Buffalo Jump
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Buffalo Jump
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture & Enhancement
Description
This cliff wall in northern Larimer County (in Colorful Colorado) is a Protohistoric period (1540–1860 CE) bison kill and butchering site that dates to about 1663–84 representing one of the southernmost bison jump sites on the Great Plains.
The kill site is located on Roberts Ranch near Livermore, Colorao in northern Larimer County, about fifteen miles south of the Wyoming border. It is at the base of a cliff on the south bank of the North Fork of the Cache la Poudre River. Ranch owner Evan Roberts discovered it in 1957 when he saw bones sticking out of the riverbank while using a bulldozer to open the river channel.
Communal bison killings played an important role for human groups on the Great Plains from the area’s earliest inhabitants to the nineteenth century. Kills used a variety of methods, but the basic goal was to gather bison in a group and drive them to a kill point such as a trap or jump. These coordinated kills often occurred in late fall or early winter. By the Late Prehistoric period, most communal bison kills seem to have taken place north of Colorado in Wyoming and Montana.
Archaeologists discovered fourteen small rock cairns running along the crest of a slope near the top of the cliff. This suggests that the cairns were perfectly positioned for bison hunters to turn a stampeding herd north to their deaths. The bone bed at the base of the cliff contained 3,005 bone elements, indicating that a minimum of nineteen bison jumped and died at the site.
Some digital effects were applied to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition. Ordered images will not contain the FAA watermark
Image copyright 2018 Jon Burch Photography.
Uploaded
October 8th, 2019
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Viewed 346 Times - Last Visitor from Romeo, MI on 04/22/2024 at 5:29 PM
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