DOG DAY AFTERNOON

Dog Day Afternoon

by John Bradford Branney

Figure One - In the valley on March 8, 2017. 

In the summer of 1986, I was at the Denver Public Library researching potential hunting spots for artifacts. I happened to discover an old doctoral dissertation from a candidate who investigated approximately forty archaeological sites in northeastern Colorado. Since northeastern Colorado was pretty much a new playing field for me, I decided to check out the author's sites in the autumn of 1986. I had very little success finding anything at most of those sites. I learned that local collectors had known about those sites for decades. The doctoral candidate probably found those sites by speaking to local people or by following the work of an earlier archaeologist. E.B. Renaud (1931) conducted the first official archaeological reconnaissance of eastern Colorado in the late 1920s. Finding any artifacts on those hunted-out sites proved to be like finding a needle in a haystack.

I had mostly given up on the 674-page doctoral dissertation when I noticed a small site that the author briefly mentioned. The doctoral candidate dedicated less than a page to the site. I asked myself how important that site could be. Was it worth my time and effort to investigate? My answer was why not. I studied the topological map of the target area and triangulated the site's location based on the author's vague description.

Five days before Christmas in 1986, I arrived at the bowl-shaped valley. The ranch house was located two to three miles from the main county road and was located at the base of the valley. I remember that long, winding road leading to the ranch house as if it were yesterday. It was not much better than a two-track trail. Before I reached the ranch house, my low-clearance car crossed a dry creek bed filled with well-sorted, sugar-like sand. I gunned the car so that its frame glided across the sand like a sled in wintertime to the other side of the creek bed without becoming stuck. I made it! Why did the rancher leave the road that way?

Figure two is a photograph of a Late Prehistoric corner-notched arrowpoint that I found in the valley on August 11, 1987. Artifacts don’t get any better than that one. I was shocked that something so delicate had survived that long on an active cattle ranch. The material was a semi-translucent Hartville Uplift chalcedony.

Figure Two - Corner-notched arrowpoint made
from a semi-translucent petrified wood.    

When I reached the ranch house, two dogs ran out to greet my vehicle. One dog was a small cattle dog with a loud bark, while the other dog was a massive Saint Bernard with an intimidating look. In 1986, the book and movie Cujo had already made their rounds. The storyline left everyone who read the book or watched the movie horrified. The book and movie did not help the Saint Bernard breed's reputation. I was a bit apprehensive about getting out of the car as the massive beast slimed my car windows with muddy drool. The lady of the house called out to the dog, and he ceased and desisted. After a brief conversation with the rancher's wife, she granted me permission to hunt. I set my eyes on the bone-dry creek bottom that wound its way up the valley toward a natural spring and a long line of bluffs.

After trudging through the soft sand for a couple of hundred yards, I heard a loud noise behind me. It was the Saint Bernard loping toward me. Fortunately, the dog’s intention was good, and he licked my face. I wondered where the Saint Bernard's mouth had been that morning.  

On August 6, 1996, nearly ten years after my first visit, I found the Shoshonean knife form in figure three in the dry creek bed. The material the flintknapper used was a pale red-and-white Flattop Chalcedony, sourced from a prehistoric rock quarry in eastern Colorado. Archaeologists Kornfeld, Larson, and Frison (2010) suggested that Shoshonean knife forms, or Snake Head knives, as some people call them, were a reliable marker of late Shoshone Tribe occupations on the High Plains and were sometimes associated with a mixture of Crow and Shoshone pottery.

Figure Three - Shoshonean knife form made
from Flattop Chalcedony.  

Shoshonean knife forms started out as leaf-shaped bifaces, but both blade edges were resharpened bilaterally. Hence, the knife forms remained mostly symmetrical in outline, and the working end retained its lenticular-transverse cross-section. The knife forms were resharpened until they became thin and broke. Jeb Taylor (2006) noted that Shoshonean knife forms were more common on the northern plains, while Harahay knife forms were more common on the southern plains. 

The Saint Bernard and I wandered up that sandy creek bottom, but we were on different missions. I was in pursuit of prehistoric artifacts while the Saint Bernard was searching for rabbits and varmints. To my left, a sand-colored butte towered over the land, while to my right was rolling prairie, carved up by random arroyos. A quarter of a half mile ahead of us loomed a sandstone bluff that wrapped around the valley on the north, west, and south. 

