Archaeological Findings After a Wildfire

An archeologist who is a member of our historical society asked for volunteers among the other members to meet this spring to do an important archaeological survey of an area where there was a wildfire in an open space on the east side of a local hogback last December.

An archaeological survey is collect information about the location, distribution, and organization of past human cultures across a large area. Several published archaeological documents indicate that just after a fire is a more productive time to search for surface artifacts before vegetation begins to regrow.  This area in Colorado has shown many past archaeological finds from people. The Ken-Caryl South Valley Archaeological District contains rock shelters that were used by prehistoric peoples from at least the Late Paleo-Indian Period (before 6000 BCE) through the Early Ceramic period (150–1150 CE)

As you can see from this photo, the grass is already growing back...

... among the burned scrub oak remains.

When this 150-acre wildfire occurred last December our community was very fortunate that the winds became milder as time passed and that a single-engine air tanker from Fort Collins was able to drop water on the fire to help emergency crews battle the spread.   We were evacuated from our home for a short time during this fire and I learned a few valuable lessons from that experience, which I blogged about in this post.

Sadly, just a few days later, Colorado experienced the devastating Marshall Fire, in which two lives were lost and over 1,000 homes were burned to the ground. There were "Red Flag" conditions that day with drought conditions and high winds and that wildfire moved very quickly for many miles. It even crossed a six-lane concrete highway!   The cause of that fire is still under investigation.

On a chilly windy day in early April our community archaeologist, three colleagues from the Colorado Archaeological Society--CAS, an Open Space ranger, and eleven community volunteers arrived to do the archaeological survey, one of the volunteers was my husband.  Each volunteer was given a grid area to cover by foot, a GPS, and pin flags to place into the ground if they saw anything of interest so a trained eye of an archaeologist would be able to do a more thorough examination.  They slowly walked an area rectangle about 2 miles long and 300 yards wide, looking down for artifacts for around 2 1/2 hours.

The photo collage above is of some of the interesting items found during this survey. The descriptions are from the report our archaeologist sent to all the participants:

#1 (left photo in the collage) A prehistoric stone tool that appears to be a pointed hammer stone.

#2 (middle photo) A prehistoric grinding stone, often called a "mano" in archaeological circles. Parallel scars on the tool caused by grinding are on several surfaces. These manos were used along with a flat stone surface, often called a "metate" to process food and
sometimes paint.

 
#3 (right photo) A prehistoric stone tool with signs of human manufacture.

All the GPS locations of these artifacts were also recorded in the official report.

A probable fire ring. These are made by people of all past eras.

Some other interesting geological samples were collected by a resident geologist for further study.

The report concluded that the density of artifacts found in this survey was low. It appeared that the prehistoric and historic people did not use the eastern hogback slope to a high degree as they used the west hogback slope and valley where hundreds of artifacts have been found in past surveys and digs. 

A couple of years ago my husband and I assisted in an archeological dig on a foothill in our neighborhood. which you can see in this post. A burn pit and stone tools were found in that dig that was carbon-dated to the Early Ceramic Period 150–1150 CE. It is always so fascinating to think that people lived and thrived in our area so long ago! They may even have had interesting visitors, which you can read about in this post about the possibility of Celtic Ogham writings found nearby.

I wanted to be one of the volunteers on this survey, but I had a scheduling conflict this time.  A group of friends I've kept in touch with since high school, who all live in different states, were having a Zoom birthday celebration for a friend in the group, and I did not want to miss that. We lost one of our close high school friends last year in a tragic car accident, and we now find that we treasure our Zoom times together even more than ever.  

Meanwhile, "Red Flag Fire Warnings" are becoming a common occurrence here. As much as we enjoy assisting with archaeological surveys, I'm hoping that there won't be the need for another burn scar survey in our area anytime soon! We hope May will bring the rains that April forgot in our area.

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A Colorado Time Capsule

We've had a lot of cool weather and rain and snow showers this spring but on a warmer day last week, my community's historical society had our first outing of 2021, to visit some sites that are literally almost in our own backyard.

