Utah Statewide Archaeological Society Newsletter, Volume 9, Number 1, March 1963

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UTAH STATE HISTORICAL SOCIET'f 603 EAST SOUTH TEMPLE SAUl rAKE CITY. UTAH

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Mar. 196,

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UTAH ARCHAEOLOGY is puplished quarterly by the UTAH STATEWIDE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOCIETY. Surbscrition is included in membel'ship. Membership in the society is available from the secretary-treasurer at $.2.00 per year. Correspondence concerning the activiities of the society should be, directed to the president. All l1UlllllScripts and news items ,should be sent to the editor: Lloyd J:!i e l'tHlIl Anile" Na.lM.ul i\fOliCilllcIlIJo;=Moa~h.

UTAH SrA gIIE ARCHAEOLOGICAL SOC IE '1Y

PRESlDEHb John L. Cross, 860 South 10th East, orem, Utah VICE PRESIt&NTa bancis Hassel 906 Rancho Blvd .. Odgen, Utah SECRETARY*1C!SURERt Veone Galo, 1432 Surnriew Dr., Ogden, Utah ADVISORa Dr.; . ~sse D. Jennings, Univ. of utah, Salt Lake Cit! 12, utah EDI'IDRI W. D. ~ ~ck, 310 South 3rd East, Preston, Idaho • EDITOR'S NOmS

I ~e Utah State\side Archaeology Society is having its annual meeting Saturday April 20thi All ofticers and one delegate from each chapter should be there a,' 'tOO A. ,~. Ever:rone in the Society is to be at the 10,00 A. M. meetinlt Papers will be given that wID be of interest to everyone. We will ,eet at the Dept. of Anthropology at the University ot utah. There will ~t some interesting displays and some good reports.

We espeoially imri 1i some of our new members.

The annual meeM.ng ot the Society for Amerioan Archaeology is to be held at the Unive~y of Golorado at ;eoulder, Colo. May 2, 3, 4. It any of you are intsres~ you can vlrite Robert Lister at the University of Colo. We wiU have .ore informs tion a bout this at the meeting. \

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Some ot you map be interested in a Bl annual publication of the Idaho State College Uuaett. called TEBIWA. This has excellant work definately related to our Nortl~rn Utah area, and is avaUable at $1.50 Je r year. our issue this "Jme contains one article by Robert F. ¡H eizer, Univ. of Cali.f. who bas .~d a lot in .Utah. Also, one by Melvin Aikens otbis

expedition into 80uJb;lrn Utah. I hope you find them as interesting as I did.

We are 8 trivil2l to improve each iasue eo any helpful comment would be appreciated. Be 8Ire 1;0 keep sending 70ur articles to me.

We are looking ~arward to eeeing all of you April 20th. friends.

Bring your

By the way, tJOIie ot ,au who are interested, the addree8 of the Idaho state College ~ Pocotello, Idaho.

UNUSUAL Ft1ROGLYPH FIND IN UTAH

'Ihough many reports have been made on the archaeological. finds ot the West Canyon area of utah County, Utah, and though many collectors and amateurs sa- well as professional archaeologists have roamed the area over the years, it was not untU March of 1962 that sTr3' type of glyph was found, or at least, repQrted Hunter Joe ot the Utah COt11'1ty Chapter of the Society discovered, in March, a large water V1ClI'n. boulde:r bearing a petroglyph in the canyon and requested that John L. Cross, Society president accompany him to the site and look at the find. The two accompanied by John L. Cross Jr. did visit the site on Hov. 26, 1962 and during a survey of the area, John L. Cross h. discovered another boulder bearing the unusual petroglyph shown on the bottom ot this page.

Figure 1 represents the boulder with sketch of glyph. The boulder is water worn and the shaded areas represent Chipped or broken surfaces. '!be boulder is 40 in. long at its longest point and is 24 in. vade at the widest point.

Figure 2 represents a scale drawing ot the glyph

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The boulder lies with its long axis running East and TIest, the Eastern end being on the up-hUl grade of a slope. It was difficult for the group to ascertain which view of the glyph represented the bot tom and which the top.

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GREAT BASIN PE'1ROGLYPHS AND PREHUS'lORIC GAME TRAILS

Reprinted from Scj~nce, April 3, 1959, Vol. 129, No~ 3353, pages 90!~-905 ..

