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Walking Colorado: An Introduction to the Origins Section

Hundreds of generations of Native American ancestors are represented in Colorado by scatters of artifacts along with the less portable evidence of shelter, the warmth of hearths, storage needs, and symbolic expression. We learn about them through…

Falls Creek Rock Shelters Archaeological Site

The Falls Creek rock shelters are the most important archaeological discovery in the Durango area. Along with nearby Talus Village, they are type-sites for the Eastern Basketmaker II period (400 BCE–400 CE) of the Ancestral Puebloan (Anasazi) tradition,…

Great House

“Great House” refers to a class of ancient Ancestral Puebloan structures from the ninth through thirteenth century. Great Houses were monumental, geometrically formal constructions, with thick stone masonry walls made with careful craftsmanship. While…

Plains Woodland

The Plains Woodland period covers approximately a thousand years of Colorado prehistory across a large portion of the state. Plains Woodland describes the groups of people occupying much of the western plains from present-day Nebraska and Kansas, west of…