THE ONE THAT GOT AWAY - A Besant Story

The One That Got Away

A Besant Story

by John Bradford Branney

 

Figure 1 - 2.1-inch-long Besant atlatl dart point or knife form found by the author in  
Goshen County, Wyoming, in the summer of 1972. The raw material is a cream-
colored jasper, most likely sourced from the Hartville Uplift. One might call
this point a Pelican Lake or Besant 'tweener'. More on 'tweeners' later.   

Fast Track

There was not a cloud in the powder-blue sky. At ground level, it was a different story. Blowing sand and snow pelted the landscape. In the distance, a man walked toward the morning sun along a wind-swept ridge. His back was to an intense, gale-force wind out of the northwest. Ten paces or so behind him, another man followed, and behind that man by a few paces was a third man. Below the ridge and running parallel to the men was a small river meandering across a wide floodplain. At that time of year, the river was small, but when the snowmelt arrived in the spring, the river would carry muddy water from one side of the floodplain to the other. A millennium and a half later, white settlers would name that river the Powder. Behind the men, snow-capped mountains in the distance reached for heaven. A millennium or so later, those blue mountains would be called the Bighorns.

Up on the ridge, the furious wind flung dirt and snow high into the air, creating ground blizzards and whiteouts. The men were hunting for bison, but they would settle for deer, elk, pronghorn, or practically anything that moved. The hunters were not starving; their tribe stockpiled enough food to last through much of the winter. But as winter plodded along, the hunters became restless just lying around their dwellings. You can only make so many projectile points and atlatl dart shafts before you become frightfully bored. The hunters craved physical activity to stave off the tedium. They just picked the wrong day.

The bitter cold found it difficult to penetrate the hunters’ garb. Over their inner clothes, the hunters wore buffalo robes fashioned into ankle-length coats. Elk hide was used to make their leggings. Sock-like boots with fur against the skin covered their moccasin-laden feet. Fur-lined caps rested on the hunters’ noggins. The leader’s long gray hair blew across his face as the wind pushed him across the ridge. His cap was made from the facial skin and fur of a badger. Empty animal eye sockets aimed forward and moved in unison with the leader's turning of the head.

The leader’s complexion was weathered and dark, and his face long and drawn. Deep wrinkles lined around his mouth and eyes. The leader’s nose was large and hooked, and a long pinkish-red scar ran diagonally across his right cheek. He squinted against the bright winter sun and the harsh wind. The rims of his eyes were red from an ice and sand assault. He was considered old, surviving that harsh environment for over forty winters. He was a survivor who had so far met any challenge nature threw at him. 

Several winters prior, the leader and his people left their village near a big river to the northeast. White settlers would someday call that big river the Missouri. The leader's tribe, which an archaeologist would name Besant, traveled southwest, following smaller river tributaries, sometimes by boat, while most of the time on foot. His people still traded with the kinfolk who remained camped along the big river. In fact, the brown semitranslucent rock used to make most of their projectile points came from trading with the people to the northeast.

The leader stopped at the edge of the ridge and braced himself against the gusty wind. He liked living along that small river; there was enough food to feed the village, and the water from the river was mostly good. Out of the corner of his eye, the leader spotted a broken atlatl shaft lying on the ground. At its tip was a corner-notched projectile point with two sharp barbs near its base. It belonged to a different people who spoke a strange tongue. Those people once camped along the river, but the leader and his people took the land away from them and pushed those strangers west into the mountains. Archaeologists would call those displaced people Pelican Lake.

The leader’s attention was on the river valley below. The ridge partially shielded the river valley from the wind. If there were any prey animals to find on that blustery day, they would be hunkered down in the valley below. The old man threaded his way down the steep slope of the ridge through a field of granite boulders. The other two men followed behind. The hunters’ spear throwers were ready, with spearshafts resting on their shoulders just in case they spooked out a beast or two from amongst the rocks. They would need to act quickly if they expected to make a kill.

