Late Paleoindian Occupation of the Southern Rocky Mountains explores how some of North AmericaÂ’s earliest people used the Rocky Mountain landscape 10,000 to 7,500 years ago. Bonnie L. Pitblado is particularly concerned with the extent to which early people incorporated the southern Rocky Mountains into their settlement systems and how late Paleoindian people moved across the southern Rocky Mountain landscape. Based on extensive research comparing more than 600 painstakingly documented late Paleoindian projectile points from Colorado and Utah, this book reveals profound regional differences along three axes of projectile point variability, which suggests equally profound regional differences in late Paleoindian settlement strategies. Pitblado highlights unique characteristics of early human use of the southern Rocky Mountains, but the comparative nature of the research also yields new inferences about late Paleoindian use of the Colorado Plains, the Utah Great Basin, and the Colorado Plateau.

Synthetic and comparative in nature, "Late Paleoindian Occupation" of the Southern Rocky Mountains will appeal to a broad range of scholars and avocational archaeologists. For professional archaeologists, hunter-gather land-use modeling and interpretations of late Paleoindian settlement strategies across four major environments of the American West will be of particular interest.