NO. 4 A FOLSOM COMPLEX ROBERTS II 



in the digging throughout the period that the excavations were being 

 made. The kindness of Mr. Lindenmeier in granting permission to 

 work on his land is deeply appreciated. 



THE LINDENMEIER SITE 



The Lindenmeier site, where the specimens described in the follow- 

 ing pages were found, is 28 miles (45.062 km) north of Fort Collins, 

 Colo., and if miles (2.816 km) south of the Wyoming line. Specifi- 

 cally, it lies in sec. 27, T. 12 N., R. 69 W., sixth principal meridian. 

 The site is on a terrace (pi. i, frontispiece) above the valley of an 

 intermittent tributary to a series of creeks which ultimately join the 

 South Platte River. Whether this is a part of the old terrace system 

 of the Platte, which is being extensively studied by geologists in the 

 region farther east, is still to be determined. The formation is gener- 

 ally called the White River, It consists of a bed of grayish clay 

 covered with a conglomerate composed of sand, gravel, and occasional 

 large boulders. The clay is a Tertiary deposit, OHgocene, with a 

 possible admixture of some volcanic ash. The capping conglomerate 

 is indeterminate in age. It may be rather old, or it may be compara- 

 tively recent. 



The Lindenmeier site presents an interesting geologic problem in 

 the question of the wearing away and building up of the terrain. The 

 man-made material and animal bones occur in a dark soil layer which 

 rests on the clay bed and underlies the conglomerate. A tentative 

 reconstruction of the topography at the site, based entirely upon the 

 writer's interpretation of conditions and not upon observations by a 

 competent geologist, suggests that at one time there was a short, nar- 

 row valley lying between a series of conglomerate-topped ridges, a 

 situation comparable to that existing today at no great distance above 

 the archeological location. (See pi. 2, fig. i.) The valley bottom con- 

 sisted of a soil layer, several inches in thickness, resting on the OHgo- 

 cene deposit. Here and' there were small ponds or marshy places, as 

 indicated by the siltlike strata of dark soil in depressions in the clay 

 bed. The human occupants of the valley lived on top of this soil layer. 

 As a result of their continued presence, numerous objects associated 

 with their daily round of life — charcoal and ashes from their fires, 

 bones from the animals that supplied the meat for their meals, stone 

 chips from the implements that they made, broken tools and other 

 artifacts — were scattered over the surface. These in time became em- 

 bedded in the rising soil level, were subsequently buried by additional 

 soil layers after the people departed, and eventually were covered by 



