UC Merced Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology

Title Madsen: Exploring the Fremont

Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/6rd07751

Journal Journal of California and Great Basin Anthropology, 11(2)

ISSN 0191-3557

Author Aikens, C. Melvin

Publication Date 1989-07-01

Peer reviewed

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1905-1920s; ConsoUdation and Recreation, reference under Broadbent (1951a) is to U.C. 1920s-Present; and Summary. Archaeological Survey Manuscript 125. Notable findmgs of the project uiclude However, Manuscript 125 actuaUy reports additional data on the Esselen-Salinan boun­ Broadbent's work at CA-MNT-107. (Broad­ dary and some of the results of Jones' ongoing bent never conducted excavations at CA- research into the projectUe point chronology MNT-101.) An errata sheet would be a major of the Central Coast. These portions of the addition to this volume. report are accompanied by numerous maps WhUe this report detaUs the first three and good artifact Ulustrations. Other field seasons, several additional seasons, some discussions of prehistoric topics cover Central including subsurface investigations, have Coast chronological sequences, explanatory subsequently been conducted. Based on the models, settlement pattern changes, and arti­ current volume, we should be able to look facts and temporal placement of reserve sites. forward to interesting and enUghtening results The background investigations include exami­ from subsequent reports as weU. nation of some of Harrington's notes, histori­ cal research, as weU as interviews with descen­ dants of pioneer famUies of the area, resulting in a detaUed compUation of the exploration and settlement of the southern Monterey County coast within five of the chapters outlined above. Exploring the Fremont. David B. Madsen. This document is also notable in another Salt Lake City: Utah Museum of Natural respect: the results obtained from field History, 1989, xiv -i- 70 pp., 70 figs., schools often go unpubUshed. This may be $12.00, (paper). particularly true of field schools that do not conduct subsurface excavations. This report Reviewed by: contains a wealth of information from a Uttle C. MELVIN AIKENS Dept. of Anthropology, Univ. of Oregon, Eugene, known area of CaUfornia that must be OR 97403. regarded as a notable accompUshment for a field school dealing with the surface archaeol­ This beautifuUy produced Uttle book is the ogy of the area. exhibit catalog for a Utah Museum of Natural WhUe this volume contains a large History exhibit on the Fremont culture. The amount of valuable information, there are museum is the repository for the most ex­ unfortunately also a number of errors, tensive coUections anywhere of Fremont ar­ inconsistencies, omissions, and editorial lapses chaeological materials, and many interesting that detract from the quaUty of the work. and informative specimens are iUustrated in Uncritical reUance on this report as a the book. David B. Madsen, who by his own reference wiU only serve to perpetuate these testimony has been mystified by the Fremont errors. For example, in the table that reports culture through more than twenty years of significant excavations on the central coast, study, provides an account of it here that is Broadbent is reported as having conducted aimed at a lay audience. excavations at CA-MNT-101 m 1953; the The book begins with a synopsis that citation for this excavation is given as evokes the variation and diversity of Fremont Broadbent (1951a). The bibUographic culture and the landscape in which it grew. 276 JOURNAL OF CALIFORNIA AND GREAT BASIN ANTHROPOLOGY

