Utah Statewide Archaeological Society Newsletter, Volume 4, Number 1, March 1958

UTAH ARCHEOLOGY

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Vol.

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No. 1

A Newsletter'tJrAH SIArE RISTORICAL SOCl2rt t~" \ EAST SOUTH TEMPLlMarch 1958 Contents .' \LJ A..AK~ ~lJ~Y~ .t.\I4ij . ,· / "

Editor's Notes Ut.ah Archeological Field Plans for 1958 An Underground Storage Pit Near Moab

by Lloyd Pierson Plant and Animal Material in Archeological Interpretation

by James H. Gunnerson Recent Publications

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Pictograph from near Ferron 9 Utah

Utah Archeology is distributed quarterly to all members of the Utah Statewide Archeological Society. All correspondence should be "directed to the Editor~ James H. Gunnerson~ Department of Anthropology , University of . Utah 9 Salt Lake City l2 9 Ut.h

EditorUs Notes Let me again urge all of you to encourage your acquaintances to j,ointhe Utah Statewide Archeological Society. T~e larger our membership» the more successful the organization and newsletter will be.

This Issue~ Lloyd Pierson 9 author of "An Undercut Storage Pit Near the National Park S~rvice at Arches National Monument. is very active wi~h the Moab Chapter of the USAS.

Moab~n

is with Mr. Pierson

The final article is by your editor.

Judith Goodrich9 an anthropology student at the University of Utah» has volunteered to do art work for the Newsletter. She has repro .. duced a series of pictographs for covers 9 including the present one» and will produce drawings for future issues. .

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Back Issu~s ~ Fa,r the benefit of members who have just recently joined the USAS» I should like to point out that complete sets of Volume III '(1957) of Utah Archeology are available for $1.00 per set by writing to the editor. With each set of Vol. III~ 1°11 send copies free of the scattered ear1ie,r numbers that are still available.

Financial Statement~ Amourit received (dues apd gifts) as of December 319 1957 . • • $106.10 Expenditures Checking account Printing Vol. III of Newsletter Mailing Vol. 1119 (nos. 1=3) of Newsletter

$ 1.00 49.25 5.99 56.24

Total Balance

$49.86

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Utah

Archeol~ical

Field Plans for 1958

During -1958j) .as in 1957 ~ the archeological activities -of the University of Utah will be concentrated on salvage work in the Colorado RiverBasin. After a successful program the first year , the University of Utah is prepared to expand it~ activi't ies t ,o salvage an adequate ' sample of the archeological material which would otherwise by inundated behind the large Glen Canyon dam. The Feder<=!-l Government has recognized the impending great scientific loss and has m(:\de money available t hrough the National Park Service for the salvaging of the archeological material.

The University of Utah p along with the Museum of Northern Arizona ~- has negotiated contracts with the National Park Service to do ,the actual salvage work in _ Gl~n Canyon. The portion of the Glen Canyon reservoir area for which the University of Utah has contracted inc ~u des the area west of the Colorado River 9 all of the land east of the Colorado River above the San Juan, and all of the land north of tqe San Juan. It is hoped that funds will continue to be appropriated until salvage activities are completed or inundation is complete because otherwise~ once the sites are f100ded 9 the information will be completely des~ troyed and lost. .

Two new full ti~e archeologists are being added to the University staff this spring to take :part in the River Basin Salvage program. Thomas W. Mathews, who was trained at the University of New Mexico-, and then at Harvard p will take charge of a survey party. Mathews has had many years experience in, the Southwest p expecial1y New Mexico and Arizona p where he wa's employed by ' the National Park Service.

The second a~~heo1ogist is Dee Ann Suhm who received her training at the University of Texas and the University of California at Lo~ Angeles.

Miss Suhm will become the supervisor of the laboratory which has been recently completed on the Un~versity of Utah campus. With five parties in the field this ~ summerp there will be a large flow of material to be processed and to have ready for analysis and reporting by the fi~ld archeologists when they return to Salt Lake City in the fall. ' In ad~ition to the new full time emp10yees~ the Upper Colorado proj~ct will hire many studentsÂť mostly advanced undergraduate and graduate anthropology students Âť for the summer . These students will be from the University of Utah- and from seve~al other Universities.

Field work will ~gain be supervised by Robert H. Lister of the Uni~ versity of Colorado and by Jesse D. Jennings and James H. Gunnerson of the University of Utah. Current 1958 plans are to have one party

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s,tart excavation of sites . pr.~v:lol.lls'ly located alon.g~ the Colorado River itself. Sites .just above the dam will be inundated as soon as the coffer dam is completed. Durin? the e~rly part of the summerÂť Dr. Lister will conduct an archeological field school at Boulder~ Utah~ for the University of Colorado' in" cooperation .with the Univer~ity of Utah. The field school will excavate ~t a site which promises to contribute substantially to ou'r underst~nding of the archeology of Glen Canyon.