The dog and I reached an artesian spring that gushed water through a three-inch pipe into a cement cistern. It did not take Sherlock Holmes to conclude that the dry creek bed was not always dry. The ranch had diverted fresh water from the spring via a pipeline to the ranch house and a fishing pond. The cold water from that spring was some of the best that I have ever tasted. The dog and I ate a peaceful lunch near the spring. I shared my sandwich with the Saint Bernard, and he returned the gesture with a few wet doggie kisses. 

The dog and I hunted that site into the late afternoon. I was thoroughly impressed. The land offered everything prehistoric people required to survive a harsh, primitive environment. There was abundant fresh water that attracted prey animals, which attracted predators, including humans. The surrounding bluffs offered a break from winter winds while offering a commanding view of the land for miles around. I returned to my vehicle while the dog took off to the ranch house for dinnertime. That first day, I found a Besant dart point and the broken base from an Early Archaic knife form. I vowed to the valley, “I shall return.”

Figure Four - cutbank where I found
the Folsom point. Red circled the spot.    

On an overcast and chilly August 30, 2007, I began my hunt at the site by meandering up the dry creek bed. Fog initially blocked out the morning sun, but as the day wore on, the fog dissipated. About one hundred or so yards east of the spring, I caught a glimpse of a sliver of chert in a four-foot-high cutbank (figure four). With my fingertips, I gently pried the needle-thin piece of chert from its tomb. Once free, I rubbed thousands of years of old dirt from the rock. As the dirt disappeared, an artifact appeared. 

My heart stopped. It was not any old, commonly found artifact; it was one of the rarest of rare. In my opinion, I held the Holy Grail of High Plains artifacts: a Folsom point (figure five). My goal on every artifact hunt since childhood was to find a Folsom point. They were incredibly cool. That artifact left me speechless.  

Figure Five - 1.4-inch-long Folsom dart point
made from Flattop Chalcedony. 

Since that first visit in 1986, the ranch has changed ownership five times. Each time the landowners changed, I held my breath, hoping that it would not impact my artifact hunting on the property. Fortunately, my artifact hunting has survived. Each of the new landowners owned different dogs, and some were friendlier than others. I am referring to both the dogs and the landowners. I now want to introduce you to the dog in figure six. 

Figure Six - Molly. Rest in peace, girl! 

That little sweetie’s name was Molly. She followed me around the land every time I went on a hunt. I remember showing up one spring, and Molly was gone. I was rightly concerned about what happened to her. The lady of the ranch told me that they gave Molly away. I was both disturbed and disappointed. Why would they do that? The reason was that a little girl's dog on a nearby ranch died of old age, and in an act of kindness, the ranchers gave sweet Molly to the grieving little girl. It was a beautiful gesture, but I sure missed my walks with Molly. 

Figure Seven - 2.8-inch-long Scottsbluff point made 
from a dendritic jasper, most likely sourced from the 
Hartville Uplift in Wyoming.   

Figure seven was an in situ photograph I took of a Scottsbluff point from the Cody Complex, found on August 23, 2008. Its orientation in the sand reminded me of the Titanic listing in the North Atlantic. When I pulled the Scottsbluff from the sand, I was initially disappointed at what I found (figure seven). It appeared that the Scottsbluff point was only partially there and that the tip had suffered an impact fracture. But after studying the point later at home, I noticed something peculiar. The rock material at the tip of the point was a lighter shade and showed heavy polishing from use. I believe that the prehistoric owner refurbished a damaged projectile point by knapping three burins onto the broken tip, one along each edge and one smack down the middle. The Scottsbluff projectile point then served its owner as a multi-purpose tool: a burin, knife, scraper, and/or chisel for use on meat, bone, wood, and hides. For more information about burins and their use, please check out the following reference (Branney 2016). 

Figure Eight - Scottsbluff points with three 
burins at the tip. Note the color and texture
change at the burinated tip.  

Over the decades, I have found almost every conceivable High Plains projectile point type on that ranch, from Paleoindian Clovis at around 13,000 years old to Late Prehistoric Washita arrowpoints at around 600 years old. I have even found iron arrowpoints and rifle cartridges from the historic western expansion of the United States. I have found fire hearths eroding from cutbanks, potsherds (Upper Republican and Woodland), various knife forms, manos, metates, a pestle or two, limaces, spurred and non-spurred plano convex end scrapers, side scrapers, thumb scrapers, a bison skull, fossilized mammoth bones, a tang knife or two, drills, gravers, beads, flake knives, and lots of many burned animal bones. Other interesting finds from the land were fossilized bones of extinct mammals from the Miocene and Oligocene geological epochs, including horses, camels, pronghorn antelope, and deer. When artifact hunting was not going so well, I could always count on finding a fossil or two.    

