Multimedia Gallery
PaleoIndian Site at Barger Gulch (Image 5)
PaleoIndian Site at Barger Gulch (Image 5)
Excavations in progress in the east block during the 2005 field season at Barger Gulch, locality B, located in Middle Park, Colo. The Barger Gulch site contains deposits that document the diversity of behaviors that occurred at a 10,500 year old hunter-gatherer residential site.
Middle Park is a high-altitude basin in the Southern Rocky Mountains of north-central Colorado that contains at least fifty-nine known Folsom PaleoIndian sites. In particular, Barger Gulch, a heavily incised tributary system of the Colorado River in the western portion of Middle Park, contains several Folsom (10,900 to around 10,200 years ago) sites. Of these sites, Locality B has been the subject of survey and excavation since 1995, yielding an extensive number of Folsom stone artifacts.
This research was performed as part of a National Science Foundation-supported grant (BCS 04-50759) awarded to researchers from the University of Wyoming Anthropology Department to investigate late Pleistocene social organization and economic relationships among Folsom peoples, as expressed through the spatial configuration of artifacts and site features. Spatial data has proved a valuable component for discerning forager social and economic relationships in both ethnographic and archaeological contexts. Detailed analysis and documentation of spatial trends at Barger Gulch provides a unique opportunity to examine the social context of prehistoric hunter-gatherer behavior. (Date of Image: July 5, 2005) [One of 8 related images. See Next Image.]
Credit: Photo courtesy Todd Surovell and Nicole Waguespack
Images and other media in the National Science Foundation Multimedia Gallery are available for use in print and electronic material by NSF employees, members of the media, university staff, teachers and the general public. All media in the gallery are intended for personal, educational and nonprofit/non-commercial use only.
Images credited to the National Science Foundation, a federal agency, are in the public domain. The images were created by employees of the United States Government as part of their official duties or prepared by contractors as "works for hire" for NSF. You may freely use NSF-credited images and, at your discretion, credit NSF with a "Courtesy: National Science Foundation" notation.
Additional information about general usage can be found in Conditions.
Also Available:
Download the high-resolution JPG version of the image. (1.7 MB)
Use your mouse to right-click (Mac users may need to Ctrl-click) the link above and choose the option that will save the file or target to your computer.