They arrived at a place in the river valley where massive granite boulders formed a natural amphitheater. Between the granite boulders, the tribe had constructed a fence using cottonwood tree posts and rails. They then draped old bison hides over the rails. The corral's opening was to the north. Painted bison skulls adorned the tops of several fence posts. The leader stopped and peered into the corral. Bison bones littered the ground, many with patches of fur and stained blood still on them. The tribe successfully utilized that bison trap twice over the last two autumns.

After briefly reminiscing over past bison hunts, the three hunters turned and walked away. Suddenly, a jackrabbit jumped out from behind a bush and hightailed it across the floodplain. With tail tucked and ears pinned back, the rabbit flat-out skedaddled. The leader launched a dart from his spear thrower high into the air. A second hunter followed suit and flung an atlatl dart into the air. The darts met the nasty crosswind and fluttered off course, crashing into the ground a good distance away from the intended target. The jackrabbit never looked back.

The hunters had a good laugh over that. That was the stringy jackrabbit that got away. With that, they searched for their atlatl darts. Both darts needed repair. The hunters would have the rest of the monotonous winter to repair those darts. The three hunters headed upriver. By the end of the day, the hunters wished they had not missed the only game animal they spotted on that miserable day.

Figure 2 - The North Butte of Pumpkin Buttes near where my story took place.
Photo Courtesy of Wyoming Catholic Cowboys.  

Besant – People of the North      

A mile or so away from where my story took place lies a well-documented prehistoric bison kill known as the Ruby Site, located near Pumpkin Buttes south of Gillette, Wyoming (Figure 2). Frison (1991: 200-208) reported that the site was a sophisticated bison trap or pound with a primitive corral, drive lane, and ceremonial structure. The construction of the bison trap took advantage of the surrounding topography, and according to Frison, designing and building the various components of the trap took an elevated level of knowledge and resourcefulness from the Besant people who built it.

Frison reported that people from the Besant Complex migrated onto the northwestern plains around A.D. 100, and then sometime around A.D. 280, they built and utilized that bison pound. Frison believed that the Besant people introduced one of the most sophisticated bison procurement strategies known on the northern plains in pre-horse times. The Besant people expended a large amount of effort digging the postholes and constructing the corral fence and drive lane at the Ruby Site. They accomplished those tasks without the aid of modern digging tools, using instead wooden sticks and bison bones as picks and shovels to dig the postholes. Frison estimated that it would have taken a hunting party of twenty males between ten days and two weeks to construct the bison pound. Frison noted that the corral was built with enough skill and care to probably meet today’s ruggedness standards for bison enclosures.

Frison (2004: 100) reported the unpredictable and dangerous nature of bison. He reminded us that bison, unlike cattle, were undomesticated beasts and could quickly turn from placid to aggressive on a moment’s notice. By observing modern-day bison behavior, Frison noted that animals along a fenceline will push back against the animals crowding them. He stated that even a half-full corral of bison could break off fence posts, even in a well-constructed corral. The investigators found evidence at the Ruby site that the Besant people rebuilt the corral fence at least once on the downslope side. Herding the massive beasts on foot added more personal risk for the prehistoric hunters at Ruby. 

Patricia Lee (N.D.: 13) wrote about her bison ranching experience, “Bison are born with the instinct to charge…Open space is always the direction they will choose. Do not get between them and open space. When they feel trapped, they will try to find a way out…Their head is a fighting instrument. Any movement at the head and it is like pointing a gun in a duel. They will take up the challenge…Bison can “sense” or “smell” fear.”

Now, imagine what it was like for prehistoric hunters to round up and corral wild-eyed bison on foot with nothing to protect themselves except a primitive fence, atlatl darts, and thrusting spears. When the Besant people built the drive lane for funneling the bison into the corral at the Ruby Site, they took advantage of the surrounding topography by bending the drive lane so that the corral remained hidden from the bison for as long as possible. The hunters understood how the bison would react upon sensing or seeing the closed space of the corral. The Besant people understood bison behavior.

