The Prehistory Of Colorado and Adjacent Areas

What we now call Colorado has been peopled for at least twelve thousand years, which in human terms is more than four hundred generations. During this period the region has seen a continual ebb and flow of human occupation in response to climatic variation and resource availability, but it has never been uninhabited. Adaptations to these conditions in the southwest and northwest eventually led to village life and an economy based on corn horticulture. On the plains and in the mountains a highly resilient system based on hunting and gathering was maintained throughout prehistory. Between AD 1200 and 1450 most of the inhabitants left the state, quickly replaced by new emigrants from the north and west. These new emigrants were the groups encountered by Europeans as they entered the region.The Prehistory of Colorado and Adjacent Areas is a brief, accessible account of the state's human past. Based on the archaeological record, this book reconstructs past lifeways using current theory and explanations. Employing a regional, rather than a site-specific approach, it presents current explanations of prehistoric Coloradans' subsistence modes at various points in time and how they changed.The eight chapters consider the paleoindian era and the Clovis and Folsom periods, then focus on geographic regions: the plains: southwestern Colorado from Archaic Period through Basketmaker and Pueblo periods; the northwest, which includes the Fremont and Numic peoples; and the mountains, a region with prehistoric significance we are only beginning to understand. A final chapter offers further discussion of the Numic-speakers (Utes, Comanches), Algonquian speakers (Arapaho, Cheyenne), plus plains tradenetworks during the early historic period.