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

The Dirt on Archaeology: Gar Fish and the Lost Fremont Sites

We returned to excavate a thin layer of cultural sediments above the lower, 1200 year old floor on two grid units. The crew consisted of CVAS member Marvin Evans and CEU students Jake Anderson and Sarah Botkin. We only recovered a single lithic artifact from the floor, but Jake and Sarah found it while being filmed, and we took quite a few samples from the floor for pollen, phytolith, and macrofossil analyses for microscopic evidence of the foods they were storing and eating at the site. I am hoping for maize pollen!

We had lots of visitors on site. Rick Shaw from the Sun Advocate, Josie Luke from EmeryTelcom TV, and Janna Monson from KUSA and KASL radio stations examined the excavation at "Applique House" and toured some of the other sites in Range Creek. It was a wonderful excursion until the museum suburban broke down! Luckily, we got a tow back up the canyon, courtesy of Josie Luke and her beautiful new SUV. We also had a great visit from the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources, led by Bill Bates, the Region Manager in Price, and Mark Connolly, the main security officer in Range Creek.

We also recorded several Fremont sites near Nine Mile Canyon-- including a amall pithouse village with pottery and ground stone, and a large site with maize, three granaries and three rock art panels-- and looked at several additional sites that we will be recording during the next month. Thank you Marvin Evans and Tom and Jeannie McCourt!

Tom McCourt made the most exciting discovery of the week... fossilized scales from a prehistoric gar fish! These fish were predators adapted to shallow, still, murky water. They can be up to 3 meters long, weigh hundreds of pounds, and have been around for about 60-100 million years. Wow!!

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

THE DIRT ON WEEK FOUR

The final week went by like a blur. We really missed Joe and Ingrid, but Kim and Casey were awesome crew members!

We surveyed and recorded the very cool "Lizgrid" Metate Site on the ledge of a side canyon, did lots of mapping, and the entire crew worked incredibly hard to carefully take grid units in the south portion of the structure down to floor level, and defined a second occupation with artifacts that include polished turquoise, a carved bone awl, a ceramic pendant fragment, pottery sherds, a small piece of yellow ochre, and lithic debitage. We also had a very pleasant evening at the Tavaputs Ranch, with dinner, showers and a refreshing cool mountain retreat hosted by Butch and Jeannie Jensen. (The "better-than-sex" cake was delicious, and that's all we'll say about that!) The complete mano, bowl portion, trough metate fragments and several projectile points also appear to be associated with the later occupation, circa AD 1000. Our lowest floor is approximately 1200 years old with several hearths, burned bone, several large unburned deer bone fragments, a charred maize kernel, and numerous sherds near the hearths, a possible central posthole or large burned timber fragment, a stone ball, mano and metate fragments, a rounded subfloor pit with the rim and neck of an applique jar, a stone pendant, a large grayware jar fragment, and dozens of tiny microliths (very small stone debitage from pressure flaking- sharpening or finishing tool edges with an antler tip) in a small area of the floor near the posthole and stone ball.

This week Mel found lithics, ceramics and TURQUOISE ...

Celia found a ceramic pendant fragment, yellow ochre and ceramics....

Kim found floor contact applique and grayware ceramics...

Casey found many ceramics, lithics and faunal remains in several cultural levels ....

and Lisa found a complete bone awl sitting at the contact level of the upper, dark black cultural level with an orange, compact stratum interpreted as a second floor.

Lisa provides a thoughtful, intriguing interpretation of the site in her summary: "...Feature 8 is a large pithouse, possible pithouse, or tower that sits on a fairly steep slope about 100 feet above the flat alluvial floodplain of Range Creek. So far in our excavation of F8 we have found two possible habitation (sic) layers. Uinta grayware, a couple of Uinta points, lots of chalcedony lithic flakes probably originating from the San Rafael Swell, lots of Emery grayware, a bone awl, turquoise, applique pottery, a mano and metate, and a stone slab hearth. Most prehistoric sites if well-constructed have a second habitation. Its common. When I found the whitewash (slipped) ceramic bowl, I wondered if a second use was possible. I still think it is, especially because we can definitely see a orangey floor layer (above) the F11 floor. We also found two intact Uinta side-notched projectile points in higher levels than the F11 floor. These are not all too common within the Fremont culture of this area. Most resources come from the San Rafael Swell. I also think this site is not a permanent site. I don't think the amount of corn produced in these floodplains could support that many people. The game in this canyon would add substance but I still don't think it would provide enough sustenance for a small tribe or even a band. With Range Creek flooding (sic) in the early spring each year the houses would be left above the water. Also, with the amount of granaries above the flooding level of creeks and the extreme places most of the granaries are placed, from 60 to (hundreds of) feet above the canyon floor, may suggest securing food for return at a later date and to keep others and curious animals out of their food supply. The unusual placement of these granaries may also suggest a fear of neighbors competition among other cultures outside Range Creek or hostile bands within Range Creek, perhaps a shortage of food made people hide their food in obscure heights. The shortage of food could also explain the eventual abandonment of the canyon...."

Awl in awl, it was a pretty great week! We saw lots of birds and butterflies, heard coyotes in the morning, and had a Mr. Squirrel (aka Mr. Chipmunk) visit one day. We also had a very nice visit from Tom Curwen of the LA Times and several members of the Marriot Library sound team.

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