The Colorado Archaeological Society conducted 33 archaeological digs in our community, Ken-Caryl Ranch, beginning in 1973. Our resident archeologist explained that the study identified five distinct periods of occupation of ancient people in our area including two from the Archaic period and three from the Plains Woodland period. The investigations uncovered artifacts such as pottery, projectile points, and hide scrapers. The people were hunters and gatherers with little knowledge of farming since no farming tools were found. The area above is close to a creek so a water source was available and the hogback mountain formations allow for good lookouts for both wildlife and possible enemies.

Our community, and others along with nearby areas of the Colorado Front Range also have large red rock formations.  These south and west-facing rock outcrops of the Fountain and Lyons Formations captured the sun’s warmth and provided shelter. Quartz, granite, and petrified wood were available for toolmaking. Wild plums and chokecherries lined the nearby creeks, which attracted wildlife. All of these factors made this area well used by ancient peoples.

In 2009 two young resident boys stumbled across a mastodon mandible (see above) in another creek in our community that had been uncovered by floodwaters. The Denver Museum of Nature & Science reported that it was the best example of a mastodon ever found in Colorado to that date, and could be 50,000 to 150,000 years old! Further investigation uncovered a tusk as well.  

Discoveries of the bones of Mammoths, camels, horses, and bison have also been discovered nearby at Lamb Springs Archeological Preserve in Littleton, Colorado. You can read about our visit to that interesting site here.   Recently, during an Interstate 70 construction re-route project near Denver, the remains of a prehistoric fossilized camel were found!

Do you remember my blog post "The Secrets Beneath Our Feet" about the archeological dig that was conducted on a foothill in our community in October of 2020? You can click on the highlighted link to read more about it if you missed that post.

Another archeologist who lived in our community happened to find a mano--which is an ancient tool used to grind food by hand--on a trail in that foothill. I'm sure I would have walked right past this stone, but he knew what it was right away. Upon further investigation, he saw that there was an area nearby that had eroded a bit and which contained a large amount of blackened soil that meant it may have been a fire pit at one time. After telling our historical society about this find we decided to have an official archeological dig done. The archeologists removed a lot of soil and small artifacts in the layers they uncovered for analysis and carbon dating. 

The report came back recently and this is what our historical  society archeologist excitedly wrote to us in an e-mail:

"The site yielded a carbon date of some burned tuber from the roasting oven at AD 133-324! This date of almost 2,000 years ago was when Romans still ruled the Mediterranean world, the Classic Maya were just getting going, the Anasazi were still in primitive pit houses, and before the Christian New Testament Canon was formed! It is at what archaeologists call the end of the Late Archaic Era and the beginning of the Ceramic Era."

This was not the first archeological dig that we witnessed. In 2014 we were invited to one in a cave area in another county which also led to interesting discoveries, including a spearhead that was 8,000 years old! You can see that post here. 

All of Colorado is rich in ancient artifacts and there have been many serendipitous discoveries of ancient tools such as the Mahaffy Cache that we saw on display at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Museum of Natural History exhibit.  You can read about the discovery of this large amount of ancient stone tools found buried in a garden on this post.

Stegosaurus dinosaur tracks

Even older evidence of life can be found in our area. The Morrison Formation, named for the town of Morrison to the north of Ken-Caryl Ranch, is notable for the number of dinosaur fossils that have been found. Giant reptiles roamed this region for a few million years until the seas again returned to form the beaches of the Dakota Sandstone, 100 million years ago. Evidence of the dinosaurs walking these preserved ripple marked beaches can be seen in Dinosaur Ridge National Historic Site. Dinosaur footprints and bones are preserved there in stone. I blogged about this historic site here and here.  

A dinosaur exhibit in the Denver Museum of Nature and Science

Construction sites in Colorado have also unearthed rare torosaurus dinosaur bones and a triceratops dinosaur in recent years. There have been many other dinosaur discoveries made in Colorado, and they are on display throughout the state. You can see a list of where to see these dinosaurs and fossil sites on this Colorado.com link.

It is certainly interesting to take a look back into time and think about all the forms of life that lived in our area from the dinosaurs to ancient civilizations to more recent Native Americans, pioneers, and now us as suburbanites. I wonder what traces our era will leave behind for future generations to discover?

