the Upper Republican phase? Were the Washita and Harrell projectile points I photographed in Figures Three and Four made by High Plains Upper Republican people? Those are unanswered questions I found no answers to during my research.   

Of course, people have opinions, but opinions are only sometimes backed up with facts. Bottom line, side-notched and tri-notched projectile points like Washita and Harrell were widely used, far beyond the known range of High Plains Upper Republican. The design swept across the entire western part of the continent. Surface finding Washita and Harrell projectile point types in the geographical range for High Plains Upper Republican is still not conclusive evidence for the presence of High Plains Upper Republican.  

  

Figure Nine - A small rockshelter I discovered in eastern Colorado in the 1980s.
The roof of the rockshelter collapsed a couple of decades ago, burying 
the remaining prehistoric occupation levels under rocks.     

Figure nine was a small south-facing rockshelter I discovered in eastern Colorado in the early 1980s. On my initial visit, I found ash, charcoal, burned bone, and chipping debris on the ground in and around the shelter. Most of the rockshelters I have investigated faced south. Facing south meant the rockshelter captured sun rays in the winter and the rock behind the rockshelter blocked those nasty winter winds. That particular rockshelter was small and could only accommodate a single family. The roof of the rockshelter looked unstable so I contacted a local university to see if they were interested in investigating it. The university never bothered to get back to me, so I proceeded with my salvage operation.    

In that rockshelter, I found a lot of chipping debris and burned bone. I also found a couple of bone awls, several Late Prehistoric projectile points including Plains Woodland and Upper Republican types, scrapers, and a couple of flake knives. On the pasture in front of the rockshelter, I discovered several Late Prehistoric and Late Archaic artifacts. The roof collapsed on the rockshelter fifteen to twenty years ago, burying the remaining occupation levels under massive sandstone boulders.

     

Theories of Origin for High Plains Upper Republican 

Any viable theory on the origin of High Plains Upper Republican must provide evidence that answers basic questions. Did earth-lodge dwellers from the Upper Republican phase of the Central Plains tradition abandon their earth-lodge homes and lifestyles and head west to the High Plains? If so, was that move to the High Plains seasonal or permanent? Or did indigenous people already living on the High Plains interface and trade with the original Upper Republican people from the Central Plains?

Lindsey and Krause (2007:96) encapsulated the wide range of theories by stating, "Ceramic-bearing campsites in eastern Colorado and western Nebraska have been attributed to Woodland stage hunters and gatherers, mobile hunting/gathering populations making Upper Republican-like pottery, and Upper Republican cultivators ranging to the west to hunt." 

Wedel (1961:102) suggested that there was a need for more evidence to be collected and analyzed from the High Plains sites before questions of origin could be answered. He stated that it was impossible to determine whether Upper Republican material on the High Plains sites marked seasonal hunting camps for the Upper Republican horticulturists out of the Central Plains. 

Wood (1969) proposed that the Upper Republican campsites on the High Plains were occupied by Upper Republican earth-lodge dwellers from the Central Plains during seasonal hunting forays. Wood's evidence was based on a lack of burial sites, horticultural tools, and permanent structures at the High Plains campsites. Wedel (1970:7-10) and Reher (1973:119) argued that Wood's theory was illogical. Reher refuted Wood's claim that earth-lodge dwellers would travel two hundred miles across excellent bison hunting grounds to hunt other bison on the High Plains. 

By comparing artifact inventories reported from historical Pawnee hunting trips to the artifact assemblages in Upper Republican campsites on the High Plains, Roper (1990) argued that the artifact assemblages on the High Plains were too culturally diverse and well-represented to be from temporary hunting camps.  

Steinacher and Carlson (1998:248) summarized three hypotheses for the High Plains Upper Republican sites. The first hypothesis was the Wood proposal above where earth-lodge dwellers from the east made periodic or seasonal trips to the High Plains to replenish their resources. The authors noted that raw material originating in the High Plains was used almost exclusively on stone tools discovered in some Upper Republican sites in Kansas and Nebraska. That raw material could only get to the Central Plains from the High Plains by trading or transporting it. 

Using geochemical analysis, Roper et al (2007) determined that a few of the ceramic pots discovered in High Plains Upper Republican sites used clay from the Medicine Creek area of southern Nebraska. That was evidence that at least a few Upper Republican ceramic pots were transported from the Central Plains to the High Plains. The researchers also noted that during the excavation of House 5 in the Medicine Creek area of Nebraska investigators discovered a large quantity of Flattop Chalcedony from eastern Colorado. That provided evidence of raw material movement from the High Plains to the Central Plains during the Upper Republican phase.         