At the Ruby Site, investigators found projectile points along the drive lane where the corral became visible to the herd. To keep the herd moving, the Besant hunters launched atlatl dart points at the rearmost animals. The harassment by the hunters at the rear of the herd shoved the beasts at the front of the herd into the waiting pen. A few of the projectile points found along the drive lane at Ruby were large enough for use as thrusting spears, perhaps meaning that the prehistoric hunters were close enough to jab the rearmost beasts with long spears. 

The typology of the projectile points found at Ruby was an odd assortment, ranging from classically made Besant points to barbed corner-notched Pelican Lake points to even a point that looked like a Middle Archaic Oxbow (Frison 1971: 82). Did the Besant people salvage those other projectile point types and reuse them, or was the bison pound used by two separate cultures: Pelican Lake and Besant, or was there a cultural connection or communal hunting operation going on between the Besant and Pelican Lake people? The answers to those questions remain unanswered. 

At Ruby, investigators discovered an alleged ceremonial structure, or spirit lodge, twenty feet east of the pound and six feet away from the drive lane (Frison 1971: 85). The structure was ovoid in shape, thirty-nine feet long by fifteen feet wide, with a lengthwise orientation close to true north. Bison skulls and vertebrae were strategically buried or placed on the surface of the ground on the south end of the structure. There was no evidence of fire or workshop areas, which most likely ruled out its use as a habitation structure. The only human-made artifact found in the spirit lodge was a single end scraper.

Schlesier (1987: 144-149) credited shamanism as the reason for the construction of the spirit lodge at Ruby. Schlesier speculated that Eastern Besant people held both “game calling” and “sending off’ ceremonies at that spirit lodge. He claimed that the Eastern Besant people who built and used the bison pound were the ancestors of the Cheyenne Indians, a tribe well known from the Indian Wars of the 1800s. Schlesier speculated as to what might have happened at that spirit lodge after a successful bison hunt: “After the herd had been brought in, killed and butchered, and a portion of the meat taken to the camp on the stripped hides, the sending-off ceremonies would formally be held in the spirit lodge.” 

Around one hundred miles south of the Ruby site, investigators found another Besant bison kill site called Muddy Creek (Frison 1991: 208). Just like the Ruby site, there was a bison pound that took advantage of the surrounding rolling hills. The corral was built in a natural depression, which shielded the trap from the herd's view until the very last moment. The Besant people constructed the corral on sloping ground in an area where lodgepole and limber pine were available. The investigators speculated that a drive lane fence once existed, but they found no remains of it. Figure 3 shows examples of Besant projectile points found at Ruby and Muddy Creek (Frison 1991: 106). 

Figure 3 - Besant points from the Ruby and 
Muddy Creek bison kill sites (Frison 1991: 106). 

 At both sites, investigators found superb examples of Besant projectile points that the people made from excellent raw material. The Besant flintknappers placed side notches on the projectile points for attaching to the dart or spear shafts, and most of the projectile point bases were heavily ground or polished. The tips and edges of the projectile points were sharp, and the hafted ends were stout enough to withstand high-velocity impacts. 

The Besant projectile point was first documented and named by Wettlaufer (1955: 39) at the Mortlach Site in the Besant Valley of south-central Saskatchewan. Wettlaufer (1960: 108) later confirmed Besant at the Long Creek Site, also in Saskatchewan. Figure 4 shows sketches of the Besant projectile points found at the Mortlach and Long Creek Sites (Dyck 1983: 116). Note that the projectile point labeled "b" strongly resembled a Pelican Lake point with corner-notching and barbs. 

Figure 4 - Besant points (and a Pelican
Lake point?) Dyck 1983: 116 

Vickers (1994: 9) described the typical Besant projectile point as lanceolate in shape, with notches twice as wide as they were deep and placed close to the basal edges. In some cases, Vickers noted, the notches were so close to the projectile point base that the notches removed a portion of the base, giving the projectile point a corner-notched appearance. Vickers stated that the projectile point bases were often ground or polished. He described the range of workmanship on Besant projectile points from crude to well-controlled.

