Spencer Pelton

University of Wyoming | UW · Department of Anthropology

Significance Coincident with the human colonization of the Western Hemisphere, dozens of genera of Pleistocene megafauna were lost to extinction. Following Martin, we argue that declines in the record of radiocarbon dates of extinct genera may be used as an independent means of detecting the first presence of humans in the New World. Our results, b...

Palaeodemographic studies of animals using frequency distributions of radio-carbon dates are increasingly used in studies of Quaternary extinction but are complicated by taphonomic bias, or the loss of material through time. Current taphonomic models are based on the temporal frequency distributions of sediments , but bone is potentially lost at gr...

The Hell Gap National Historic Landmark, located on the northwestern plains of Wyoming, is one of the most important Paleoindian archaeological sites in North America because it contains a stratified sequence of occupations spanning nearly the entirety of the Paleoindian period. Although Hell Gap is central to archaeological knowledge concerning No...

Significance Red ocher (also known as hematite) is relatively common in Paleoindian sites exceeding ca. 11,000 calibrated years B.P. in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains of North America. Red ocher fulfilled a wide range of functions within Paleoindian societies, as indicated by its association with graves, caches, campsites, hide-working implem...

Humans regulate their body temperatures with a suite of thermoregulatory adaptations and behaviors to cope with environmental temperature. While thermoregulation has long been recognized as an important aspect of human survival and adaptive success, it is an underexplored aspect of human behavioral ecology compared to foraging and mobility, especia...

Ethnoarchaeological studies attempt to link human behavior to material remains for the purpose of developing archaeological method and theory. Traditional studies in spatial ethnoarchaeology have focused on mapping features and refuse, but the spatial distribution of the behaviors that produced them, the thing that interests us most, has for good r...

The La Prele Mammoth site (48CO1401), located in Converse County, Wyoming, contains a Clovis-age occupation associated with the remains of a subadult mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). In this paper, we present the geochronological and geoarchaeological context of the site. The La Prele Mammoth site is buried in an alluvial terrace of La Prele Creek, a t...

This is a preliminary summary of investigations from the Willow Springs campsite (48AB302), a major multiple component archaeologial site in the Laramie Valley of southern Wyoming.

By 13,000 BP human populations were present across North America, but the exact date of arrival to the continent, especially areas south of the continental ice sheets, remains unclear. Here we examine patterns in the stratigraphic integrity of early North American sites to gain insight into the timing of first colonization. We begin by modeling str...

The La Prele Mammoth site is a Clovis archaeological site in Converse County, Wyoming (U.S.A.) that preserves chipped stone artifacts in spatial association with the remains of a subadult Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi). The site was discovered in 1986 and initially tested by George Frison in 1987, but work ceased there until 2014 due to a di...

Archaeologists have long subjected Clovis megafauna kill/scavenge sites to the highest level of scrutiny. In 1987, a Columbian mammoth (Mammuthus columbi) was found in spatial association with a small artifact assemblage in Converse County, Wyoming. However, due to the small tool assemblage, limited nature of the excavations, and questions about th...

This book was funded by the EU 7th Framework Programme (7FP), TropicMicroArch 623293 Project (http://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/187754_en.html). The book will be Open Access, thanks to FP7 post-grant Open Access (https://www.openaire.eu/postgrantoapilot).

The Sisters Hill Paleoindian site located in an ecotone between the Bighorn Mountains and the High Plains of the Powder River Basin. Previously known for its Hell Gap component (ca. 11,000 cal BP), recent excavations at Sisters Hill discovered at least three components, including one associated with the Cody complex (ca. 10,900 cal BP) and two slig...

We compare a site-based Paleoindian chronology from the Hell Gap site to a regional Paleoindian chronology from the Northwest Plains. This poster is a useful reference for Northwest Plains and Rockies Paleoindian chronology.