Figure Nine - 4.1-inch-long discoidal biface made from 
Alibates agatized dolomite out of Texas. 

On May 30, 2010, I found the discoidal biface in figure nine. Discoidal biface is a technical term for a large and flat disc-shaped tool made by prehistoric humans for a specific purpose. The Paleoindian who made this discoidal biface hammered out a sharp edge around the circumference of the rock. The prehistoric human probably used this artifact as an all-purpose tool for scraping hides, chopping wood, and cutting through animal bones and tendons. The material is Alibates agatized dolomite from the Panhandle of Texas. Besides being an all-purpose tool, the discoidal biface served another purpose. Since these nomadic prehistoric hunters were not always near raw material to make tools, they used discoidal bifaces as portable rock supplies. This artifact, and how it originated on the Panhandle of Texas and ended up in northeastern Colorado twelve thousand years ago, was the inspiration for my book series on Paleoindians titled SHADOWS on the TRAIL Hexalogy.      

My only other “dog experience” on the ranch occurred on December 3, 2016. My faithful German Shepherd, Madd Maxx, and I were artifact hunting on the ranch when a herd of wild Corriente cattle decided they did not like the dog. I came to the dog's defense, and when I did, an ill-tempered cow named Sheila punished me tenfold. I ended up on Flight for Life to a trauma center, and Madd Maxx ended up at a veterinarian.  I documented our near-death experiences in Branney (2016a).

Figure Ten - Madd Maxx, the greatest dog of all time, 
hunting artifacts with me on February 19, 2016.
He loved the outdoors. Rest in peace, my dear friend.   

Since 1986, I have visited the ranch more than one hundred times and collected and documented over one thousand artifacts. I have discovered at least eight prehistoric campsites on 160 sixty acres of the ranch, including three separate rock shelters. I have found other prehistoric rock shelters on the High Plains. Most of them faced south so that they could benefit from passive solar and be protected from frigid northerly winds in the winter. But on that ranch, two of the rock shelters face north. My only conclusion was that prehistoric people used those shelters during the warm months of the year when shade was a welcome relief from the hot, dry climate.

I found that site by researching an old doctoral dissertation in a public library. I look back at that moment of discovery as a combination of luck and destiny. Eventually, I would have found that ranch without that document, but it led me there sooner rather than later. Since that first visit in 1986, my artifact finds at the ranch have dwindled dramatically. I have been completely skunked more than once. The days of wine and roses are over. Any artifacts that remain are buried under soil, and erosion is an incredibly slow process that won't keep up with my hunting pressure. But even with a decline in the valley's artifact production, some of the best days of my life were spent artifact hunting there. It is one of my favorite places on Planet Earth.

So that you don't feel too sorry for me, I leave you with one final photograph of a twelve-thousand-year-old Midland dart point I found at the site on May 27, 2023 (figure 11). The valley still produces artifacts; I just need to make sure that I am there when Brother Erosion unearths them.    

Figure Eleven - 1.4-inch-long Midland dart point found on May 27, 2023. 

  

References Cited

Branney, John Bradford

2016  Prehistoric Burins Along the Shadows on the Trail. Academia.com.

2016a Dog and Devil Cows Along the Shadows on the Trail. Academia.com.

Kornfeld, Marcel, George C. Frison, and Mary Lou Larson

2010  Prehistoric Hunter-Gatherers of the High Plains and Rockies. Third Edition. Left-Coast Press Inc. Walnut Creek.   

Renaud, E.B.

1931 Archaeological Survey of Eastern Colorado. University of Denver, Department of Anthropology.      

Taylor, Jeb

2006  Projectile Points of the High Plains. Sheridan Books. Chelsea.

 

About the Author

John Bradford Branney was born and raised in Wyoming and became interested in Prehistoric America through his grandfather's artifact collection. From the time he could walk, Branney went hog wild collecting and documenting prehistoric artifacts and sites along the High Plains. 

Branney has written fourteen books and approximately one hundred articles on archaeology and geology. He holds a B.S. degree in geology from the University of Wyoming and an M.B.A. in finance from the University of Colorado. He lives in the Colorado mountains with his family.