At the Walter Felt Site in Saskatchewan, Kehoe (1974) defined several varieties of Samantha projectile points stratigraphically above the Besant stratigraphic layer. He stated that while the Samantha projectile point type was part of the Besant Phase, Samantha projectile points were the bow-and-arrow version of the larger Besant atlatl points. Kehoe suggested that Besant atlatl points existed in the earlier part of the phase from about the time of Christ to around A.D. 400, and then transitioned to Samantha arrow points once the bow-and-arrow was introduced to the northwestern plains. Then, around A.D. 700, Kehoe declared that Samantha arrow points transitioned to Prairie Side-Notched arrow points.

Greiser (1994: 37) noted that Besant sites existed along most of the major drainages on the northwestern plains, including the Missouri and Milk Rivers in northern Montana and the headwaters in Saskatchewan. She stated that Besant sites were not common along the upper Yellowstone River in western Montana but occurred more frequently in eastern Montana and Wyoming along the Middle Missouri, Bell Fourche, and Powder Rivers. Surface finds of Besant projectile points have also shown up in collections around the Black Hills of South Dakota. Vickers (1994: 13) added that the western extent of Besant generally coincided with the Rocky Mountain Front Range, with a few Besant projectile points found associated with Pelican Lake points in the mountains.

Peck (2011: 282) added that investigators have also found Besant sites in southern Alberta, southwestern Manitoba, and southern Saskatchewan. He noted that a few investigators suggested that much of the Besant material in the Dakotas and Manitoba might be from a different culture that archaeologists call the Sonata Complex. I will not discuss the Sonata Complex for this article. 

Author’s note: I have personally found what I cataloged as classically made Besant and Samantha projectile points while surface hunting for artifacts in north, central, and southeast Wyoming, the panhandle of Nebraska, and northeast Colorado, including along the Rocky Mountain Front Range. I have noted that when I find Besant projectile points, I also find Pelican Lake projectile points. Since I discovered those projectile points outside the original archaeological context, I do not know whether there was any relationship between the peoples who made the Pelican Lake and Besant points. What I do know is that Pelican Lake and Besant oftentimes frequented the same sites. Figure 5 is a photograph of projectile point bases that I surface recovered from the area mentioned above. 

Figure 5 - Besant projectile point bases surface found by the author in Colorado and Wyoming.
The raw material comes from geographically wide sources, from the Alibates rock quarries 
in Texas to the Flattop Butte rock quarries in Colorado, and further north to the 
Hartville Uplift and Spanish Diggings rock quarries in east central Wyoming.
     

Reeves (1983: 141) proposed two theories for the origin of the Besant Phase and outlined the pros and cons of each theory. The first theory was that Besant was a sequent phase within his Tunaxa Cultural Tradition and that Besant evolved from the older Pelican Lake Phase or one of the Pelican Lake regional subphases. Reeves’ second theory was that the Besant Phase was unrelated to his Tunaxa Cultural Tradition and either originated from a separate Indigenous plains tradition or from an intrusive cultural tradition coming from another region. Reeves favored intrusive cultural tradition for Besant. He noted that Besant sites along the eastern fringe of the northern plains shared similarities with Woodland cultures in the Midwest of North America. Those similarities included Woodland-like pottery, burial mounds and practices, and examples of permanent habitation structures. Reeves contended that the Besant Phase was part of a cultural tradition that he called Napikwan, and it originated somewhere east and north of the northern plains. 

In disputing a cultural relationship between Besant and Pelican Lake, Reeves (1983: 96) suggested that the Besant and Pelican Lake Phases utilized different lithic sources. He stated that while the Besant Phase favored Knife River Flint out of North Dakota, the Pelican Lake Phase preferred obsidian from the Yellowstone Park area. As an example of Besant's bias toward Knife River Flint, Reeves pointed out that at the Richards and Muhlbach Besant Sites in Canada, the artifacts were mostly made from Knife River Flint, in fact, 96 percent and 84 percent, respectively. Both sites were far away from the Knife River quarries in North Dakota, which further highlighted the Besant people's inclination to transport and use that rock type. 

