The Mountaineer Site

There is a really neat Folsom site that sits atop a mountain called W Mountain, called the Mountaineer Site, situated at 8600 feet above sea level. I have had a hard time finding any information on this site which Mark Stiger is excavating, but it is starting to trickle out now more and more. Stiger is a professor at Western State College, in Gunnison, Colorado. He was apparently examining the area for the construction of a radio tower and found a site that dates to the Folsom period (around 11,000 years ago). The Folsom people made exquisitely thin points for their hunting spears weapons. They hunted bison with proficiency but they also ate fish and turtles and other critters. They were first discovered at the Folsom site, from where it got its name. The discovery of that site is an interesting story, but I will save that for another time.

The Mountaineer Site is really interesting because they found the rock foundation of a house, which is the first house ever associated with people from this time period. Most of the sites discovered have been sites where large mammals were killed, usually bison or where stone tools were being made. Only ephemeral evidence for structures have ever been documented and usually just by association with the chipped stone debris. So this site is remarkable first--the definitive evidence for a Folsom dwelling and a definite settlement.

This Folsom settlement will add brand new information to this time period about which we know a lot about their technology involving stones chipped into tools, some about what and how they hunted, but otherwise very little else. I hope they will find more beads, of which only one has ever been recovered from a Folsom aged site, in this case the Shifting Sands site in West Texas and this little bone bead was found stuck to the dirt on the underside of another artifact. Hopefully, with careful excavating, we will learn a lot more about these ancient peoples.