Component age estimates for the Hell Gap Paleoindian site and methods for chronological modeling of stratified open sites - Response to commentary by C. Vance Haynes - Volume 90 Issue 1 - Spencer R. Pelton, Marcel Kornfeld, Thomas Minckley, Mary Lou Larson

We report results from excavations at the Wold Bison Jump (Wold, site number 48JO966), a Late Prehistoric (ca. 300–500 BP) bison jump located in the southeast foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, Wyoming. We argue that (a) the site was created by the ancestral Crow based on its location, age, material culture, and hunting technique and (b) the jump...

We report major new insights from recent research at the Powars II Paleoindian red ocher quarry (48PL330). We salvaged more than 7,000 artifacts from Powars II between 2014 and 2016 by screening redeposited sediment from the talus slope below the intact portion of the site. Clovis artifacts dominate the diagnostic artifact assemblage, including 53...

This is a summary of surface recording, auger testing, and test excavations conducted at the Duck Creek site (48AB2802) in August of 2013 and 2015 by students associated with the University Wyoming. In total these efforts documented 694 flakes, 60 prehistoric and protohistoric tools, 2 stone circles, and several historic artifacts. Most notably, th...

Prehistoric foragers living in the high elevations of the Colorado Front Range (CFR) transported ground stone tools at least 20 km from the CFR foothills to around 40 percent of sites in the subalpine forest and alpine tundra despite the sparse plant resources present in this region. This study is a distributional analysis that explains why there a...

The Wold Bison Jump (48JO966) is a communal bison (Bison bison) hunting site in Johnson County, Wyoming. It likely represents a single kill event precipitated by Great Plains foragers between A.D. 1433 and 1643. Operating the jump required that prehistoric hunters drive stampeding bison up a steep slope in order to position them within a V-shaped d...

We argue that variation in Younger Dryas-aged fluting in the Great Plains and Rocky Mountains was primarily conditioned by cold-mediated time budgeting concerns. Foragers that lived in cold environments had more time to flute projectile points during prolonged periods of downtime relative to those in warmer, southerly environments. We show that flu...

The Wold Bison Jump in Johnson County, Wyoming, is one of many prehistoric, mass kill sites scattered across the Plains. At Wold, a foraging basin of prime ungulate grazing habitat abuts the gently sloping backside of a bluff. Funnel-shaped drive lines of cairns extend across the top of the bluff towards a treacherous cliff. The drive was configure...

The Spring Canyon site (5LR205) is a multicomponent prehistoric campsite located in a foothills valley within Fort Collins, Colorado. It is one of the largest, most diverse sites in the northern Colorado foothills, possessing over 1,700 artifacts spanning Folsom to Late Prehistoric times. This study is a synthesis of existing research at the site t...

End scrapers are a widely recognized tool in the archaeological record, but their performance characteristics are poorly understood. We use experimental results and adapt marginal value theorem (MVT) for use in lithic studies to devise a formal model of end scraper performance that predicts the optimal time at which one should resharpen their end s...

This study presents preliminary climate modeling of the exchange of heat between humans and the environment. I use data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), produced by the Earth System Research Laboratory (ESRL) at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (Messinger et al. 2005). All data are means for January and...

The Granby cache was found near Granby, CO at an elevation of 2,520 m asl and is comprised of 25 large flakes made from Kremmling chert. All but one cache item is modified or retouched, most notably as notched 'spokeshave' implements postulated to have been used to work wood, bone, and/or antler implements.

The Olson site (5BL147) is a multi-component rock walled game drive located in the James Peak wilderness area of Northern Colorado, USA. It is one part of a much larger game drive complex located at Rollins Pass, situated above modern tree limit and along the Continental Divide, at approximately 3600 m above sea level. Byron Olson and James Benedic...

Ground stone tools are a long-noted aspect of pre-contact archaeological assemblages from the high elevations (2975-3666 meters asl) of the Colorado Front Range (CFR). The tools are present in small frequencies at around 40% of the sites thus far recorded, and are typically present as heavily fragmented grinding slab fragments procured many kilomet...