The second hypothesis suggested by Steinacher and Carlson was that some people from the east gave up their sedentary horticultural lifestyles on the Central Plains and took up nomadic hunter and gatherer lifestyles on the High Plains. That is a logical hypothesis if we assume that some humans around A.D. 1000 were as adventurous as the pioneers who settled in the western United States in the 1800s. Humans have a desire to live their lives the way they want. Some people prefer a predictable lifestyle while other people like taking bigger risks. The High Plains Upper Republican people might have abandoned their farming hamlets along the tributaries of the Upper Republican River in Kansas and Nebraska to head west just like the pioneers of historical times did.       

The third hypothesis that Steinacher and Carlson suggested was that indigenous people already occupying the High Plains established trade with the Upper Republican people in the east. We already know that Upper Republican people along the Central Plains ended up with raw material originating from the High Plains, and ceramic pottery from the Central Plains ended up in High Plains Upper Republican sites. Was that material shared between two groups from the same phase or two entirely different phases or societies?

Figure Ten - 1.1-inch-long Washita arrow point that the author found on 
May 18, 2024, in Logan County, Colorado. Over the decades, 
the author has found many Washita and Harrell
arrow points and potsherds in the area.  

Conclusions 

Is it a good assumption that High Plains Upper Republican was the western extension of the Upper Republican phase of the Central Plains? 

Based on archaeological evidence, the Central Plains and High Plains people lived vastly different lifestyles. On the Central Plains, horticulture was an important part of the economy while on the High Plains horticulture appeared to play little or no role. Even with the different lifestyles, there was a relationship between the High Plains and Central Plains people during the Upper Republican phase. At High Plains sites, archeologists found Upper Republican pottery manufactured with clay from the Central Plains, and at Central Plains sites, archaeologists found raw material originating on the High Plains. We know that the Upper Republican people from the Central Plains and High Plains used the same styles of side-notched and tri-notched projectile points. 

That is clear-cut evidence that material moved between the Central Plains and High Plains populations during the Upper Republican phase. However, the evidence of material movement does not define the social relationship between two groups of people. Were those people kinfolk or not related? Did the Upper Republican phase on the Central Plains use the High Plains as outposts or for seasonal hunting trips? I found no smoking guns or evidence that conclusively answered those questions. 

When excavating a Late Prehistoric site on the High Plains, archaeologists have three markers used to identify the presence of Upper Republican. First, the age should fall between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1400. Second, small, triangular side-notched and tri-notched projectile points should be in the artifact inventory. And most importantly, the distinctive Upper Republican ceramic pottery must be present. If there is evidence of horticulture (corn), working hoes made from bison scapula, and permanent dwellings that is a bonus, even though Scheiber (2006:135) reminded us that, "These western sites are known more for what they lack (houses, hoes, and corn) than for what they possess." 

Surface finds of Upper Republican material are an entirely different ball game. For one thing, it is impossible to accurately date materials out of archaeological and stratigraphic context. Secondly, the presence of side-notched and tri-notched arrow points of the Washita and Harrell variety may or may not be associated with High Plains Upper Republican. The most important artifact for determining the presence of High Plains Upper Republican is the distinctive ceramic pottery. Of course, the potsherds must be large enough to differentiate them from earlier Plains Woodland ceramic pottery. Of course, finding an entire High Plains Upper Republican pot would be a surefire indicator. I have been searching for that well-preserved ceramic pot for decades. Unsuccessfully, I might add. Finding a well-preserved Upper Republican ceramic pot is as rare as finding moose feathers. 

References Cited

Cassell, E. S.

1997    The Post-Archaic of Eastern Colorado. In The Archaeology of Colorado, pp. 215-219. Johnson Books. Boulder.  

  

Cooper, Steven R.

                2018   The Official Overstreet Indian Arrowheads Identification and Price                                             Guide. Stevens Point, WI.     
 

Ellwood, Priscilla B.

2002    Middle Ceramic Period in Colorado. In Native American Ceramics of Eastern Colorado. University of Colorado Museum. Boulder.                                  

Irwin, Cynthia, and Henry Irwin

             1957      The Archaeology of the Agate Bluff Area. Plains Anthropologist                                            8:15-38.               

Lindsey, Roche M., and Richard A. Krause

             2007        Assessing Plains Village Mobility Patterns on the Central High                                           Plains in Plains Village Archaeology, edited by Stanley A. Ahler and                                Marvin Kay.       