Abstraots Aborigina.\ 'P o ~r.~ :~"l..~'}1fh.~ (1Il:lJ).~ h....wl'>'lt:bgtl) in \"/estem and central.

Nevada have, up tc now, remaino~ e puzzl( t~ archeologists as regaads their function. llnd loc.:s.tlone Rec,.)r..t fi~ld lr.'!1(-l ~t1gaticn strongly suggests that these are co~~e~ted with hunting magic, presumably aimed at success in the chase, and that they are located alotg routes of deer migration.

In the summer of 1958, assisted by Albert B. Elsasser and Eugene R. Prince, we carried out archeological reco~naissance 1n northern and central Nevada (1). Among the types of sites studied were those at which the primary evidence of activity of man takes the form of geometric and natupallstj.c designs pecked into boulder and r.liff. surfaces. 'nIese designs, " Called petroglyphs (2), occur in greatest quantity in North America west of the Rockies. (3).

Despite the numerous sites mown, dnd studies made of west~rn Nollth ,American petroglypbs (4,5) I there 1s no (lvidence thus far presented which satistactorUyaccounts tor the occurrenM of petroglyphs at certain 'locatiops. Ca1n 1 s conclusion (4, Ptl 5.~) ~t-t "all such aboriginal. can1.ngL _ '_ were simply a medimn for exp!"essillJ S 'J me emction ever. a spiritual. or '008crete event" is typical in itf' '\1'agueness and poin1;s up the failure of students of the subject thus fal' to arrive at specific functional conclUSions.

Our recent field observations sho17 that in western and central Nevada nearly all petroglyphs ooeur along deer m1gration trails, at spots where the animals could be shot with bow and an-ow. 'Ibe petroglyph designs are therefore to be unders-';..ood as evid0nce 9( the practioe of compulsive magio by hunters, aimed at insuring s~~cess in the chase (6)~ From several deer hunters and state and fedc}ral wilctiife service field men who have stu.died 1.,c81 deer migl'a tiomJ, Vie 2ear-nati ill detail cf e. mznbe::o of r~utes whi~h deer follow" In "i:.he 13:i;e fall, v.hon snow starts tc :fall, the ciser follow these routes out of the high mountai~9 hto lower country, w,lere they winter. The deer retu.'n by these 1"O'.:;;:~es to higher elevations as the snow melts.

At certain po1n+,s" especialJ.y at the mouths or along the courses of washes 01¡ canyonI'! tl:ll'ough which the deer tra.vel, are locaticns whioh are ideal for huntirg from ambush., Thus, whel'e a Vlash ha6 cut through a :rock reef and the canyon na:rrC'78 "bo :.:'or:a a, ehute or gate, or 'where a ~a.nytJn is narrOV'!' wi til a ~ulder-a trewn b<:>uc!h !'9i¡ehod above Juhe defile, or in a saddle paes, the m~ving p.n:lmal~ (partislJlal'ly if dJ:'i ven trom the ~ea:l.') -;ouJ.d be forced to run past ccnce.4cG archers. PJ:efer.reo hun '~ers' pos Itions appear to have been at those spots where the animals could be shot from above

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at very close range. It 115 a t such locations that in western a nd central Nevada, and a long migration series of vaUey noors and low mountain ranges has (and petroglypha) scattered along it at appropriate

one finds petroglyphs trail which crosses a such hunting sites points.

When deer, in moving downward to snow-free elevations, remained 1n the same mountain range, such sites are either oorrelated with some other circumstance or are absent entirely. Thus. in arid valleys petroglyphs may be found in the close vicinity of a water tank or spring. Here the purpose was appar ently to aid in the taking of such animals (perhaps antelope) &s came to the spot to drink.

When deer herds are abundant, liS in 1teaternmost Nevada where the animals move east to lower country from the high eastern ranges of the Sierra Nevada mountains, petroglyph s1 tes are most abundant; this quantitative factor may be construed as an indication of the amount of game. the density of human population, and the intensity of hunting. other petroglyph sites occur along such major streams as the W'alJter, Careon, and Truckee rivers, which rise east ot the orest of the Sierra Nevadaa and flow out to empty into the saline lakes of the western GreatBasin. The narrow flood plains ot these streams served as migration trails, and petroglyphs are found at certain points where the deer had no alternative but to pasa through a bottleneck. otten at such ai tes blinds made by piling up a circle of rocks to a height of 2 or 3 feet are found.