Author’s Note: Reeves must have been referring to his experience with Canadian sites for the assertion that Besant and Pelican Lake used different lithic sources. I have recovered Besant and Pelican Lake projectile points made from Knife River Flint in both Wyoming and Colorado. Pelican Lake people also liked Knife River Flint and either visited the quarries in North Dakota or traded for the material. We know Pelican Lake people frequented the Dakotas because we find their projectile points there, made from a wide variety of materials, including Knife River Flint. 

Of the hundreds of Pelican Lake and Besant projectile points I have found in Wyoming and Colorado, I have not noticed any obvious raw material preferences for Pelican Lake or Besant. I have examples of both projectile point types made from every available material possible. Based on my experience, both phases used locally sourced material much of the time. 

Not everyone agreed with Reeves and others regarding an Eastern Woodlands origin for Besant. Schlesier (1994: 318-320) advocated for the Mackenzie and Keewatin districts in the Northwest Territories as the origin for Besant. He claimed that there were no antecedents of Besant east in the Woodlands or northeast in the Boreal Forest. Greiser (1994: 36-37) countered that by stating that most researchers believed that Besant originated in the Eastern or Northern Woodlands.

If the Besant Phase originated to the east or north of the northern plains, did the Besant projectile point technology originate there as well? Reeves

Figure Six - Sandy Creek
projectile points. 
Dyck (1983: 108).  

(1983: 14) proposed a theory suggesting that Sandy Creek, a projectile point technology characterized by small, side-notched points, might be the missing link between Middle Archaic Oxbow projectile point technology and Besant projectile point technology. He based that theory on three common Sandy Creek attributes: squat forms, shallow side-notching, and offset V-shaped bases (Figure 6). Reeves reported that Sandy Creek projectile points persisted alongside the Pelican Lake Phase and emerged around the time of Christ as Besant projectile points. 

Author’s Note: I clearly see the similarity between Sandy Creek projectile points and Besant projectile points. I did not understand Reeves' reasoning behind attempting to connect Oxbow projectile point technology to Besant projectile point technology through Sandy Creek technology. If the Besant Phase originated in the Eastern or Northern Woodlands as Reeves proposed, it would seem more logical to connect Besant and Sandy Creek projectile point technology to the Eastern or Northern Woodlands, perhaps through the Middle Archaic Matanzas or Logan Creek projectile points. 

Since Sandy Creek projectile points could easily be mistaken for Besant projectile points, and the Sandy Creek Phase coexisted with the Pelican Lake Phase, it is assumed that Sandy Creek was pre-Besant. The relationship between Pelican Lake and Sandy Creek should be questioned and studied.   

What happened to Besant? It is reasonable to assume that the people of the Besant Phase evolved their weaponry and culture throughout time. Kehoe (1974: 104) suggested that Besant atlatl points existed in the earlier part of the phase, around the time of Christ to A.D. 400. When the bow-and-arrow became available, Besant atlatl points shrank in size and became what Kehoe called Samantha arrow points. Then, sometime around A.D. 700, the Samantha arrow points evolved into what we call Prairie Side-Notched arrow points. 

Schlesier (1994: 318-320) was an advocate for the Northwest Territories for the origin of the Besant Phase, noting that there were no direct antecedents of Besant in the Eastern Woodlands or to the northeast in the Boreal Forest. Based on linguistic research, Schlesier proclaimed that the Besant Phase had two subphases, one in the east and one in the west. Schlesier proposed that the western subphase of Besant became the Blackfoot Indian Tribe in later years, while the eastern subphase of Besant eventually ended up as the Cheyenne Indian Tribe. Schlesier backed that theory up with the linguistic differences between the Algonquian languages of the Blackfoot and Cheyenne tribes, which suggested different origins and histories for each tribe. As expected, that theory met with resistance, but Schlesier pointed out that no one came up with any data that contradicted his theory.