Reher, Charles A.

1973       A Survey of Ceramic Sites in Southeastern Wyoming. The Wyoming Archaeologist. XVI, pp 1-2.     

Roper, Donna C.

1990      Artifact Assemblages Composition and the Hunting Camp Interpretation of High Plains Upper Republican Sites. In Southwestern Lore,

                56(4): pp. 1-19.  

Roper, Donna C., Robert J. Hoard, Robert J. Speakman, Michael D. Glascock, and Anne Cobry DiCosola
                2007    Source Analysis of Central Plains Tradition Pottery Using Neutron                                           Activation  Analysis: Feasibility and First Results. Plains Anthropologist,                              Vol. 52, No. 203 (August 2007), pp. 325-335. 

Scheiber, Laura L.

                 2006  The Late Prehistoric on the High Plains of Western Kansas, High Plains                                Upper Republican and Dismal River in Archaeology of Kansas, edited by 

                            Robert J. Hoard and William E. Banks. Lawrence, KS.           
 

Steinacher, T. L., and G. F. Carlson

    1998   The Central Plains Tradition in Archaeology of the Great Plains, edited by W. Raymond Wood. University Press of Kansas. Lawrence.

Strong, William Duncan

                 1934    An Introduction to Nebraska Archeology. Miscellaneous Collections 93(10): iii-323.     

               

Wedel, Waldo R.

1961        Prehistoric Man on the Great Plains. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman. 

1970        Some observations on “Two House Sites in the Central Plains: An experiment in Archaeology. Nebraska History 51(2) pp. 1-28.  

 

1986        Central Plains Prehistory: Holocene Environments and Cultural Change in the Republican River Basin. University of Nebraska. Lincoln.

 

Withers, Arnold M.

              1954         University of Denver Archaeological Fieldwork. Southwestern Lore                                   19(4):1-3.         

Wood, J. J.

1967        Archaeological Investigations in Northeastern Colorado. Ph.D. dissertation. University of Colorado, Boulder, University Microfilms, Ann Arbor.  

Wood, W. Raymond

1969         Ethnographic Reconstructions. In Two House Sites in the Central Plains: An Experiment in Archaeology, edited by W. Raymond Wood, pp. 102-108. Memoir 6. Plains Anthropologist.     

              1971         Pottery Sites Near Limon, Colorado in Southwestern Lore, Vol. 37,                                   No. 3, December 1971.  

                             

1990        A Query on Upper Republican Archaeology in Colorado. In Southwestern Lore, 56:3-7.        

 

About the Author

 

John Bradford Branney began collecting and documenting prehistoric artifacts in Wyoming with his family at the ripe old age of eight years old. He has amassed a prehistoric artifact collection numbering in the thousands. He has written eleven historical fiction books and over ninety papers and articles about Paleoindians, prehistoric artifacts, and geology. The author holds a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Wyoming and an MBA in finance from the University of Colorado. He lives in the Colorado Mountains with his family.

Rattlesnake Shake - A Shadows on the Trail Adventure

RATTLESNAKE SHAKE  

A Shadows on the Trail Adventure

by John Bradford Branney

Figure One – Lots of land for me to explore.

                                         

The sun popped up over the hills to the east, the start of another August scorcher. With my back to the sun, I walked up the dry streambed, my eyes searching the sand for prehistoric artifacts. That dry streambed was not always dry. At one time that stream flowed a good amount of water with an underground spring as its source. The ranch owner now diverts the spring water for domestic and agricultural use. Over the years, I found enough diagnostic artifacts along that streambed to prove that prehistoric man occupied the valley from north of 13,000 years ago right up until historical Indian tribes. That particular day I was deliberately walking past my previously discovered prehistoric campsites to check out a gully upstream from the underground spring. Yes, I did have a tough time walking past my prime artifact-hunting spots to check out a new location.    

When you hunt a prehistoric site long enough you notice when something is out of whack. It was apparent that the site had gone through some heavy rainstorms where the downpours cut a couple new channels into the pasture. Also, massive blocks of soil had broken free from the cutbanks and tumbled into the streambed. There is nothing like erosion to put a smile on an artifact hunter’s face.        

A buzzing sound yanked me from my daydream. About fifteen feet in front of me there was a rattlesnake and about ten feet behind that one, there was a second rattlesnake. When they sensed my approach, they took off and slithered up the rock-filled gully in the opposite direction. The larger of the two vipers suddenly reversed course and headed right toward me (figure two). I don’t know, it must have been something I said.    