The authorsbip of petroglyphs is a difficult matter to settle. our evidenoe shows that petroglyphs ~ere made over a long period of t1me, since at most si teB designs show not only stylistio variety but also great variation in weathering or acownulation of desert varnish, some elements appearing "Iery fresh and others being nearly indistinguishable from the deep chocolate-hued, pat1nated surface of the basaltic rock. Evidence from aroheology and linguistics agrees in showing that the Northern Paiute of western Nevada are relatively recent occupants of the area. The Northern Paiute, and, in tact, all of the recent tribes of the Great Basin, deny that they or their ancestors made petroglyphs. We have. accordingly, some basis for believing that petroglypbs can be attributed to the groups which oocupied the area before the Nozothern Paiute appeared on the scene some time wi thin the last thousand years, though at the same time cultural loss in is te prehistoric times among the recent Shoshonean tribes oannot be ruled O\lt.

As to whether the hunter himself or the shaman (med1eine man) made the petroglyphs, Vie inoline to the probabll1 ty that the des igns were insoribed by the shaman. Petroglyphs as hun t -.alg magic are Ul'lknovm to the recent Basin tribes, but shamanist,ie r t +";,3.) c r-c,l1lflciie1 with tho cee!"!! antelope,. or moun.. tain f.:heep hlmt is a "\l:i d e.; pl"~r>.a RG.,;:',n r'i"C:.I.(' t::"~e o If i l;O::'vidual hunters made petTOg~. yphs, we !3h ul i~ e;=pect ':0 £, in~ Iihem randomly ciistr jbut.ed and oecU!':&:'ing .q,'~ spots wI e~(:: a bl,l !.te:." WilS 'Lr~;lB to canse game t o €",ppear, but this situation clea:o:-ly cJ09S nut oquaxe Vli 'iib. tbe obsel" t ed oocurrenc.e of petr.oglypha On the who~e it uppea:os pI'o'Jable that the ambu.sh hunJu for deer or antelope during the seasonal migrations of these animals was in earlier ""

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times in the western Great Baain a special type of hunt carried out at traditional spots by a group which was aided b.Y the local shaman.

The tact of great numerical concentration ot petroglyph symbols at particular sites, taken together with the clear indication that these designs represent an accumulation, presumably by annual increments, sugge8~s that these hunting spots were traditional.

In terms of the abong ...

1.'lal way or life in the Great Basin, these evidences appear to point to a form of territorial ownership and use like that described by Omer stewart for the No~them Paiute where groups returned year after year to the same spot to hunt or -gather sane' variety of tOQd.. It may be proposed, further, that once a hunting site at which petro~ uere made came into use, continued S\1ccet5s at the spot where petrog~ were a v1siltle and- pennanent feature t70pld tend to invest the site with magical power and eff1cacy which would further enhance its attractiveness as .a place for successful hunting.

SItes with few petroglyph designs may, ther tore, be spots where the hlUlt was rarely Sl)ccessful, and sites Tlith an abundance of designs may mark important and repeatedly used spots.¡ our impression is that the lilcHJms took care npt to overhunt the deer, as evidenced by the distance separating ambush si te~. Overhunting along the trail might cause the animals to Beek new routes c\nd perhaps thus become available to another bunting group.

Occupational debris does not occur at most petroglyph sites, partly for the obvious reason that such spots were unfavorable for settlement.

Where petrod,yphs are found in :bnmedia¡t e association with living refuse the latter appears either to postdate the petroglyphs or to be a winter village. si w which wou:).d have been occupied only during the periott between the fall deer migration to lower elevations and the return migration in the spring to higb coun try.

M!iny detaUs of this whole rna tter rerna in to be worked out. Among these are the determination of how widespread in western North America was the practice Qt petrog17phic hunting magic connected with the taking of migratory deer; whether there aloe known major deer traUs which do not have petroglyph s1 '\as along their courses; v/hether there are extended lines of 8i tes which presumably mark former m1gra tion trails but which are not recorded as used in the historic period by game; what; types of migratory animals were hunted in this manner (7); and the dating of petroglyph si tes

(8).