Figure 7 - Northern plains Besant projectile points from the author's collection. 
Raw materials include Knife River Flint, jasper, and Spanish Diggings (?) quartzite. 

Discussion and Conclusions

Reeves (1983: 76; 135) believed there were two distinct cultural traditions called Tunaxa and Napikwan, represented by the Pelican Lake Phase and the Besant Phase, respectively. According to Reeves, those two cultural traditions competed with each other for land and resources which left an impression to the reader that the relationship between the two phases was more contentious than cooperative. Reeves proposed that the Besant Phase entered the northern plains from either the northeast or east around the time of Christ. At that time, the Pelican Lake Phase was already occupying the northern plains for over a millennium. Reeves then proposed that over the next few centuries, the Besant Phase was powerful enough to displace and drive the Pelican Lake Phase westward into the mountains, and beyond (Reeves 1983: 189). 

A good archaeologist or researcher is like a modern-day Sherlock Holmes. They collect obscure and incomplete clues from scattered archaeological sites, connect the dots between the sites, and then create a narrative about what happened during that period in the past. Brian Reeves was one of the best. Without all the answers, archaeologists must fill in the blanks and a good story might become a part of the narrative. In my opinion, that is where the story with the Besant Phase stalled and is now waiting for more discovery to fill in the blanks. Even with the large number of archaeological site investigations from Alberta to Wyoming involving the Besant Phase, there remains a number of questions about Besant's cultural relationship to other phases, specifically Pelican Lake and Sandy Creek. What makes it more difficult is that Besant, Pelican Lake, and Sandy Creek's lifestyles were remarkably similar. The only things to differentiate the Besant Phase from the Pelican Lake Phase or the Sandy Creek Phase were age and projectile point typology. 

I found it interesting in my study of Besant that the Ruby bison trap projectile point assemblage contained not only classically made Besant atlatl points, but also projectile points that were identical to Pelican Lake (Frison 1971: Figure Four). The assemblage even contained what appeared to be a Middle Archaic Oxbow projectile point. When I saw the projectile point assemblage from Ruby, I could not help but wonder why Frison did not address or at least draw attention to that inconsistency. Did the Besant people salvage Pelican Lake projectile points on the ground and reuse them at Ruby? Was the bison trapping at Ruby a communal operation between the Besant and Pelican Lake people? Did the people who made Pelican Lake projectile points have an ancestral or cultural relationship with the people who made Besant projectile points? We also saw a classic Pelican Lake projectile point show up in a Besant level in the well defined stratigraphy at the Mortlach site. Wettlaufer (1955: 44; 96; Figure 4 above) claimed that the most likely scenario was that a Besant person picked up the Pelican Lake projectile point off the ground and reused it, and that was how that projectile point ended up in the Besant level. Perhaps, that was the same scenario at the Ruby Site, or perhaps there was more to it. The narrative would probably change if Besant projectile points were found in an older Pelican Lake assemblage.    

Based on anecdotal evidence from surface hunting fifty-plus surface sites in southeastern Wyoming and northeastern Colorado, Reeves' narrative about Pelican Lake and Besant did not convince me, not that it needed to. Questioning Reeves' narrative about the relationship between Pelican Lake and Besant is not an easy thing to do based on the fact that Reeves' entire career, starting with his Ph.D. dissertation, was researching prehistoric cultural changes on the northern plains. But I have to wonder how anyone could determine the cultural relationship between Pelican Lake and Besant without more information. What evidence excluded Pelican Lake and Besant from having a sequent or direct lineage relationship? 

