Western Colorado University C.T. Hurst Museum
Western Colorado University professor Mark Stiger stands amid an exhibit in the anthropology department that acknowledges the looting of artifacts that has taken place in the Four Corners region of southwestern Colorado and the damage it has caused to ancient sites by destroying their cultural and anthropological integrity. (Dean Krakel, Special to The Colorado Sun)
An Homage to Dr. Mark Stiger
Currently on display at the C.T. Hurst Museum in Hurst Hall this exhibition focuses on saying thank you and goodbye to a wonderful anthropologist Dr. Mark Stiger and his 35 years of contribution to the Western Anthropology Department and the C.T. Hurst Museum. Dr. Stiger was born in Kansas but raised in Colorado and found his first projectile point at the age of only four. Dr. Stiger is known for his work on W Mountain in Gunnison, and Tabeguache Cave, as well as his two published works Hunter-Gatherer Archaeology of the Colorado High Country and The Mountaineer Site: A Folsom Winter Camp in the Rockies. This exhibition seeks to display some of the many artifacts Dr. Stiger has come across in his tenure, such as southwestern ceramics, projectile points, awls, corn, different textile types, and even a sandal.
Our Mission Statement
The CT Hurst Museum is a steward of the material culture and natural history of the Western Slope. As an academic museum and archaeological repository located on the campus of Western Colorado University, the museum strives to be a catalyst for education through the exhibition, research, preservation, and administration of the collection.
In accordance with Colorado rules and procedures (8 CCR 1504-7) the C.T, Hurst Museum is a state approved museum for held in trust collections from lands belonging to the state of Colorado or its political subdivisions. In good standing.
“GUNNISON — In the early 1990s, when Mark Stiger first unpacked what’s known as the Peterson collection, the anthropology professor found more than 100 objects wrapped in decades-old newspaper and stuffed in cardboard whiskey and grocery boxes, stacked and nearly forgotten in a stairwell on the Western Colorado University campus.
When he peeled away the paper and saw a human skull, and ultimately the remains of 25 individuals among about 100 other cultural objects, the discovery triggered an almost visceral reaction.
“It was embarrassing,” Stiger recalls, noting how much attitudes had changed after federal law created the first template for repatriation of culturally identifiable remains and disposition of those whose origins remained a mystery.
The objects had been amassed by a man who lived in the southwestern corner of Colorado in the 1920s and ’30s. When he died in the 1940s, he left the collection to his brother, an alumnus of what then was known as Western State College of Colorado.”
This article continues on the Colorado Sun page linked above.
The Cottonwood Cave Collection
First inhabited around 270BC, this expansive rockshelter was where the earliest corn discovered in Colorado was found. It was officially recorded on September 11, 1996, and was first excavated by Clarence T. Hurst in 1947. This cave revealed a hidden stash of corn that was subsequently dated using radiocarbon methods. At this site, known as Cottonwood Cave, the team led by Hurst could only conduct limited excavations due to the strain of daily treks between their base camp and the distant cave. They discovered pictographs and petroglyphs adorning the cave walls and unearthed numerous Basketmaker artifacts in a well-preserved state, including cured deer skin, baskets, and two distinct styles of yucca-leaf footwear. Their most significant find was a bundle positioned thirty inches beneath the surface in a garbage heap. Constructed out of strips of juniper bark and divided yucca leaves, the oval-shaped bundle housed fourteen complete ears of corn and almost a gallon of dehusked corn. Given the immaculate state of the corn, Hurst theorized that it was likely seed corn or a ritualistic offering rather than a stockpile of food.