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For determining the route ot migratory game animals in prehistoric times it is aleo possible that ancient ~ could be identified from air photographs, as was suggested by Crawford (9).. This method could, howeverâ&#x20AC;˘ . be applied only in areas where plant cover was more abundant and varied than 1 t is 1n the arid Great Basin region_ Robert F er Department of Anthropology, University or California, Berkeley Martin A. Baumhort Universi ty of California, Davis

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References and Notes l~

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S. 9.

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Support for the research reported here was provided by the National Science Foundation (G3916). The cooperation of the Nevada State Museum, through its director, J. yr. Calhoun, is gratefully acknowledgedÂŤ Pectograph, in current usage, refers to similar designQ painted on rock surtaces.

R. M. Tatum, Arn. Antiquity 12, No.2 (1946).

H. T. Cain, Petroglypha ot Central Washington (Univ. ot r.,r ashington Press, Seattle, 1950).

L. S.Cressman, Univ. Oregon Publs. in Anthropol. No.2 (1937); R. Pâ&#x20AC;˘ . Irwin, state Hist. Soc. Idaho, Biennial Rept. 12 (1929-30); J. H.Steward, Univ. Calif. Pub1s. Am. Archaeo1. and Ethno1. 24, No.2 (1929).

We eannot, at this point, even guess whether (among others) the hope of the petroglyph author was to increase his chances for a successful arrow aim, or to compel the deer to make their appearance.

B. Me. Hazeltine, manager of the Sheldon Antelope Refuge in Northeastern Nevada, has supplied detaUed information on antelope migrations.

The traUs in this area correlate in every particular with the occurrence or petroglyphs a. given in this paper for deer. At the extensive si te near Grimen, southeas t ot Fallon, Nev., probabUi ty favors antelope as the animal hunted rather than deer.

A paper describing the evidence now in hand on these subjects is in preparation. We have data on petrogl1P~ fro~ about 150 sites in Nevada, 0. O. S. Crawford, Archaeology in the Field (Pra.eger, New York, 1953), pp. ~t 214, plate 5a...o.

Dee81li~r

1958

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PRELDfiNARY REPORT ON EXCAVATtONS roT SOU~m"ES'lERN UTAH, 1962

'uy 8(' Melv'.n A1h:ens

Two ,:n d (,ne··haJ I.lon·~h , 01 archeologir.al excavs"tion and limited sur'Ver- '. /e':."'8 r::r.rl"'led oU'jj \&1 sJuth7l'et;tern Utah during the 1962 field season by a University of utah (;'t'e"l1 under the direction of Don D. Fowler. The

cr ew v;ae one of 'iihree f j elcled by the Univerai ty this season; the others, working in the Glen Canyon anc Flaning Gorge areas, were supported by the Upper Colora do River ~sin Archeological Salvage Project. The work here reported was made posB~ble by a grant from the National Science Foundation. }~mbers of the exeava tion crerl were: Don D. Fowler, Universl ty ot Utah; C. Melvin AikcflIJ, University of Chicago; T. J. Barrette, Universiv

of Minnesota; James '£t'acD.ey, Skyline High sc.hool, Salt Lake Ci t.n Robert.

Jacka, University or V:1chi ta; David Jennings, St. l·1 ark's School for Boys, Sal t take C1 tYj Alan Iosse, University of Chicago; Leslie Pennington, University of Texas; ~ .'a lter Shumsky, Fairmont College .

The area studied ~raddles two physiographic provinces, the Great Basin (St. George) and the Co~orado Plateau (Zion National. Park and Johnson Canyon).

The most oonspicuous prehistoric remains in this region are those ot the Kayenta-related A~azi, but there also exist traces of earlier and later peoples. Late talute material t'l'as tound in the disturbed surface levels ot several Pueb10an sites.

The first month ()1 the season was spent in the neighborhood ot st.

George, where one large ma sonry pueblo was sampled rather thoroughly, and some data recove~<J from two other sites that had been extensively dug by sma taur.. Systema~1c survey wa s also carried out along several miles of the Santa Clara Riter; a fa sites shown to us by Ell1s and \'!ayne Carter and Clare Pa.xmfJJ\, ot the st. George chapter ot the utah State Archeological SOCiety; vere visited and recorded. The aid and interest that the members ot t~ St. Qeorge chapter, and particularly these three men, showed 1n our worJc, 1s gratefully acknowledged. In mid- July the crew moved east to Zion Pa~ where tyro small eaves 17ere tested and a complex ot 14 ciroular structures ~6xcavated during a three..week period. The final month of the season was. spentin Johnson Canyon 15-20 mUes northeast ot Kanab, vihere limited SUr"f'ey was carried out and t170 sites were sampled.