Whenever I find Pelican Lake projectile points on the fifty-plus sites that I mentioned above, I nearly always find Besant projectile points. Of course, that does not prove anything except that the people who made Besant points frequented the same sites as the people who made Pelican Lake points. Or is that a hint of something more between them? I also find projectile point type 'tweeners' on those same sites. What is a 'tweener'? A tweener is a transitional projectile point or an intermediate form between two projectile point types. For example, a tweener could be a Pelican Lake projectile point with Besant features, such as side notching or basal grinding, or a tweener could be a Besant projectile point with Pelican Lake features, such as corner notching and shortened barbs. I have found enough of those Pelican Lake/Besant tweeners to at least imagine a technological step between the two projectile point types. Could that be the result of a relationship between the two phases, a coincidence, or a case of copycatting? While that does not prove any kind of cultural relationship it might indicate a level of cooperation (Figure 8).  

Figure 8 - A few 'tweeners' from my collection.
Besant points with Pelican Lake features.  

The thoughts in the previous paragraph were based on my artifact finds outside of their original archaeological or stratigraphical context. However, picking up two projectile point types at the same sites, time after time, at least proved that allegedly contentious populations visited and camped at the same sites. The Besant and Pelican Lake Phases also had very similar geographical ranges. Did the Besant people merely follow in the footsteps of Pelican Lake, or was it a coincidence, or was there more of a substantive relationship? 

There is still much to learn and debate about Pelican Lake and Besant. Currently, Reeves' widely cited and well-researched theories remain the go-to standard for the Pelican Lake and Besant Phases. His theories have so far held their own based on no new information. I will end my article with a positive quote about the Besant Phase from George Frison based on the work done at the Ruby and Muddy Creek bison kill sites. 

 “Besant represented a cultural peak—particularly regarding bison hunting—

that was never achieved again on the Northwestern Plains.”

                                                                 - George C. Frison (1978: 223).

That we can agree with... 

References Cited

Dyck, Ian

1983  “The Prehistory of Southern Saskatchewan” in Tracking Ancient Hunters: Prehistoric Archaeology in Saskatchewan, edited by Henry T. Epp and Ian Dyck, pp. 63-139. Saskatchewan Archaeological Society. Saskatoon.

Frison, George C.

1971 “The Buffalo Pound in Northwestern Plains Prehistory: Site 48 CA 302, Wyoming,” in American Antiquity, Vol. 36, No. 1, January 1971.

 

1978  Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press, Inc., New York.

 

1991  Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Second Edition. Academic Press, Inc., New York.

2004  Survival by Hunting. University of California Press. Berkeley.

Greiser, Sally T.

1994 “Late Prehistoric Cultures on the Montana Plains,” in Plains Indians, A.D. 500-1500, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

 

Kehoe, Thomas F.

1974  “The Large Corner-notched Point System of the Northern Plains and Adjacent Woodlands,” in Aspects of Upper Great Lakes Anthropology, Papers in Honor of Lloyd A. Wilford, edited by E. Johnson. Minnesota Historical Society. St. Paul.

 

Lee, Patricia Lee

N.D. “Warnings and Challenges” in Buffalo!

 

Peck, Trevor R.

2011 Light from Ancient Campfires. AU Press. Edmonton. 

 

Reeves, Brian O.K.

1983 Culture Change in the Northern Plains – 1000 B.C. – A.D. 1000, Occasional Paper No. 20. Archaeological Survey of Alberta.   

 

Schlesier, Karl H.

1987  The Wolves of Heaven. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

 

1994  Plains Indians, A.D. 500-1500. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

 

Vickers, J. Roderick

1994  “Cultures of the northwestern Plains: from the Boreal Forest Edge to Milk River,” in Plains Indians, A.D. 500-1500, edited by Karl H. Schlesier. University of Oklahoma Press. Norman.

 

Wettlaufer, Boyd

1955  The Mortlach Site. Anthropological Series No. 1. Department of Natural Resources. Regina.

 

1960  The Long Creek Site, edited by William J. Mayer-Oakes. Anthropological Series No. 2. Saskatchewan Museum of Natural History. Regina.

 

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.

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.