Last summer the reconnaissance was completed for the dramages coming into the CalOrado River from the west from the dam north to. and including the Escalante River. This coming summer work will progress north from . the Escalante River to the upper end of the lake on the west side of the river and in the "V" formed by the Ban Juan and the Colorado riv¡e rs.

By the end of this summer ~ it is hoped to have this .initial survey complet~,d.

Once this is done 9 the size of the over all problem can be better assessed and plans formulated for systematic testing and excavation of key sites.

Pj..~ Near Moa!?." Utah Lloyd Pierson

An Undercut Storage

Bulldozers are not usually considered as archeological excavation tools~ particularly where detailed work is called for.

HoweverÂť bulldozers have made a .great number of archeological discoveries over the years. This was the case recently with the uncovering of a small subterranean storage pit in the Moab area o The Eastern Utah Development Company of Moab has a gravel pit about one and a half miles down the Colorado River from the Portal on the east bank. It is in a deposit of gravel overlying a sandstone cliff immediately in front of the famed ' IIMastodon" petroglyph. The gravel itself is prbbably a late tertiary or early ~uaternary deposit as described by Baker (1933 .9 ppo 56=58).

Overlying this particuaar gravel deposit is a layer of windblown sand with occasional lenses. of caliche sandwiched between the sand and ' the gravel. The storage pit was uncovered during the early summer of 1957 by a bulldozer removing the overburden of sand and caliche from the gravel Mro C. Robert Sundwall of Moab was notified by the company manager that the pit had been found and Mr. Sundwall 'gener~ ously invited me to go along with him to inspect ito ' 0

We found that the pit had been dug into one of the caliche lenses.

After its last use the coverp a thin slab of sandstone p had been re~ placed over the entry hole. There was a seventeen inch layer of

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; windblown sand. ,? over the eritrY', to the pit. The bulldozer )) in removing the sand ~ pushed the s'lab cover off the entry hole, exposing the storage pit,!), but without cutting into the pit itself. When we arrived at the site~ we found that the small amo~nt of fill had been removed by someone else.

The storage pit was of a type described as undercut or jug shaped.

It had ci' tWEmty~t:wo i.nch diameter opening and was thirty=nine inches cleep. The diameter was forty-four inches'at the maximum girth which occurred fo:urteen inches above the fairly flat floor. At floor level the pit tapered to forty=two inches in diameter. The bottom section p at one side J) gave eviden~ce of having been plastered!) probably with the same caliche that the hole had been dug into.

The workmen who uncovered the ',pit reported a handful of broad-lined black on white sherds present on the surface of the small amount of fill in the pit. Unfortunately they had disappeared but I surmised from the desc:r iption that they were Pueblo wares as do occur in the area ; possibly Mancos Black on White.

The surrounding area was carefully searched on two different occasions but no other indications of prehistoric works could be found. However p there:i.s ~ still a large section of the hill top that ha.,s not been bulldozed so the presence of other structures cannot be discounted.

Assigning the storage pit to a time or culture would be difficult on the meager evidence. It is apparent from the literature that they have not been previously reported from open sites in the Moab region .

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rJence they shoul d be looked for in the future. They do occur in ' cave sites as Hunt (l953 ~ p o 203) reports them from Mill Creek near Moab ~s "unlined bell shaped pot holes 0" In her summary o,f the Fremont culture Wormington (l955 p ppo 172~173) considers this type o·f "pot 4ole" pit'a' Fremont culture trait., as it occurs in four out of six of the Fremont subareas It also has sporadic distribution throughout the southwest at ·vari.ous t ime levels .

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*** Bibliography 1933 Geology and Oil Possibilities of the Moab Dist,r ict p Grand and San Juan Counties Utah . Geological Suryey Bull e t~ 84 l p Washington .

Hunt , Alice 1953 Archaeologi cal Survey of the La Sal Mountain Area , Utah.

Unive.,Esin of Utah Anthropological Papers '» No . 14 p Salt Lake City .

Wormington}) Ho Mo 1955 A Reappraisal of the Fremont Culture with a summary of the Archaeology of the Northern Periphery . Proceed i ngs of the ~y"er M~!~.~!!L.2f Natural Histo!:Y" No. I p-Denver 0

Plant and Animal: Materials in Archeological Interpretation James Ho Gunnerson Tl1e archeologist Os interpretations are based on many t ypes of evidence.

