Presented by Todd Surovell
Professor of  Archaeolgy, University of Wyoming

The Barger Gulch site preserves evidence of a Folsom cold season occupation dating to 12,800 years before present in an intermontane basin of Colorado. While many Folsom sites leave little archaeological materials (reflecting a highly mobile lifestyle), the people at Barger Gulch left behind tens of thousands of pieces of chipped stone as they overwintered here. Careful excavation of the site and analysis of the materials recovered have yielded evidence of Ice Age households. These are among the oldest houses ever found in the Americas. By comparing the contents of those households, Dr. Todd Surovell has been able to infer aspects of Paleoindian social organization, demography and activities—such as a camp circle, child flintknapping, and household production of weaponry—which are difficult to study from other kinds of sites.

Todd Surovell, PhD is a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the George C. Frison Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of Wyoming. He received a BS in Anthropology and Zoology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an MA and PhD from the University of Arizona. His areas of expertise include human behavioral ecology, hunter-gatherer archaeology, and the colonization of the Americas. He is also skilled in quantitative methods, geoarchaeology, archaeometry, and ethnoarchaeology. Dr. Surovell is the author of two books and more than 75 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. He is the principal investigator of the Barger Gulch and La Prele Mammoth site projects. He completed a five-year ethnoarchaeological study of Dukha reindeer herders in northern Mongolia, examining spatial properties of human behavior in campsites of nomadic peoples.