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Franktown Cave is located 25 miles south of Denver, Colorado on the north edge of the Palmer Divide. It is the largest rock shelter documented on the Palmer Divide, which contains artifacts from many prehistoric cultures. Prehistoric hunter-gatherers occupied Franktown Cave intermittently for 8000 years beginning about 6400 B.C. The site held remarkable lithic and ceramic artifacts, but it is better known for its perishable artifacts, including animal hides, wood, fiber and corn. Material goods were produced for their comfort, task-simplification and religious celebration. There is evidence of the site being a campsite or dwelling as recent as AD 1725. ==Geography== Franktown Cave is a rock shelter above Willow Creek, a tributary of Cherry Creek that flows into the South Platte River at Denver, Colorado, 25 miles to the north. It is more than in elevation.〔 Situated on Palmer Divide, which separates the South Platte River basin from the Arkansas River basin, Franktown Cave is its largest documented rock shelter in the area.〔 Palmer Divide is an east-west ridge in central Colorado that runs perpendicular to the Rocky Mountains between Denver and Colorado Springs and east to Limon, Colorado. Monument Hill, is the highest point of the divide at about .〔Nelson, Mike; Laubach, Tony. (''Where is that? Explaining The Different Regions of Colorado.'' ) October 27, 2009. Retrieved 10-2-2011.〕 The cave was created when water eroded the soft, water soluble layers of Dawson Arkose formation through seeps below a thick, hard shelf of Castle Rock Conglomerate. The area provides two key raw materials that were used for tool-making: * Microcrystalline rock in white chalcedony, light yellow and caramel that was formed from petrified wood during the Paleocene period. Projectile points and small bifaces were made from microcrystalline rock. * Wall Mountain tuff rhyolite from the Oligocene age for flake tools.〔 Near the rock shelter, spring-fed streams traverse a land of scrub oak, plains grassland and open ponderosa pine forest.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Franktown Cave」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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