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Provisioning Camp Floyd: An Analysis of Faunal Remains
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From 1858 to 1862, the United States Army operated Camp Floyd, a military outpost in Utah’s Cedar Valley that, at its height, housed thousands of soldiers. Even though Camp Floyd has long since been abandoned, clues about life there can be coaxed from archaeological remains. Dale L. Berge, a professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University, and his students conducted archaeological field schools at Camp Floyd from 1982 to 1993. Most of the artifacts they recovered came from several refuse pits, and the largest collections of artifacts consist of ceramics, glass, and animal bones.1 Unfortunately, very few collections from Berge’s excavations have been analyzed. The majority of the field work was done by Berge’s students and volunteers, and information about the project comes from student field notes, maps, and the physical artifact collection.2 The following article represents the first in-depth analysis conducted on the animal remains excavated from Camp Floyd (CF87–1).3 Bones are more than artifacts; they are clues about the diet and health of nineteenth-century soldiers, the draft animals serving as the army’s food supply, and the butchering and meat processing methods employed at Camp Floyd.4 They say an army marches on its stomach and in the case of Camp Floyd, this is historically and archaeologically true. By uncovering details about the percentage and distribution of valuable meat cuts, the quality of butchering, and the general age of animal harvest we can add to what is already known about Camp Floyd. United States soldiers created Camp Floyd, some forty-six miles south of Salt Lake City, when they were sent there by President James Buchanan in 1857 in an attempt to expand and guard communication routes across North America and to establish federal law in Utah Territory.5 Camp Floyd was only operational for a short time, from 1858 to 1862, but it gave an early jumpstart to Utah’s economy. The outpost was heavily populated and well provisioned, despite being located in a relatively isolated area within a new, unconstructed territory.6