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The Secrets That Lie Beneath Our Feet

The Colorado foothills are a transition zone between the plains and low relief hills and the adjacent topographically higher mountains, hills, and uplands.  Native Americans often hunted on the plains but used the foothills to make their winter camps as they had views of potential enemies and often found sources of water from creeks and giant red rocks and caves to use as shelters.

The prehistoric natives date back more than 12,000 years. Archeological evidence suggests that the first people to appear in Colorado were the big game hunters (or Paleoindians), probably from the north. These people are divided into the Clovis and subsequent Folsom cultures. Archeologists distinguish the two cultures by their different types of spear points. The Clovis people are often called the “mammoth hunters,” while the later Folsom people are the “bison hunters.” These people marked the beginning of a big-game hunting tradition that lasted thousands of years until historic times.  I blogged about a wonderful discovery of Clovis era stone tools found in the Boulder area on this post. 

 

Many Natives American tribes lived in Colorado but the most common was the Utes who were hunters and gatherers.  They acquired horses from the Spanish conquistadors, who were the first Europeans to visit Colorado. The Ute lifestyle changed dramatically with horses, giving them more mobility. Once primarily defensive warriors, they became adept horsemen and warriors, able to raid other tribes. Prestige was based upon a man’s horsemanship, as well as the number of horses he owned. 

A few years ago, my husband and I attended an archeological dig that was performed by the Colorado Archeological Society (CAS) in a nearby county--click here to read that post-- where many ancient artifacts were found, including some artifacts from the Spanish explorer era. 

 

Very often red rock overhangs and caves along the front range of Colorado were used as shelters and artifacts are often found in these areas on various archeological digs. In fact, 33 past archeological digs have been conducted in our area in the past with many discoveries made.

This all brings us to a recent archeological dig that was performed in our community recently, but instead of near red rocks, it was done on a foothill, where years of erosion had revealed a dark black burn area.  A resident of the community, who is an archeology professor, found an ancient tool rock tool called a mano in this area while he was on a hike.  You or I would most likely have passed right by that rock and this burn area, but to the resident's trained eye he realized it was a discovery of ancient life.  Our community history committee decided this was a discovery worth exploring and we contacted an archeology company to do a private dig and evaluative testing of the site.

The archeologists excavated the burn area and samples were collected for radiocarbon assays to date the artifacts.  It takes a while for results from these tests, but the archeologists felt this was a fire pit most likely used by hunters from the past to cook wild game. They estimated they were from the Early Ceramic Period 150–1150 CE.  It is fascinating to think of evidence of man from so long ago!

Archeological digs are painstaking work requiring many hours of minute digging and passing rubble through screens to check for any object pieces that are identifiable. Anything significant is removed for examination and sent to labs for further study as well as portions of the soil which were collected for radiocarbon assay. The hope is to find spearheads, arrowheads, ancient awls, bones, and pieces of cooking tools, and other hunting weapons.   We will be excited to find the exact dates of the samples and what other evidence could be analyzed. I'll update this post when that information comes in. 

Isn't it amazing what secrets lie literally beneath our feet? 

I feel fortunate to live in such an interesting place and to be able to be a part of these discoveries.  We are also blessed to be among many volunteers in our community who are devoting time and energy to help advance our knowledge of the past and to preserve it for the future.

Thank you for reading my post--I hope you found it interesting

Stay happy, safe, and healthy!

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Italians in Denver, Colorado

Three years ago my husband and I visited his home town in Italy, where he lived until he was seven years old before emigrating to the United States with his parents and siblings. One of the joyous things we experienced in his town was the Feast of Saint Rocco procession--click here--to read that post.  Saint Rocco (also referred to as St. Roch) was born around 1340 in Montpellier, France, and performed many healing miracles throughout his life. Saint Rocco is venerated by the Roman Catholic Church as the protector against plague and contagious diseases. He helped to take care of, and cure, many suffering of the plague in Southern Italy during the 14th century and is venerated as a patron saint by many Southern Italians. Last summer, I read that Our Lady of Mount Carmel Catholic Church located at 3549 Navajo Street in Denver, Colorado, also had a St Rocco procession, which my husband and I decided to attend.  The church was very beautiful and is in a neighborhood of Denver that was once considered a "Little Italy."

