University of Utah Anthropological Paper – serie

This descriptive report on the 1975 archaeological excavations at Cowboy Cave, an Archaic site located in Wayne County, Utah, provides relevant comparative and interpretive comments by a number of authors.

This volume is compilation of individual papers from the Great Basin/California Pottery Workshop of April 1983. The papers include data reports, literature reviews, statements of theoretical positions, and analytical methodology. All address ceramics, primarily of undecorated wares, from the Great Basin and nearby areas.

This paper is the first of two volumes presenting the ethnographic field notes of Willard Z. Parks, who studied the Northern Paiute from 1933 to 1940.

Based on more than ten years of field work, this is the only modern interpretive site report on the Sinagua culture.Lizard Man Village is one of many small settlements in the Flagstaff vicinity occupied by the Sinagua between AD 1050 and 1300. Generally considered affiliated with the Mogollon, the major archaeological culture group in central Arizona, the Sinagua inhabited a region where three distinct groups intersected: the Mogollon, the Hohokam, and the Anasazi.Sinagua survival strategy in this very arid region combined dispersed agriculture with hunting and foraging. It appears that an essentially egalitarian social system allowed flexibility to maximize wild resources and potential agricultural sites or vice versa. The area is characterized by a number of small villages that probably consisted of only a few families each. Precisely because Lizard Man Village is typical of such sites, the authors chose it for intensive fieldwork. According to them, "in its very ordinariness lies its importance."Based on the site report, the authors provide interpretations for comparison to other sites in the Southwest, as well as a detailed consideration of what went on at a small Sinagua village. Using material assemblages they present a picture of social organization through successive culture phases.

University of Utah Anthropological Paper No. 124Buzz-Cut Dune is an important Fremont-culture village site located on the western margin of Dugway Proving Ground near the Utah-Nevada border. It was discovered during construction activity in 2000. Initial descriptions noted at least five structure floors apparently dating to the Fremont period (AD 500-1200) together with an array of ceramic, groundstone, and chipped stone artifacts. Full-scale excavations revealed a much more complex intermittent occupational pattern over a period of at least 5,000 years beginning with “Archaic” foragers up through proto-historic times.Throughout this sequence, site usage was characterized by short-term visits from mobile foraging groups. Although the Fremont practiced agriculture elsewhere, there is no evidence for it here, which bears on current discussions regarding the relationship between Fremont farmers and foragers.Buzz-Cut Dune and Fremont Foraging at the Margin of Horticulture is the site report of a well-planned regional excavation with a strong theoretical component.

A report on the findings and interpretation of an archaeological survey completed in the La Sal Mountain area near the town of Moab, Utah. This work was completed in 1949-1952 and summarizes about 350 recorded sites, many at high elevations.

A report on the salvage survey and testing of nine archaeological sites during the years 1952-1953, located in Beef Basin, southeastern Utah.

The final report from the Utah Statewide Archeological Survey that covers an area bounded on the north by the Uintah Mountains, on the west by the Wasatch Mountains and Plateau, and on the south by the southern edge of the Dirty Devil drainage. The Colorado River and the Utah-Colorado state line form the eastern boundary.

Contains the archaeological survey of the Kaiparowits Plateau by James Gunnerson, the Glen Canyon main stem survey by Don Fowler, and the San Juan triangle survey by Ted Weller reports.

More than 650 archaeological sites were found and recorded during the survey of the Death Valley salt pan. A number of these were excavated: five rock mounds, five storage pits, one dwelling, one shelter, six rock circles, six rock traps, and one fireplace. The survey and excavation work is reported in this volume.

This volume reports on sites excavated in southwest Utah, three near St. George, three in Zion National Park, and two in Johnson Canyon, east of Kanab. The appendix also describes additional sites that were surveyed in these areas.

