Dust, Drought, and Rattlesnakes: Ancient Climate, Environment, and Cooking at Piñon Canyon

Monday, November 9, 2026

5:30 pm business meeting, 6 pm speaker

Englewood Public Library

(Hybrid)

Business meeting: 5:30 pm Catch up on the latest CAS news and VOTE for 2027 Denver Board

Speaker: 6 pm Dr. Linda Scott Cummings

Our meetings are free and open to the public. Members will receive the Zoom link by email. If you are not a member and would like to attend this talk, please contact us to receive the Zoom link.

Abstract:

In late May of 1983, the Army had just acquired the Piñon Canyon Maneuver Site in southeastern Colorado. A small team of archaeologists spent two weeks in the field there, sharing the canyons with rattlesnakes. We began collecting sediment from rock shelters, hearths, storage features, grinding stones, a deep arroyo exposure, and the largest playa in the area, which continued over the next several years. Those samples began a record of climate and plant use that still shapes our understanding of the region.

This talk follows that record from the landscape to the kitchen, sprinkling in work by others in the area. Pollen from modern ground surfaces showed us what grasslands, piñon and juniper woodlands, and riparian canyons look like today. With that baseline we could read three meters of stratified sediment at the Sue Site in Van Bremer Arroyo, alongside a core from Simpson Lake playa. Together these records show shifts between wetter and drier times, while the plant communities themselves remained remarkably stable. Climate models, produced with R. A. Varney also of PRI, add another view of the conditions people faced.

The cooking story is just as revealing. Seeds, pollen, and residues from grinding stones and hearths show that people roasted and ground goosefoot, grasses, sunflower, prickly pear, and cattail. Maize appears on manos, in a hearth, and with storage features in Taylor Arroyo and along the Purgatoire River. Wild plants were not a fallback. Some returned as many calories for the work as corn did. Finally, we look at places where grinding and ceremony meet, including a turtle pecked into a bedrock metate, and ask what these shared spaces tell us about the people who lived in rattlesnake country.

Location: Englewood Public Library, Anderson Room, 1000 Englewood Parkway, Englewood, CO 80110. The Anderson Room is located in the library on the first floor of the Englewood Civic Center Building (Google Map Link). The Civic Center Building can be reached via S. Broadway, W. Hampden Ave and S. Santa Fe Drive. There is free parking accessible from S. Inca Street (enter the building on the 1st floor) and S. Jason Street (enter the building on the 2nd floor and take stairs/elevator to 1st floor). Public transit is also available at the nearby Englewood Light Rail Station and Bus Transfer Loop (Parking and Public Transit Link). For public transit information, please visit RTD's Trip Planner Web Page.

Speaker:

Linda Scott Cummings, Ph.D.

Founder and Principal Scientist, PaleoResearch Institute

Dr. Linda Scott Cummings is an archaeobotanist and paleoenvironmental researcher with more than 50 years of experience investigating past environments, human subsistence, and the relationships between people and plants. As founder and principal scientist of PaleoResearch Institute in Colorado, she has directed and contributed to an extensive body of scientific research supporting archaeological, historical, and geological investigations.

Beginning with palynological research in the early 1970s, Dr. Cummings expanded her analytical expertise to encompass pollen, phytolith, starch grain, macrofloral, charcoal, protein residue, and organic residue analyses, as well as AMS radiocarbon dating. Her interdisciplinary approach integrates multiple lines of microscopic, botanical, and chemical evidence to reconstruct ancient environments, identify human activities, and investigate prehistoric diets and resource utilization.

Her extensive publication and technical report record documents research throughout North America and internationally, including projects in South America, Europe, the Pacific, and the Caribbean. Her work has supported universities, museums, government agencies, archaeological consulting firms, and cultural resource management programs, including investigations for the National Park Service, U.S. Geological Survey, Bureau of Land Management, and U.S. Army.

Through decades of collaborative research and the application of increasingly sophisticated analytical methods, Dr. Cummings has made substantial contributions to archaeological science, particularly in the interpretation of plant remains, environmental change, and the reconstruction of past human behavior.