Italians started settling in Colorado in the late 1850s, and, by 1922, roughly one in five people living in Colorado was Italian American. Many lived in the North Denver area and being of the Roman Catholic faith they founded the parish of Our Lady of Mount Carmel in 1894, and this brick and motor church replaced it in 1899.  If you click on the photo above it will enlarge, and you can read the interesting history of the parish and church.  The plaque is located on a wall outside of the church. In 2017 the church was listed on the National Register of Historic Places and the Colorado State Register of Historic Places.  More of the interesting background history of the church's history can be read on the church's website at this link.

The inside of the church is very beautiful. Its architecture is  Romanesque Revival Style.   Before the Saint Rocco procession was to begin a Mass was held inside the church.

A statue of Saint Rocco, that is usually in an area inside the church, was then carried outside on a platform. Some donations were already pinned to ribbons hanging from the statue.  The procession. and festival held afterward, is a fundraising event for both the church's and Potenza Lodge's charitable work. Parishioners and visitors have a chance to join an auction where the highest bidders have the honor of carrying the statue in the procession. The lodge supports many charities--click here--for a list.

The oldest Italian Organization in Colorado is the Societa Nativi di Potenza Basilicata, more commonly known as the Potenza Lodge.  It was founded in Denver, October 14, 1899.  The Society was founded to help other Italian immigrants from the Basilicata region in southern Italy (Potenza is the capital city of that region) become familiar with America while socializing with their fellow countrymen. They also helped find employment and housing.  The lodge took over the annual Feast of Saint Rocco procession seven years after it was founded, and for over 120 years the organization has been promoting Italian culture through various social events, as well as hosting weddings and other special occasions for the community.

Italian immigrants at the early times were very poor and in fact, most of the hardest work at the time of building Denver and the American West was, as Mother Cabrini stated: "reserved for the Italian worker."   My husband and I visited a very fascinating special exhibit in 2007 that was displayed in the History Colorado Center in Denver that was called "Italians in Denver," about the early Italian immigrants to the present. From that exhibit, we learned that, sadly, Italian Americans faced discrimination as Catholics in Denver, along with Jews and Blacks, by the Klu Klux Klan in the early 1920s.  Most of the discrimination in Denver was directed to those of Italian and Mexican heritage, as they were the largest populations with the Catholic faith.  The KKK lost popularity in the later '20s and the city has become much more tolerant of all faiths and ethnic nationalities over time.  
A book was eventually published from the History Colorado exhibit called  "Italy in Colorado: Family Histories from Denver and Beyond."  Information about the book through an interview with the author, Alisa DiGiacomo, can be read on the "We the Italians" website on this link.

A local Catholic high school band played and the parish priest said an invocation prayer as Potenza Lodge Members prepared for the procession.  We were told that at one time the procession was attended by hundreds, if not thousands, including local politicians and prominent people in Denver.  Over the years, the Italian population in the area has moved away to the suburbs, and the procession has become much smaller. Sadly, the Novel Coronavirus Pandemic of 2020 canceled the Saint Rocco procession this summer, as well as many of the other fundraiser events and ceremonial uses of Potenza Lodge, which has created a great financial hardship for the organization and the many charities it supports.

Last summer, we were happy to join in with the rest of the faithful and parade behind the statute during its procession around the block. It was a much smaller procession than what we participated in Italy, but it was equally reverent and joyous in its own way.  The procession ended with the statue being returned inside the Lady of Mount Carmel Church. Later in the day, a large festival bazaar would be held at the Potenza Lodge backyard with food, games, music, and entertainment.  We were not able to stay for that event as we were babysitting that evening back at our home. The bazaar was also canceled this year.

As you can see from the photos above this part of Denver still retains some of it's historic older cottage homes, but there is also quite a bit of push to replace them with multifamily apartments and condos (lower left) as Denver grows in size. 

Italians have contributed much over the years to Denver and Colorado.  The History Colorado center has a compilation of some of those contributions in an interesting article called "7 things you didn't know about Italian Coloradans and their contributions"--click here--to read it.  