The Fremont range included most of Utah Nawthis ViUage was a large farming com­ north of the Colorado and Virgin rivers, and munity on the southern Wasatch Plateau of adjacent areas of Nevada, Idaho, and central Utah, situated at an elevation of 6,600 Colorado. In the characterization by Madsen, feet. Substantial masonry buUdings and pit- house structures were both in use. Corn, Some people were primiu-Uy settled farmers, growing corn, beans and squash along streams beans, and squash were grown, and pinyon at the base of mountain ranges; some were nuts, chenopod seeds, cattaUs, and Indian rice nomads, coUecting wUd plants and anim£ds to grass were gathered. Deer, mountain sheep, support themselves; stiU others would shift between these lifestyles. rabbits, squirrels, and other smaU animals were hunted. Fremont culture arose out of the Desert BuU Creek, on the northern flank of the Archaic, with the gradual adoption of horticul­ Henry Mountains in east-central Utah, has ture, ceramics, and substantial semi-subterra­ given evidence of over a hundred smaU sites, nean dweUings. The earUest corn known in including dwelling places, toolstone quarries, the Fremont area comes from Elsinore, m storage areas, temporary camps, rockshelters, central Utah, where radiocarbon dating places and observation points. These were occupied it between 2,340 and 1,940 years ago. Pottery by people who bordered Anasazi puebloan and pithouses appeared soon afterward. territory to the south, and who used structures Madsen describes and iUustrates four classes and pottery of types traceable to both of artifacts which by their distinctive typology Fremont and Anasazi traditions. set off the Fremont from neighboring Anasazi The Orbit Inn site and others like it in far cultures that were largely contemporaneous, northern Utah, where the Bear River enters and from the Numic immigrants who replaced the Great Salt Lake, were oriented to rich salt the Fremont folk. These artifacts include marsh ecosystems that provided marsh plants, one-rod-and-bundle coUed basketry, hide waterfowl, fish, sheUfish, and even bison. moccasins of unique style, thin-waUed Their occupants dug storage pits, buUt pole- grayware pottery, and anthropomorphic framed structures with sUghtly excavated figures wearing hair bobs and necklaces, that floors, and made distinctive slate knives and are rendered in both rock art and clay stone pestles. figurines. Hogup Cave, in an arid peninsular moun­ A chapter on archaeology sketches for the tain range west of the Great Salt Lake, was lay reader the bases of archaeological inter­ occupied by people who manifestly represent­ pretation, at the same time giving a brief ed the more mobUe end of the range of history of efforts by archaeologists to define Fremont subsistence-settlement patterns. the Fremont culture begUining with the pio­ WhUe at Hogup they hunted and gathered on neering 1931 account of Noel Morse. Madsen the mountain flanks and along the moist mar­ notes that the question of regional variation gins of the salt flat, and left behind in the dry in Fremont culture has preoccupied many ar­ cave fragments of basketry, worn-out mocca­ chaeologists, including himself. But in the sins, pieces of netting, and many other items current presentation he avoids pigeon-holing m addition to their characteristic grayware by simply stressing the diversity of Fremont pottery. culture in general, and presenting sketches of FinaUy, Topaz Slough, in the Sevier Desert sites that iUustrate different aspects of the of west-central Utah, gives evidence of many Fremont Ufeway. smaU sites in the open that suggest temporary REVIEWS 277 camps occupied by people who came to coUect terest to researchers working in the Mojave the seeds of desert marsh plants and grasses, Desert. and catch the rabbits, smaU rodents, insects, Martin Lord's paper on the Black Butte and lizards of the locaUty. Pinto site is based on his analysis of a Professional archaeologists need to write coUection housed in the San Bernardino more books of this kind, to convey their re­ County Museum, and observations made by search to the pubUc that supports it. Madsen Lord and others. This primarUy is a descrip­ has appropriately mentioned but not unduly tive report with sections on geological setting belabored the esoteric concerns of archaeolo­ and environment, the site, the artifacts, a gists, whUe keeping the account descriptive general characterization of the assemblage, and focused on what is most interesting about and a brief interpretation of its chronological prehistoric people, the ways in which they placement. This paper makes avaUable Uved in their time and place. The illustrations important data from a Pinto Period site. are plentiful, weU-chosen, and beautifuUy Lord notes the existence of questions of executed. The overaU design of the book is chronological interpretation and problems of elegant. All involved in the Utah Museum of cultural processes associated with Pinto Natural History project that produced this material, but he does not address these work have done a good thing. questions. To do so requires more than a traditional descriptive report with and this clearly was not the intent of the author. AdeUa Schroth's paper on the use of mesquite in the southwestern Great Basin is a literature survey of the uses of mesquite in the Mojave and Colorado deserts (mesquite Papers on the Archaeology of the Mojave is not found in the Great Basin Desert). Desert. Mark Q. Sutton, ed. Salinas: Coyote Schroth presents a thorough coverage of this Press >lrc/i/ve.y of Califomia Prehistory No. topic including the pertinent information on 10, 1987, 152 pp., $12.45 (paper). the distribution and biology of mesquite, Reviewed by: ethnographic uses, and archaeological CLAUDE N. WARREN evidence for its use. Two minor errors should Dept. ofAnthropology, Univ. of Nevada, Las Vegas, not detract from this paper: Ash Meadows is NV 89154. to the east of Death VaUey, not west of it as Mark Q. Sutton has brought together a stated on p. 57; and the mesquite from Ash series of six papers addressing four subjects: Meadows dated to 4,450 ±360 B.P. was not (1) A Pmto occupation at Black Butte; (2) the found in an archaeological context as she prehistoric and ethnohistoric use of mesquite states. This mesquite sample was recovered m the southwest Great Basin; (3) aUgnments from the sand dune-peat bog uiterface, m a of cairns at two sites; and (4) the archaeology, stratum of burned material that could not be faunal remains, and pottery from the Denning positively identified as havuig a cultural origm. Springs Rockshelter. The papers of this col­ This is an important paper for anyone inter­ lection are both short and limited in their ested m historical or prehistoric use of contribution to the prehistory of CaUfornia. mesquite and how it may have been integrat­ However, these papers do mclude important ed into the subsistence strategies of past data and/or ideas that are of value and in­ societies of these desert regions.