The most obviou s s ources of information ,? of course » are t he ,a rtifacts .". the tools ., weapons !) utensils , ornaments ., and structures ~~ found at archeological- sites. Bu t additional information concerning the age of a site }) the environment a t the time of occupation }) and various cultural activities of t he inhabitants can usually be gained from a careful study of the plant and animal remains recovered !) whether these . , have been made into artifac t s or not , To be of use to the 'a rcheol ogist .!' however }) these remains must be identified . Fortunat e l y }) since different species of animals have dist~nctive bones , t ee t h }) hide }) hair and even dung; and different species of plants have distinctive stems }) leaves !) seeds }) fruits }) biossoms 9 and pollen gtains p a zoologis t or botanist can often

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identify even very small fragments.

To ' better understand the activities of a group represented only -by archeological material.., it is necessary to have some knowledge o:f 'the environment which prevailed at the time the gr?up was livin~. The aspects of environment which are most important 'and p at the! same time 9 most variable.., 'are temperature p moisture and available plant and animal resources. Most species of plants and animals are restricted to areas with certain average precipitation and temperature 9 and animals are further restricted by available food p either plants or other animals. Thus!) once the species found at an archeological site have been identifie'p» their characteristic environment can be ascribed to the site at the . time of its occupation. In like manner» it is often possible to detect changes in environment through time at a stratified' site which has been occupied for a :.long time. Where sever~l species are represented at a site» it 'i~ possible to describe the environment more precisely by selecting factors which are required by all of the species present.

With regard to animals" the, archeologist is usually concerned with the remains of species either hunted or kept by prehistoric people.

Sometimes» however!) animal remains are included naturally in deposits which contain archeological material. For example.., microscopic snails and other ' shelled forms frequently found in such deposits are good indicators of environment.

Plants are even more closely restricted to, environmental zones than are animals.., which are free to migrate to some extent. Plant ma= terial» however.., is more perishable than bone and is thus less often available to the archeologist except where the site lsa dry c~ve or where heavy plant material!) such as wood!) is preserved by partial charring. Wood has one further way of reflecting even minor year to year chan'ges in climate!) especially rainfall. Many trees in temper~ ate climates will produce a wider growth ring in wet years than in dry years. Thus a study of tree rings will demonstrate periods of drought which were sufficiently mild or short so 'as not to cause the extinction of the trees. By plotting the pattern of wet and dry years!) it has been possible to construct a year by year record of climate extending back almqst 2000 years in the American Southwest.

By matching the tree "ring pattern of a sample of wood fro,m this area with the master chart!) it is possible to determine",when the 'tree grew and when it was cut down. Thus!) a study of the wood from species of trees which accurately reflect climatic changes can pro~ vide both environmental data and o in many instances o absolut~ dates for the archeological sites from which the specimens were collected.

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Plant material need not have been gathered or used by people to yield helpful information. An example is pOl'len ,9 which is so small and li,ght that it will be carried by the wind for many hundre?~ of yards» but is so resistant to decay that it is still identifiable after many thousands of years. Where pollen is common in a deposit ; it is possible to determine quite accurately the average temperature and the general moisture situation by the percentages of different pollens qf the various plants represented. Climatic changes tan be traced by noting the changes in the pollen count from bottom to top of such stratifie~ deposits as peat bogs and lake sediments. -When characteris't ic or index artifacts of a particular p-r ehistoriC cultu;re are found ,associated with a partic ular layer of lake sediments ~ it is possible to determine the climate at the time the artifact was used and/or lost.

Changes in pollen count have also provided a way for determining the age of a particular archeological site. Since pollen counts change with changes in climate and the sequence of these changes has been determined from stratified deposits which represent several thousands of yearsO accumulation » i t is po ssible to establish the age of artifact ,bearing layers by matching them with layers containing similar pollen percentages. This way it is possible to establish the relative age o.f near=by sites . If the stratified deposits have been dated .!) it is possible to establish abso l ute chronology with varying degrees of accuracy .

Inferences concerning cultural activities can be made from plant and animal material as well as from artifacts . A large sample permits some inferences not warranted by a small one. Even an inventory of the edible plants and animals recovered from an a;rcheological site will in itself tell the archeologist much about the diet of the people~ but a statistically significant sample will permit far more interpretations.

It is sometimes possible to determine whether plants and animals were wild or domesticated. Domesticated plants and animals are usually bred to bring out more strongly those characteristics which are con= sidered desirable. Thus p there is a tendency for individuals of a _ .... _ _ _ _____ dnmOClt-it"!lt-orl ~

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Also domesticated breeds will differ from wild forms due to selective breeding. There will usually be less range in the age of the animal at the time of death when the animal is domesticated or at least kept in captivity than when it is a wild form which is hunted . That is,9 , animals which are kept in captivity for food will usually be killed when the meat is at its best» whereas the age of animals killed in , hunting is frequently not the prim~ry consideration . Furthermore » large wild animals which are hunted at~distance from the village or

