CHAPTER
2
THE EARLY PEOPLES OF THE LAND J o h n M. McCullough of the University of Utah telephoned Joel C. lanetski at Brigham Young University in August 1991 inviting lanetski to meet near the abandoned town of Mosida on the southwest shore of Utah Lake, where human remains had been discovered by fishermen and had been verified by the medical examiner's office in Salt Lake City as being prehistoric. McCullough and lanetski used professional archaeological procedures to expose the remaining skeletal materials at the ancient burial site. Photographs were taken during the excavation to help record the "organized destruction" of the site. Back at the lab, each piece taken from the site was cleaned, and accession n u m b e r s were assigned to each piece to ensure that the museum had detailed records. 1 The researchers determined that the burial site dated from between 3,649 and 3,352 B.C. The site included the remains of a man lying "on his back on the n o r t h side of the pit with his feet to the southwest and legs flexed . . . [and a] dog [lying] at the south edge of the burial pit with its head toward the east."2 Several bone and antler 25