Figure Two - Say "hello" to
my little friends.

Rattlesnakes can be quite dangerous if a person is careless. After a hundred or more close encounters with the slithering kind, I conclude that rattlesnakes are quite benign if you don’t surprise, threaten, or antagonize them. Give them respect, don’t box them into a dead-end corner, and always give them a wide berth. I tapped my walking stick on the rocks to remind Mr. Rattler that I was there. The big rattlesnake reared up into a tight coil, shook its tail, and reminded me that it was still there. After a minute or so standoff, I realized that the gully wasn’t big enough for the three of us, so I retreated. I stepped back hoping that I did not step on a third rattlesnake and then I took a detour around that section of the gully.   

         I walked the rest of the gully until I reached its head at the base of a sandstone cliff. My only reward for that hike was a few chert chips. The only highlight was my close encounter with the rattling kind. Don’t get me wrong, a hike on an artifact hunt is never a waste of time. I never know what I am going to find until I walk the land. I have found prehistoric artifacts in some pretty strange places.    

Not wanting to waste any more daylight, I headed back down the gully at a pretty fast pace, but still cautious about having a reunion with my slithering friends. I was anxious to get back to the prehistoric campsites and start finding artifacts. As I approached the underground spring, I knew I was back in artifact country. The layers of soil in the cutbanks alternated between light and dark shades of gray. The dark gray in the soil came from the soot, charcoal, and organic matter from thousands of years of prehistoric camping.   

Figure Three – The cutbank with
my walking staff. 

It was not long before I found my first prehistoric artifact. I found it at the base of the cutbank in figure three where the tip of my red walking stick marked the spot. Figure four shows the exposed base of a complete Pelican Lake dart point in situ. I have found many Pelican Lake points at that site, so that was not an unusual find. Pelican Lake people inhabited that site sometime around the time of Christ, give or take a few centuries.

Figure Four - in situ
Pelican Lake.  

That 1.6-inch-long Pelican Lake dart point was made from a grayish-orange quartzite, perhaps from the Spanish Diggings quarry in Wyoming or maybe from a local quarry. The author wrote about the Pelican Lake prehistoric culture in a previous article so will not cover it here. (Branney 2002).

In the afternoon, I was exploring a two-foot-high cutbank when I noticed a piece of chert stuck in a layer of soil. It appeared to be an artifact. My initial reaction was surprise which quickly evolved into anticipation as I pulled the suspected artifact from the soil. My next reaction wasn’t elation, it was a disappointment. I only found half of a projectile point. I wet the broken end of the projectile point with spittle to determine if it was a new or old fracture. I was disappointed to see the cloudy white patina return to the fractured end when the projectile point dried. That meant it was an old break which lowered my chances of finding the projectile point tip close by. The tip of the projectile point could be anywhere. The prehistoric hunter might have broken the projectile point while hunting and then discarded the projectile point base from its foreshaft when he returned to camp. I find projectile point bases in prehistoric campsites all the time. Nevertheless, I dug into that cutbank like a gopher on caffeine. After several minutes of poking and prodding, I gave up. If the other half of the projectile point was in that cutbank, finding it would have to wait. With my best Terminator impersonation, I peered down at the cutbank and said, “I’ll be back!”    

Figure Five - concave base, edge grinding, and basal thinning. 1.4” long
Goshen projectile point broken back found on Rattlesnake Shake Day.

When I cleaned the dirt off the projectile point base, I was impressed by the beautiful material. It appeared to be petrified wood with very cool banding (figure five). I could tell by the flaking scars that the projectile point was probably made by a Paleoindian.    

My brain kicked into second gear trying to identify the projectile point type. The base of the projectile point consisted of a concave base with pronounced ears. Based on those characteristics it could be a Midland or a Goshen or even a McKean Lanceolate point from the Middle Archaic. I was hoping that it was not a McKean. There is nothing wrong with McKean points, but Paleoindian points are a better prize.     

With my thumb and forefinger, I ran my fingers up and down the basal edges and found them to be polished and smooth. That characteristic gave me a clue that the projectile point might be of Paleoindian or Early Archaic origin.       

I ran my thumb across the bottom of the base, and it was quite sharp. I noticed the four or five pressure flakes running vertically up from the base of the projectile point. The flaking on the projectile point was done very well with one face exhibiting horizontal transverse flaking while the reverse side was comprised of collateral flaking. Based on those clues, and the fact that I previously found several examples of the same projectile point type on that site, I concluded the projectile point came from the Paleoindian Goshen Complex.