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camp are often represented skeletally in the trash deposits by bones from only the meatier partso It is sometimes possible to correlate activities with particular seasons by means of plant and animal remains Some archeological .sites show evidence of only seasonal occupatiqno Where the trash 'consistently shows the remains of plants and animals at a particular stage of annual development which is seasonal~ it can be safely postulated that the site was occupied during that seasono For example~ if a site ' contains bones of numerous animals,9 all of which were three to five months old~ and animals of this species are known to be born in the spring,9 then one can assume that the site was occupied in the summer ° 0

Some sites of hunting and gathering peoples contain a large quantity of plant material assignable to a particular season and v'ery little other materialo For example a site might show little evidence of occupation except for large quantities of corn husks and cobso If this site were very close to good agricultural land and there w~re large sites of the same cultural affiliation and age within,: a few miles but not near good farm land.\) one would assume thatthe'site with the corn husks was involved with the seasonal activity of growing coorn for the larger villageo Much evidence concerning hunting and butchering techniques of a group can be secured from a study of bones o 4s mentione4 before, bones from only the meatier parts of a large animal strongly suggest that the hunting and butchering was done at some distance from the village ° Some I9kill" sites yield only large quantities of animal bones and a few cutting and scraping toolso These obviously repre= sent places where animals were killed and butchered o Frequently large quantities of buffalo bones are found at the foot of a cliff over which the animals were apparently stampeded to kill or cripple them o Mammoth bones are often found associated with stone tools in. what were apparently once swampy areas o Animals driven into such areas would have been less mobi,l~ and hence easier to killo The spear points or arrow points which presumably killed the animals are sometimes found asso~iated with their bones at kill siteso Coo~ing techniques can also ofteN be inferred' :t:romthe evidence o.

Long;: bones' and skulls app~rentlyOdeliberately split bpen.9 'were" probably so treated to secure'the marrow and brainso Bones which' show charring at the ends but not in the middle suggest the broiling of large pieces of meat over an open fireo Scorched seeds found in the interstices of a scorched basket would strongly suggest that the seeds had been parched with glowing coals in the basket Other evidence of the parching of seeds could consist of scorched seeds,9 0

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10 J either loose in the site or contained ~n feceso What appears to be burned mush is sometimes found inside pots where it presumably had been over=cooked.

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Trade is suggested by items foreign to the environment indicated by the total plant and animal i ,n ventory In the Southwest 9 bones and feathers of brightly colored ' tropical or sem:l.-tropical birds~ most probably from Mexico 9 and seashells of species found along the California coast have been fpund at archeological sites o California shells have also been found as far east as the Mississippi Valley.

The ' spread of domesticated plants and animals can be followed arche~ ologically from the native area and poi~t of domestication to the limits of distribution.

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In many cultures~ various animals have been held sacred or have received ceremonial emphasis. This is often reflected in the archeological evijence qy the presence of animal bu~ials with mortuary offerings Sometimes parts of animals ~ especially the skulls Âť are found associated with what are unquestionably altars or other ceremonial struct~re~o Hence 'even ceremonia+ activities can sometimes be infe~ted from faunal evidence. , 0

Recent Publications Archeological Surve~ o~t he Fremont Area Âť by James H. Gunnerson.

University of Utah Anthropological Papers, Noo 280 University of Utah Press. 166 ppo: 30 figso,? 6 tableso $30000 This publication reports the results of three summer~ reconnaissance of the northern two=thirds of the eastern half of Utah Th'is are'a was dominated by the Fremont people for a few hundred years prior to about 1200 A.D. and most of the sites found in the area are of the Fremont culture. About 200 sites are reportedÂť primarily on the basis of surface materia1 9 but test excavation at a few sites contributed to the over-all picture o 0

Two Fremont Sites and Their Positipn in Southwestern Prehistory , by Dee C. Taylor . University of Utah Anthropological Papers 9 Noo Z90 University of Ut'ah Presso 171 ppo 57 figs.., 15 tableso $30500 Tl?is is a report of the excavation at two sites between Emery and S~lina9 Utah.

Work was done in 1955 by an archeological field school f1i"om the :University of Utah.

11 The Glen Canyon Survey in 1957, by Robert H. Lister. University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 30. (Glen Canyon Series No.1). University of Utah Press, 52 pp. $1.25.

This publication reports the results of the first summer's recQnnaissance by the Unive'i:'s1ty of Utah in the atea to be flooded or damaged/' by the construction ~ ;. of the Glen Canyon dam.

The area covered by the report ¡ includes the drainages entering the Colorado River from th~ 'Wsst from the damsite north to and including the drainage of th,~ jgstZa1an~e River A total of lOS. sites is reported. ,. " 0

Utah Archeolpgy Department of Anthropology University of Utah Sait Lake City 12, Utah

Non-Profit Org. .r I

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