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Show Fig. 9 Jar with handle. Fremont "Snake Valley Corrugated" vessel. Recovered near Marysvale, Utah. Alluvial clay, quartz, feldspar, biotite mica temper. Spiral coiling, scraped interior, corrugated surface, A.D. 900-1200 (?). L: 29-5 cm. Diam.: 24.2 cm. Collection of Utah Museum of Natural History. Fig. 10 Figurine. Fremont. Recovered at "Old Woman" site (42Sv7). Originally unfired clay, no temper. Female figure. A.D. 1075-1175 (?).L: 10.9 cm. W: 6.0 cm. Collection of Utah Museum of Natural History. Fremont figures) small applied strips and blobs representing ear and neck pendants, aprons, eyes, and breasts, were probably ritual or fertility forms of some sort.5 The forms are strong and seem curiously modern. We glean from them information about the costume and ornamentation of the people who made them, and they remind us of a possibly intricate religious life of which we know practically nothing. Indeed archaeologists can tell us something about the cyclical round of life-about the hunting and gathering techniques, dwelling places, cooking methods, clothing, and even physical stature of the people who lived in the Great Basin before the white man arrived-but we can only guess about a lost realm of magic and ceremony which may have once existed in the familiar desert. It is perhaps dangerous to draw analogies about prehistoric life from ethnographic data, but the European explorers and trappers who entered Utah in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries encountered people probably still practicing variations of the triumphantly successful and ancient Archaic lifestyle. One of these Shoshonean-speaking groups named themselves the Nuwuvi.6 Today they are called the Southern Paiutes. In the nineteenth century these people had a hunting and gathering lifeway, moving in small groups through their own territories in a creative annual cycle and visiting informally owned springs, aeries, and pinyon trees at specific times of each year. They gathered wild plants, utilizing a bewildering range of seeds, berries, and roots for medicine and food. Pinyon nuts were a staple of existence, so all objects connected with their harvesting and preparation must have been of great importance to the Nuwuvi. Graceful, fan-shaped twined baskets were once used to clean the nutritious nuts before they were roasted and to hold the rich pinyon flour after it was ground (Figs. 11 and 12).7 Nineteenth-century Paiute people displayed great ingenuity in the construction of fiber objects, including cordage, nets, water jugs, cooking and eating baskets, burden baskets, cradles, hats, seed-beaters, and a range of other utensils. Construction materials were gathered at precise times throughout the year and were perhaps woven together often during the cold winter days when people gathered around their fires. Most things were made without much decoration. Fringes, beadwork, quillwork, and even vegetal dyes rarely obscured the natural hues and fine stitching of the basketry or the utilitarian lines of the clothing. People moved through the lean, white winter days into spring and from the hot, flickering summer into autumn, weaving a timeless, seasonal pattern that is perhaps very ancient in its rhythms. The appearance of face paint, feathers, and a few beads marked festive ceremonial or social events, but these bright interludes were probably infrequent (Fig. 15). 9 |