Shallow site archaeology: Artifact dispersal, stratigraphy, and radiocarbon dating at the Barger Gulch Locality B Folsom Site, Middle Park, Colorado

Abstract

Shallowly buried archaeological sites are particularly susceptible to surface and subsurface disturbance processes. Yet, because cultural deposition often operates on short time scales relative to geologic deposition, vertical artifact distributions can be used to clarify questions of site formation. In particular, patterns in artifact distributions that cannot be explained by occupation histories must be explained by natural processes that have affected sites. Buried only 10-50 cm beneath the ground surface for 10,450 14C yr, the Folsom component at Barger Gulch Locality B (Middle Park, Colorado) exhibits many signs of post-depositional disturbance. Through examination of variation in the vertical distribution of the artifact assemblage, we are able to establish that only a Folsom component is present. Using vertical artifact distributions, stratigraphy, and radiocarbon dating, we are able to reconstruct the series of events that have impacted the site. The Folsom occupation (∼10,450 14C yr B.P.) was likely initially buried in a late-Pleistocene eolian silt loam. Erosion brought the artifacts to rest on a deflation surface at some time prior to 9400 14C yr B.P. A mollic epipedon formed in sediments that accumulated between 9400 and 7000 14C yr B.P. Some time after 5200 14C yr B.P., this soil was partially truncated, and artifacts that had previously dispersed upward created a secondary lag at its upper contact. This surface was buried again and artifact dispersal continued. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.