Lindemeier Dig Site

This is an archaeological site that contains the most extensive Folsom culture campsite. It has been a National Historic Landmark since 1961, and is now part of the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area owned and managed by the city of Fort Collins, Colorado.

The Lindenmeier Site is a stratified multi-component archaeological site most famous for its Folsom component. It is located on the former Lindenmeier Ranch, now the Soapstone Prairie Natural Area, in northeastern Larimer County, Colorado, United States. The site contains the most extensive Folsom culture campsite yet found with a radiocarbon date of 10,600 to 10,720 B.P. Artifacts were also found from subsequent Archaic and Late pre-historic periods.

The site was declared a National Historic Landmark on January 20, 1961.[2] The United States National Park Service has studied the possibility of making the Lindenmeier Site a United States National Monument.

Paleo-Indian period[edit]The period immediately preceding the first humans coming into Colorado was the Ice Age Summer starting about 16,000 years ago. For the next five thousand years the landscape would change dramatically and most of the large animals would become extinct. Receding and melting glaciers created the Plum and Monument Creeks, the Castle Rock mesas and unburied the Rocky Mountains. Large mammals, such as the mastodon, mammoth, camels, giant sloths, cheetah, bison antiquus and horses roamed the land.[3]

There were a few Paleo-Indian cultures, distinctive by the size of the tools they used and the animals they hunted. People in the first, Clovis complex period, had large tools to hunt the megafauna animals of the early Paleo-Indian period.[3]

With time, the climate warmed again and lakes and savannas receded. The land became drier, food became less abundant, and as a result the giant mammals became extinct. People adapted by hunting smaller mammals and gathering wild plants to supplement their diet.[4] A new cultural complex was born, the Folsom tradition,[5] with smaller projectile points to hunt smaller animals.[3] Aside from hunting smaller mammals, people adapted by gathering wild plants to supplement their diet.[4]

The Lindenmeier site, the largest known Paleo-Indian Folsom site,[6] contained artifacts of the Paleo-Indians who lived and hunted in the present Fort Collins area approximately 11,000 years ago. Some of the artifacts are identified from people of the Folsom tradition, named for the Folsom Site in New Mexico, and identified as such by the Folsom points used for hunting the large, now extinct Bison antiquus. They likely also gathered food in the area, such as seeds, nuts and seasonal fruits. They were nomadic people, following the bison herds, and camping many places each year.[7][8]

The tools and artifacts at the Lindenmeier site shed insight into the life of these Paleo-indians:[9][10]

They created many types and shapes of tools, including spearheads and wedge shaped scrapers, which were essentially identical to the tools of the north Paleo-Indians of central Alaska. The tools were used for chopping, slicing and skinning the hides of the bison. Broken pieces of completed tools indicate that they had been used with great pressure.Scored pieces of hematite were used to extract red ochre for rouge or red paint for their faces.Round discs of 1-2 inches in diameter were found with indented rims, designs and highly polished - the oldest form of Paleo-Indian artwork found in Colorado.The volume and variety of artifacts indicate that the site was a residential campsite, the oldest site of its kind found of the people of the Folsom tradition.While bison were the mainstay of the hunter’s diet, an ancient camel bone was found near a bison kill site. Being limited to one bone, it was likely carried from another area and did not necessarily indicate that the Folsom people hunted camel at Lindenmeier or at other sites.[11]

Post-Folsom periods[edit]The site has yielded evidence of occupation of the Lindenmeier site area over 13,000 years. While most of the artifacts were from the Folsom tradition, there are also artifacts gathered from post Folsom periods. Yuma points were also found on the site, were likely from a period a little later than the Folsom artifacts. Unfluted points were found on the Lindenmeier site from the Archaic and Late pre-historic periods and evidence of a late prehistoric kill site. The limited number of artifacts from this and other post-Folsom periods seem to indicate that the later people were more transitory than the people of the Folsom tradition or that there were limited resources in later years.[12]

Artifacts by cultural period[edit]Excavations resulted in the collection of tens of thousands of stone and bone artifacts. Artifacts were found from the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, and late Prehistoric periods.[13]