It is anticipated ~twith the data obtained from the seasonts work we will be able to addre~ ourselves to such questions as (1) what in fact does the term Virgin branch denote? - an adequate defi nition i .s still lacking, though the concept is over 20 years oldj and, (2) of what kind

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L1ImS KNOLL CAVES (42Vis202 and 203)

'l\'ro anall.caves located close together in the base of a sandstone formation known as Lambs Knoll, which lies about i mile west of the Zion Park boundary~ just .north of the Virgin River, were tested and found to ccmtain only 12.- 18 i-n. of cultural deposit. One of the caves, .42Ws202, revealed only Pueb-;1.oan pottery, but the other contained Pueblo pottery only in the bottom leTel and a m1xt11N of Pueblo and Paiute pottery only in the bottom leV'el and a mixture of Pueble and Paiute pottery in the disturbed upper level. 'lbe disturbed retpains of .small masonry structures, probably storage cista, were found in both sites.

SANDBOX SITE (42K9J.06i) Exeava tion of a small area of a very large si te in Johnson Canyon revealed arohitecture somevlhat similar to that of 'ftu"ee MUe Ruin in the santa Clara Valley. Here was found a curving row of rectangular masonry rooms, which did not, however, appear to be part of a fully circular or even semicircular complex. One of the rooms had a stone slab floor such as was common at Three Mile Ruin, but the rest had only clay-paved floors.

They further differed from the rooms at IIhree We Ruin in that they had been constructed by digging a shallow pit and lining the edges of it with vertical slab "baseboal"ds" before constt"uoting the upper masonry walls.

'Ibis technique was absent at 'lhree Uile flu1n. None of the rooms contained fireplaces.

'Dle pottery assooiated with the s:tte dates it to late Pueblo II-early Pueblo III times.

BONANZA

t:mm (42lCal076)

AlBo in Johnson Canyon we encountered a si te where a oircular subterranean masonry structure could lle seen eroding out of the cutbank of the deep arroyo of Johnson Creek. \York here consisted primarily of cutting steps down the face of the cutbank ~d cleaning a profile tbat showed 22 ft. of oulture-bearing deposit. Superposition of clay house-floors and pits indicate a sequence of seven occupations within the bottom 5 ft. of the Site, and seven more within the top 10 ft.. 'The intervening 7 ft. ot of till contains charcoal and art1facts~ but no superposed architectural remains or other definite indications of sequential oocupations were discOTered here. The sequenoe contained in the site has not yet been worked out in deta1l, but a few Paiute shards were found in the disturbed upper levels of the site in association with ~eblo wares, and no pottery at all appeared on the bottom...most levels. Further work should be done at this site.

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CONCLUSIONS On the basis of pottery differences in sites, at least two periods of oocupation C&l be inferred for the area studied. Some sites contained no othel' pottf~ry than plain gray and black-on-gray; others yielded the :. '- cqry)lg~:.~q a~d pa:i.nted wares customarily assigned to late Pueblo II-early f ' :" ": .I:\tebJ.,o ' :r;IT ~in(e8 : ..'11:e gray waj,"es were associated "lith slab-lined storage . . ~ Q~~t~ ..a ~~9 ".j·:tth blowouts where nr) architectu.r e remained; the corrugated :. ~· ..!.: a~~::R~~r.l~ed '\tJ:-fr.eB ,:,)!>oc~::-%ecl in association with large contiguous curving or rountf masonry dwellingft-storage complexes. In only one case, .at Goosenecks 'Overlook, was a definite habi tatlo~ :8:tr,w.ture found associated ' with slab..a.ined c1:sts and a non-corrugated, non~redrian"' pptte~ . as~enlage.

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The Reusch site and Bonanza 'Dune, both deep. 8i tes, ap~rently ,span the entire Basketmaker I II-Pueblo III range, Bonanza Dune even containing evidence of a nonceramic occupation at the bottom, and a Paiute occupation at the top, of 1 ts 22 f t . of deposit.

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