Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains

1. A Sloping Land: An Introduction to Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains

 In 2006 hIstory buffs celebrated the 200th anniversary of the moment when explorer Zebulon Pike first saw the mountain that would later bear his name. A great deal of effort was expended in historical detective work, using Pike’s accounts and maps to relocate the spot from which he first spied Pike’s Peak. Hoping for a clear day, celebrants returned to this location on the High Plains (just outside Las Animas, Colorado) to read his journal and, for a moment, to attempt to see the world through his eyes. Of course, for thousands of years preceding Pike, the vista he encountered was well-known to the many indigenous groups of the Arkansas River Valley. We begin with this historical sidebar because it illustrates some of the particular facets of the High Plains as a region. The story highlights something about the nature of the geography of an area tucked between the Rocky Mountains and the vast interior Plains of North America. Here one encounters o n e Bonnie J. Clark and Laura L. Scheiber A Sloping Land: An Introduction to Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains Did they choose this place or did the land choose them? —K ath l eene Wes t Bonnie J. C l ar K and l aura l . s C h eiBer  topographical surprises such as incised canyons, slanted escarpments, playa lakes, buttes, and views of mountains. This is not the sea-like, tall-grass prairie of the Northern and Central Plains. Occupied for at least 12,000 years, the High Plains geography is inscribed by human history. When celebrants attempted to return to the exact spot where Pike stood and wrote, they returned to an important locale as a way to link to the past and in so doing to refresh memories , writing them anew with a different cast of characters. As readers of this volume will discover, the writing of the past in places is something the people of the High Plains have been doing for almost as long as there have been people in the region. The stone marker placed at the Pike vista is the materialization of this ritual of renewal and memory, with a strong family resemblance to a number of the sites and features that will be discussed in the pages to come. Landscape perspectives in archaeology focus on the relationships and intersections between land and people. Although traditionally interested in issues of spatial variation at a broad scale, archaeologists have recently addressed cultural construction of the landscape as it shapes and is shaped by people’s lives. This edited volume presents recent case studies on this topic by archaeologists working in the North American High Plains. A meeting ground of different geographic regions, the area supported a wide variety of people in the past, making the region at times a crossroad and at others a frontier. Multiple generations traveled across the High Plains, while others settled and made it their home. It is cattle country, cowboy country, Indian country. It is also an area rich in ethnographic and historical heritages that are still very much present. This book, which focuses on the archaeological landscapes of, as well as the archaeology of landscapes in, the High Plains, is an exploration of a specific place using a particular set of theoretical and methodological tools. In it we present research that bridges the arbitrary division between history and prehistory. The decision to focus on long-term change allows the authors to consider both ethnographic literature and environmental data of a deep time depth, which are strengths of Plains research. The result is a cohesive and synthetic group of case studies spanning thousands of years of human occupation. What is unique about this book is that it focuses on one particular geographic region, and it explores the different and changing ways people interacted with that place. The hIgh PLAInS The High Plains lie between the Rocky Mountains to the west and the tallgrass prairies to the east and include portions of the modern states of Wyoming, Colorado, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Texas. The stan- A Sloping Land: An Introduction to Archaeological Landscapes on the High Plains  dard spatial definition of the High Plains follows definitions of the section of the Great Plains physiographic province, extending from the Pine Ridge Escarpment at the South Dakota/Nebraska border to the Llano Estacado in the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles (Fenneman...