Figure Six – 2.1-inch-long Goshen point (bottom) and broken Goshen point (top).

Figure six shows two more probable Goshen points found at the same site. Orthoquartzite was used to make both of those points. The author found the lower Goshen point on June 1, 1999, near the underground spring while the ranch foreman recently found the upper Goshen point near the ranch’s barn.     

What are Goshen points? To answer that question, let’s take a brief tour to an archaeological site in Wyoming.  

The Hell Gap Site

It was 1958 and The Bridge on the River Kwai won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. Nikita Khrushchev became Premier of the Soviet Union. Unemployment in Detroit reached twenty percent, marking the height of the 1958 Recession. Have Gun Will Travel debuted on American radio.  

It was May 23 of that same year when two Wyoming teenagers named James Duguid and Mel McKnight discovered Paleoindian projectile points in an arroyo near Hell Gap in Goshen County, Wyoming. Understanding its archaeological significance, Duguid showed the potential site to George Agogino of the University of Wyoming, and in the spring of 1960, excavations began at what is now called the Hell Gap site. In 1961, Agogino turned the site over to Harvard University to excavate under the direction of Henry and Cynthia Irwin-Williams.    

Figure Seven – Hell Gap Site in Goshen County.

By 1966, the investigators were excavating four different localities at the same time at Hell Gap. On August 15th, only days before a planned shutdown of excavations, the investigators encountered a deeper productive zone at Locality 1. The investigators thought they might still be in the Folsom strata until they discovered a different style of projectile point. After studying the newly discovered projectile points, the archaeologists ruled them out as Clovis points. Eight days later on August 26, 1966, the Hell Gap site was cemented and sealed off and Henry and Cynthia Irwin-Williams never returned to the site.     

Henry Irwin recognized the similarities between Plainview points documented in Texas and the newly discovered projectile points from the deepest level at Locality 1 at Hell Gap. However, Irwin ran into a challenge in assigning the newly discovered Hell Gap projectile points to the Plainview projectile point type. The stratigraphy and radiocarbon dates from the Plainview site in Texas indicated a younger age than Folsom while the newly discovered projectile points at Hell Gap were older than Folsom. Irwin proposed a new projectile point type and named it and its associated artifacts the Goshen Complex after the county where the Hell Gap site exists.

Cynthia Irwin–Williams et al. (1973:46) described the Goshen projectile points as follows:

Typical Goshen projectile points were lanceolate-shaped with parallel to slightly convex sides and concave bases. The overall shape of Goshen points resembled the Clovis form but the flaking technology for Goshen was more refined. Flaking patterns for Goshen points were excellent and executed with a combination of percussion and pressure flaking. Most flake scars were uniformly directed at right angles to the long axis of the point. Most points were basally thinned with the removal of multiple flakes. Specimens were uniformly thin and the basal edges were ground or polished along the lower third of the point.

Henry Irwin died in 1978, and with him died his thoughts and conclusions about the Goshen Complex. After Irwin’s death, Frison (1996:205) examined Irwin’s field notes from Hell Gap and confirmed that Irwin opined that the Goshen projectile point type was typologically the same as the Plainview projectile point type.

The 1960s excavation at the Hell Gap site was never thoroughly documented and after the death of Cynthia Irwin–Williams on June 15, 1990, the chances of the site ever being properly documented went down significantly. But the 1980s brought about a resurgence of interest in the Hell Gap site. The original field notes were reexamined, the collections were located and studied, lab analysis was done, and a new round of excavations began. All of those actions led to a better understanding of the Hell Gap site and Paleoindians on the High Plains (Larson, Kornfeld, and Frison 2009).    

Figure Eight – Probable 3.4-inch-long Goshen knife form. 

   

Stanford et al (2005:335) reported a study by Frederic Sellet involving the Goshen Complex at Hell Gap. The objective of Sellet’s study was to refine the microstratigraphy at the Hell Gap site. Sellet confirmed that the deepest productive zone at Locality 1 was Goshen-only. On top of the Goshen-only zone was Folsom strata, and above the Folsom strata was a zone with an indeterminate projectile point type. The level above that contained a mixture of Folsom and Agate Basin projectile points. And Sellet reported that the zone above that contained a mixture of Folsom- and Goshen-styled projectile points. If Sellet’s analysis was correct, it supports the notion that there were multiple projectile point styles used during the same period at Hell Gap and most likely across the rest of the High Plains.   

