Archaeological investigation from a private artifact collection located in northeastern Colorado
Date
2010
Authors
Frederick, Amy R., author
Todd, Lawrence C., advisor
Branton, Nicole, committee member
MacDonald, Brad, committee member
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Abstract
The research and publication resulting from this project contributes to the archaeology of northeastern Colorado. This collection has never been analyzed, and the land had never been previously surveyed. This research contributes to the general theory of archaeology by helping to develop a method for working with amateur archaeologists or collectors. It also provides information on behaviors of a collector: his knowledge of archaeological resources, what attributes he looks for in choosing locations to collect artifacts from, (i.e. land forms, known collection locality, etc.), and what type of artifacts are collected. This research model can be used to predict what types of artifacts one can expect to find on federal, state, and private lands that have been looted or collected, and help explain the lack of bifaces, formal tools, and diagnostic artifacts at many sites on the Plains. Artifact collecting is a hobby of many individuals and it is important to understand how this behavior affects the archaeological record. Many features cannot be assigned to a cultural group or time period without the contextual information gained from diagnostic artifacts that are often surface collected from sites. The purposive sampling method used to record the landowner’s property only includes areas that the landowner has surface collected from for decades. The archeological survey and site inventories fail to represent the landscape variety, diversity of site types, and full range of archaeological resources that one would expect to find distributed over the landowner’s property. This thesis addresses the following questions. What types of activities have occurred at the collection sites over the years? What brings the landowner, Dirk Hunter to these locations? What types of artifacts are collected by Dirk? What site types are present? What tool types and lithic materials are represented within each site and over the project area? What is the cultural history of the area based on the diagnostic artifacts found within the Private Collection? This analysis of a private artifact collection provides evidence that meaningful interpretations can be drawn from private artifact collections.
Description
Covers not scanned.
Print version deaccessioned 2022.
Print version deaccessioned 2022.
Rights Access
Subject
Archaeology
Archaeologists
Collectors and collecting