Eighteen years ago History Colorado founded the Colorado Italian American Preservation Association or CIAPA. A volunteer organization, CIAPA’s mission was (and is) to collaborate with History Colorado and other organizations to develop, support, and coordinate projects that preserve, promote, and celebrate Italian American culture and heritage. The organization has carried out its mission by meeting with people from the Colorado Italian American community—recording their stories and creating an archive that now holds more than 200 oral histories, 6,000 photographs, 4,000 research files, and 600 artifacts. You can read more about it on this link.

That is the wonderful part of the USA--we are people whose ancestors came from everywhere around the world to make a better life for themselves and their descendants. We each have our own wonderful heritage and history and we can all honor the past contributions made to the greater good of our nation. 

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The Mahaffy Cache- A Prehistoric Discovery!

A few years ago I blogged about an interesting event my husband and I attended called the International Archaeology Day that was held in Roxborough, Colorado--click here--to read that post. We have always been fascinated by the past, and the people and civilizations that came before modern times and the remnants of their lives left behind. We found the lectures, exhibits, and demonstrations on this special day very enriching. The last lecture of the day was presented by the University of Colorado Boulder Professor Douglas Bamforth about the "Mahaffy Clovis Cache." When landscapers uncovered a collection of 83 stone tools in the front yard of Patrick Mahaffy's home in Boulder, Colorado, the homeowner called the University of Colorado at Boulder's anthropology department and the next day archaeologist Douglas Bamforth came out to investigate. What they discovered is called the Mahaffy Clovis Cache. It contains elaborate stone knives and blades used to butcher ice-age mammals 13,000 years ago!

Discovered by a landscaping crew digging a fishpond in the yard of a Boulder home in 2008, the 83-piece tool cache was packed in a space about the size of a shoebox under two feet of soil, apparently untouched for millennia. The tools were discovered in the yard of Boulder homeowner Patrick Mahaffy, who is loaning them to the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Natural History as the centerpiece of the exhibit, “Unearthed: Ancient Life in the Boulder Valley.” 

My husband and I, and members of the Ken Caryl Ranch Historical Society that we are part of, took an excursion last year to visit the exhibit as we were all interested to see these ancient artifacts that are estimated to be 13,000 years old!

To be able to examine the tools up close and see their workmanship, and their almost pristine condition was very exciting. They are made of quartzite and chert materials, some of which are not found in Colorado. Professor Bramsforth feels the stones used may have originated in the Uinta Mountains in northeast Utah, the Green River Basin in northwest Colorado and southwest Wyoming, and Middle Park near Kremmling, Colorado. He concluded the Mahaffy Cache likely originated in the Uintas, was carried up the Yampa River Valley in Colorado, then through the Gore Range and into Middle Park. From there they were probably toted to the Colorado River headwaters and over a pass in or near present-day Rocky Mountain National Park, and up and over to the Front Range.

Because our group had pre-arranged our visit, we were fortunate to have James Hakala, a Senior Educator at the museum, give us a presentation about the exhibit. He explained that the landscape in Colorado 13,000 years ago was home to camels, horses, and now-extinct saber-toothed cats, wooly mammoths, dire wolves, short-faced bears, wooly rhinos, and giant ground sloths. While scientists have speculated these and other ice-age mammals may have disappeared as a result of overhunting or climate change, the reasons remain unresolved.  Prehistoric hunters obviously traveled to the Colorado Front Range to hunt the abundant wild game. They would then use these precision stone tools to skin the animals and remove their meat.  Remnants of camel and horse proteins were actually isolated for the tools in studies made.

The Mahaffy Cache Exhibit had many placards--click on the photo collage to enlarge.

Please click on photo collage to enlarge

The Mahaffy Cache includes elegantly crafted, salad plate-sized bifacial knives, a tool resembling a double-bitted ax and a number of smaller blades. It is one of a handful of artifact collections known as Clovis caches, named after a particular tool style used by one of the oldest known groups of New World Paleo-Indians.

We wondered who buried these prize tools with the intention of returning to retrieve them and what was the reason that they never came back? We will never know the answer but we can appreciate that they unintentionally left a marvelous array of artifacts for us to learn about their way of life. For that reason, it is said that Mr. Mahaffy actually re-buried a few smaller pieces of the cache and also a modern knife and fork in the same place they were found, in order that someone 13,000 years from now might make another discovery!

If you'd like to view a short YouTube video about the Mahaffy Cache click here.

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