This paper reports on the prehistory of the Virgin branch of the Anasazi in the Southwest. It incorporates information from sites excavated in the early 1960s in southwest Utah to reassess earlier studies of Virgin Anasazi culture that were based primarily on pottery.

About 12,000 years ago, a major river ran from the Sevier Basin to the Great Salt Lake, feeding a wetland delta system and creating riparian habitat along its length. But after three thousand years the river dried up and the surrounding lands became more like what we see today. Because the Old River Bed Delta experienced less environmental and human disturbance than other areas, many of the Paleoarchaic sites found there have remained relatively intact—a rare find in the Great Basin. This book presents a comprehensive synthesis of a decade of investigations conducted by research teams working in different parts of the delta and explores questions about how the old riverbed was formed, how its distributary system changed through time, and how these changes affected early foragers. It concludes with an integrated summary and interpretation. Additional material from this study will be available online at UofUpress.com.

Swordfish Cave is a well-known rock art site located on Vandenberg Air Force Base in south-central California. Named for the swordfish painted on its wall, the cave is a sacred Chumash site. When it was under threat and required measures to conserve it, nearly all of the cave’s interior was excavated to create a rock art viewing area. That effort revealed previously unknown rock art and made it possible to closely examine how early occupants used the space inside the cave. Archaeologists identified three periods of human use, including an initial occupation around 3,550 years ago, an occupation about 660 years later, and a final Native American occupation that occurred much later, between A.D. 1787 and 1804.Well illustrated with photographs, maps, and drawings of the rock art, the excavations, and the artifacts revealed therein, the book presents a rare opportunity to directly link archaeology and rock art and to examine the spatial organization of prehistoric human habitation.

Cultural Resource Management (CRM) refers to the discovery, evaluation, and preservation of culturally significant sites, focusing on but not limited to archaeological and historical sites of significance. CRM stems from the National Historic Preservation Act, passed in 1966. In 1986, archaeologists reviewed the practice of CRM in the Great Basin. They concluded that it was mainly a system of finding, flagging, and avoiding— a means of keeping sites and artifacts safe. Success was measured by counting the number of sites recorded and acres surveyed.This volume provides an updated review some thirty years later. The product of a 2016 symposium, its measures are the increase in knowledge obtained through CRM projects and the inclusion of tribes, the general public, industry, and others in the discovery and interpretation of Great Basin prehistory and history. Revealing both successes and shortcomings, it considers how CRM can face the challenges of the future. Chapters offer a variety of perspectives, covering highway archaeology, inclusion of Native American tribes, and the legacy of the NHPA, among other topics.

This volume examines an almost purely lithic record known in the Puget Sound region as the Olcott Complex. Only loosely described off and on since the early 1960s by a series of researchers, none of whom used the same analytical approach, the Olcott record has never been systematically analyzed until now. As a result, this book fills in enormous gaps in our knowledge regarding the age, mode of subsistence, and adaptive strategy of the Olcott Complex. Chatters and colleagues describe the intensive excavation of three Olcott sites that were threatened by highway construction. The book concludes by pulling those findings together to place the Olcott Complex into its proper place in regional prehistory. An exemplary model of how to conduct archaeological research, the volume demonstrates how important research issues can be addressed in a cultural resource management context.

This volume is dedicated to studies of plainwares—the undecorated ceramics that make up the majority of prehistoric ceramic assemblages worldwide. Early analyses of ceramics focused on changes in decorative design elements to establish chronologies and cultural associations. With the development of archaeometric techniques that allow direct dating of potsherds and identification of their elemental composition and residues, plainwares now provide a new source of information about the timing, manufacture, distribution, and use of ceramics.This book investigates plainwares from the far west, stretching into the Great Basin and the northwestern and southwestern edges of Arizona. Contributors use and explain recent analytical methods, including neutron activation, electron microprobe analysis, and thin-section optical mineralogy. They examine native ceramic traditions and how they were influenced by the Spanish mission system, and they consider the pros and cons of past approaches to ware typology, presenting a vision of how plainware analysis can be improved by ignoring the traditional “typological” approach of early ceramicists working with decorated wares.This work provides a much-needed update to plainware studies, with new hypotheses and data that will help set the stage for future research.

