Building boom unearths gems  By Kelly Kennedy Special to The Denver Post Sunday, June 23, 2002 - As a young archaeologist, Susan Collins felt an almost physical connection with the ancient people she studied.   "I get excited about looking at adobe and seeing fingerprints," she said. "It's almost like holding hands with someone." Now, as a state archaeologist, she works with others to make sure those connections remain intact for generations to come. When there's a fire, she helps the Forest Service determine if there are cliff dwellings that need to be protected. When a new cellular-phone tower goes in, the phone company checks with her office first to make sure they aren't digging in a sacred American Indian burial ground. Before a company maps out a new irrigation pipeline, she or her office mates walk the land to check for old railroad campsites. "Somewhere in the state there is usually an excavation going on at any given moment," Collins said. "There are probably 10 throughout the state right now. You see them in areas where you're seeing population growth or in conjunction with highway work. Pipelines for petroleum transport always seem to encounter archaeological sites." But when people see work being done on the Interstate 25 corridor just south of the T-REX construction project, they probably don't associate it with the American Indians who camped there 2,000 years ago. "We've found some chipped stone tools and grinding stones, as well as some fire remains that lead us to believe it was once a campsite," said Dan Jepson, senior staff archaeologist for the Colorado Department of Transportation. "Archaeological sites are everywhere. Four years ago, a construction crew found two prehistoric burials in Golden near Highway (U.S.) 40." Usually, archaeologists leave sites intact unless they have to excavate them. They would rather curve a highway around a prehistoric site than disrupt a site. But sometimes, excavation is unavoidable. "We found a site in Las Animas County west of Trinidad that has apparently had multiple occupations," Jepson said. "It was first recorded 20 years ago, but until recently, we've been able to avoid it. We only excavate when we can't avoid it." The site sits on a little ridge overlooking the Purgatoire River - and the new highway. Archaeologists have found arrow and spear parts, prehistoric pottery, grinding tools and old fire pits. They'll be able get an exact date on the site from fire-pit charcoal samples, but they believe it's 1,500 to 2,000 years old. Farther north, Colorado State University anthropology students are excavating a 2,700-year-old bison-kill site. In 1997, a construction crew for a housing development in Windsor discovered bones. The local newspaper called archaeologists to find out what was going on, and the archaeologists determined it was the largest kill site ever discovered in the Americas. "It's a hill slope just covered with bones," said Larry Todd, professor of anthropology and director of the Laboratory of Human Paleoecology at CSU. "It was obvious that they were bison bones, not domesticated animal bones, so we were interested." About 2,700 years ago, a group of people herded the bison into a ravine, then threw spears at them. Most kill sites contain fewer than 24 animals. This one contains 200 to 250. "It's a very important site," Todd said. "It looks like two groups of people used it because there are different types of spear points." One point uses stone from central Wyoming. The other uses stone found near Sterling. "If it hadn't been for the housing development, we probably would never have known it was there because it was under 15 feet of sediment," Todd said. "It's neat that it's close to town because we've had 3,000 school kids out to learn about archaeology." The housing development continues around the site, and Les Kaplan, the developer, is allowing the scientists to excavate through 2004 and to keep whatever they find. "He's been great about it," Todd said. "It's not like the usual horror stories you see where archaeologists can't get to a site because the developer wants to continue work on their project." Any government entity or group using government grants must have proposed sites assessed by archaeologists. Cellphone companies get their permits from the Federal Communications Commission, so they also qualify. This doesn't necessarily mean companies won't be able to build a cell tower or lay a gas line, but it allows archaeologists to negotiate for excavation rights or an opportunity to persuade the company to build around a site. State archaeologist Collins said there has also been extensive archaeological survey and landscape restoration recently at Mesa Verde National Park and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation after the large fires there. One site that archaeologists have been working on came about for cultural development reasons rather than housing or transportation development needs. On Nov. 29, 1864, 700 Colorado militia members killed more than 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians, most of whom were women, children and elderly men, in the Sand Creek Massacre in Kiowa County. "We've been working on (the site) since 1992," Collins said. "Two men came in to ask for help because they were dismayed that they weren't finding any Sand Creek Massacre artifacts with their metal detectors. It raised the question of where exactly is the site." Before the 1990s, there had been no formal fieldwork done by archaeologists at the site. "We finally put all the evidence together - the oral tradition of the natives, the historical record of witnesses and our own archaeological expedition," she said. "As it turns out, it's a very, very, very large site." And the guys with the metal detectors? "Well, let's just say they had hoped to play a much larger role," she said.