Upper Dinwoody Projectile Points: Killing Tools From the Pleistocene to the Little Ice Age

Central Wyoming College archaeology students have discovered a series of prehistoric sites along most of the trail leading to Gannett Peak and the Dinwoody Glacier. These sites provide evidence that people have lived and foraged for food at elevations up to 12,500 feet above sea level in the Wind River Mountains. The oldest identified so far was part of the Goshen Culture, over 11,000 years ago and only recently arrived from Berengia at the end of the Pleistocene Ice Age. That site was identified by the type of spear point recovered there. Other projectile points are used to date sites through the entire span of human presence in North America perhaps to the middle 1800s at the end of the Little Ice Age. This poster describes and discusses the various types of weapons that human hunters have used to obtain food and defend themselves in the high alpine of northwest Wyoming.