The Sacramento Valley of northern California was a rich, diverse environment that supported some of the densest populations of nonagricultural people in the world. Periodic flooding, however, has buried much of the valley’s deep cultural history under alluvium. This volume shares the discovery of four buried archaeological sites, including one dating to 7,000 years ago, filled with a diversified assemblage of artifacts and a rich assortment of food remains. Stone net sinkers and associated fish bones represent the oldest fishery ever documented in the interior of California, while items such as marine shell beads and exotic obsidian, and some of the oldest charmstones ever recovered in California provide evidence for long-distance trade networks. The other three sites date between 4000 and 300 years ago and reflect increasing human population density, technological innovation, and the rise of sedentism and territoriality. This historical sequence culminated in findings from a 400- to 300-year-old house complex probably occupied by the Mechoopda Indian Tribe, who collaborated with the authors throughout the project.

This volume tracks 13,000 years of environmental and cultural change in North Warner Valley—part of the Oregon Desert that has largely escaped researchers’ attention. The authors present a decade of fieldwork and laboratory analyses that reveal a record of human activity that waxed and waned with local and regional environmental and social change. Open-air sites, lithic technology, plant and animal foods, and bone and shell objects—most from a stratified rockshelter record that spans almost ten millennia—tell a story of people who visited North Warner Valley periodically to collect marsh plants, rabbits, and other resources.Smith and colleagues present their work in a way that allows readers to understand not only how people adapted to local change but also how North Warner Valley fit into the complex mosaic of precontact history in the American West. This research is the most comprehensive work conducted in the northern Great Basin in more than two decades. Its multidisciplinary nature should interest students of natural and cultural history, archaeology, and Indigenous lifeways.

This archaeological study of the interactions between Western Shoshone families and Euro-American ranchers in the late nineteenth century helps fill the gap between what is known regarding Late Prehistoric foragers of the American West and ethnohistoric understanding of Native American peoples of the Great Basin.Pottery Hill, an archaeological site located in Grass Valley, Nevada, northeast of the historic mining town of Austin, represents a small settlement of Native Americans who lived there in the late 1800s. The Grass Valley Shoshone, whose environment and traditional lifeways were disrupted by the arrival of miners and settlers in the 1860s, found work on the ranches and farms in the valley.Archaeological fieldwork conducted in the 1970s investigated house remains, hearths, and artifacts. A recent analysis of these data, enhanced by the use of archival documents and oral history, provides new insights into the dynamics of late nineteenth-century life in central Nevada. The Pottery Hill Site addresses a critical period in the history of the Grass Valley Shoshone, who adopted and modified Euro-American artifacts and materials while maintaining important aspects of their traditional culture. It gives readers a deeper understanding of the effects of Euro-American settlement on the Shoshone, the history of the western United States, and the reciprocal impacts of cultural contact.

As pioneering hunter-gatherer populations moved into unfamiliar regions, they faced the challenge of locating critical resources like food, water, and raw materials for tools, shelter, and clothing. While their descendants would eventually benefit from the accumulation of this knowledge over time, these first colonizers were forced to learn a new landscape from scratch. In Landscape Learning in the Pleistocene Great Basin, David B. Hunt proposes a quantitative model to explain the adaptive behaviors of the first groups of humans to settle in a particular area, a concept known as “landscape learning.”Hunt seeks insight into the initial development of adaptive strategies related to the procurement of essential resources within a region. Incorporating data from archaeological investigation at the Old River Bed Delta in Utah and focusing specifically on the lithics recovered, Hunt develops what he terms the Discoverability Model. He proposes this model as a way for archaeologists to begin quantifying the qualitative aspects of colonization and landscape learning models.