Figure eight is a 3.4-inch-long knife form made from a semi-translucent Flat Top Chalcedony that the author found on August 30, 2006, at the same site as the Goshen points in figures five and six. The flaking technology used by the Paleoindian was oblique transverse with a relatively flat cross-section and no medial ridge. A small portion of the base was missing from the knife form when the author found it. That made it impossible to determine the point type with one hundred percent certainty. Based on the location of the basal thinning scars and the cross-section of the broken base, the author estimated that one-quarter to one-half inch of the projectile point base was gone. If more of the base was missing than the author’s estimate, the thinning scars could actually be fluting scars. The projectile point could be Clovis, but it is the author’s opinion that the knife form was from the site’s Goshen Complex.   

Conclusions

1.  There has been considerable progress made in understanding point-type chronology and stratigraphic relationships between Clovis, Folsom, and Goshen, but we still lack evidence of the cultural or social relationships between those three groups. There are many examples of archaeological sites where a single projectile point type was used, providing evidence that projectile point type was one basis for defining a specific social group. When two or three point types are found at the same site with similar or overlapping radiocarbon dates, it creates many questions. Was the same social group using different point types or were there different social groups using the same site? If they were different social groups, did they share the site with other groups at the same time?  

2.  Many investigators believe that Goshen and Plainview projectile points are typologically and technologically the same point type. However, the time gap between the use of Goshen points on the northern plains and the later use of Plainview points on the southern plains has not been adequately explained. If the time gap was due to the north to south dispersion of Goshen point technology, why did it take approximately one thousand years to travel several hundred miles from the northern plains to the southern plains? Why have we not seen a similar time gap from north to south with Clovis and Folsom?

3.  Surface artifact hunters are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to identifying Goshen and Plainview points. Without knowing the archaeological or stratigraphic context of the artifact, it is very possible to misidentify the projectile point type. Numerous projectile point types were lanceolate-shaped with concave bases, edge grinding, and basal thinning or fluting. Those point types spanned a time frame of over 3000 years on the High Plains (Frison 1991:24f). Clovis and Folsom points are easily differentiated from Goshen points, but other projectile point types such as Allen and Midland are not easily differentiated from Goshen points (Branney 2022).

 

Selected References  

Bradley, B. A. and G. C. Frison

1996  Flaked-Stone and Worked-Stone at the Mill Iron Site. In The Mill Iron Site. Edited by George C. Frison. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque.

Branney, John Bradford   

 2002   First Light, First Blood. In Prehistoric American, Volume XXXVI, Number 3: Pp. 55-57.

2022   Unwinding a Twister, Goshen-Plainview/Midland. Academia.     

Frison, George C.

1991   Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Second Edition. Academic Press. San Diego.

1996   The Mill Iron Site. University of New Mexico Press. Albuquerque.

1999  The Late Pleistocene Prehistory of the Northwestern Plains. In Ice Age Peoples of North America, edited by R. Bonnichsen, pp. 274-275. Oregon State University Press. Corvallis, Oregon.

Irwin-Williams, C., C. H. T. Irwin, G. A. Agogino, and C. V. Haynes Jr.

1973  Hell Gap: Paleo-Indian Occupation on the High Plains. In Plains Anthropologist 18(59):40-53.

Knudson, Ruth

2005   On Plainview. In Prehistoric American, Volume XXXIX, Number 2.

Larson, M. L., M. Kornfeld, and G. C.  Frison

2009  Hell Gap: a stratified Paleoindian campsite at the edge of the Rockies. The University of Utah Press.

Sellards, E. H., G. L. Evans, and G. E. Meade

1947 Fossil Bison and Associated Artifacts from Plainview, Texas. In Bulletin of the Geological Society of America, Vol. 58, PP. 927–954.

Stanford, D., R. Bonnichsen, B. Meggers, and D. G. Steele

2005  Paleoamerican Origins: Models, Evidence, and Future Directions. In Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis, edited by Robson Bonnichsen et al. Center for the Study of the First Americans. Texas A & M. College Station.

 

About the Author

John Bradford Branney is a geologist, prehistorian, and author with eleven books and numerous journal and magazine articles on archaeology and paleontology published. Branney grew up in Wyoming and began hunting artifacts practically from the time he could walk. He has cataloged and classified several thousand prehistoric artifacts and fossils in his collection. Branney and his family reside in the Colorado mountains.