The Dirt on Archaeology: California Crew!

This week Elizabeth Seymour and Robert Nash, graduate students at the University of California, Davis, and Christine Zuhlsdorf, graduate student at UCLA, surveyed and sampled sites in Range Creek. The hiking was straight up, usually hundreds of feet above the canyon floor, and always on rough terrain and through heavy brush.

   

The weather was mostly hot and beautiful with bright blue skies, and we heard the howling of the coyotes near camp in the early morning. We reported a fire to dispatch on our first day, after Christine spotted the black smoke billowing on the horizon in the distance.

Robert found a new granary with several maize cobs and large timbers, and we cored a half dozen timbers in the granary on the ledge of the flute site. Elizabeth drilled the best cores-- two complete samples with good outsides (for cutting/death dates) through the center (for birth dates) of the trees. We also found another artifact on the same ledge as the flute site-- a carved wooden handle with hafting element that fits with the wooden shovel we discovered last November!

We were going to complete excavation of the 1200 year-old Fremont floor on Sunday, but were rained out when a big storm rolled in. So, after giving a jump to a family with a Cadillac SUV that wouldn't start, we headed up to the pass in the rain before the road was too wet to travel. 

renee

Renee Barlow, Ph.D.

Curator of Archaeology

College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum

451 East 400 North, Price, Utah  84501

phone/voicemail 435-613-5290