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Show PART ONE Prehistory Hovenweep Ruin, Hovenweep National Monument, 1940s. Utah State Historical Society Collections. 15 The Prehistoric Peoples of San Juan County, Utah Winston Hurst There is good reason to believe that San Juan County has been inhabited by humans for at least 11,000 or 12,000 years. Unfortunately, the written history of the area covers only the last 130 years (perhaps 250, if vague references in Spanish and Mexican documents are included), and that represents less than 2 percent of man's sojourn here. The remaining 98 to 99 percent of the human experience in San Juan County is the vast and fascinating domain of prehistory, whose only record consists of the material remains that the prehistoric peoples left behind. This record is accessible through the young science of archaeology. Archaeology can be defined as the endeavor to understand past human behavior through the study of man's patterned material remains (dwellings, tools, garbage, etc.). Like any science, it seeks first to describe, then to explain. Both stages are absolutely dependent upon detailed and precise documentation - in notes, maps, stratigraphic drawings, photographs, etc. - of the most minute details of the locations and layouts of archaeological sites and the arrangement of artifacts, soil deposits, and features such as fireplaces and storage bins within them. It is this emphasis on documentation, reflecting the primary emphasis on knowledge and understanding, that makes archaeology very different from simple digging for artifacts. Digging solely for artifacts results in a collection of handsome antiques that can be displayed and admired, while causing irreparable disturbance to the deposi-tional structure of the sites being dug. Archaeology does the 17 San Juan County same but endeavors to preserve the site structure in the form of maps, notes, diagrams, and photos in public archives and published reports, so that the artifacts can be made more meaningful by assignment to a time, a place, and a role in an identified culture. Thus, archaeology does not apply to any v -7^ ( 'i > ) • • - ? - .1 £/«S.' \ \ K> S i / 'jr M: I : 1 6 \ . ' r -^ ' v V nil's) 77. //"' .**. l/£..- s. kx 7"~~^"i ) ) v -\ <7' / / Cowboy Cava Canyonlanda Baaf Ba»ln L i s b o n VolUy Dry Vallay Bwnt Alloa Spring Milk Ranch Point Castla Waah Woodanahoa Canyon 10 Nava|o Mountain 11 Grand Gulch Plataau 12 Grand Gulch 13 Lima Rldga 14 Comb Waah 1B Butlar Waah 10 Cottonwood Waah 17 whit. Maaa 18 Waatwatar Craak 10 Racaptura Waah 20 Alkali Rldga 21 Montaiuma Canya 22 Hovanwaap 23 Ackman-Lowry 24 Poncho Houaa Figure 1. Map of San Juan County showing geographical features and archaeological sites referred to in the text. 18 The Prehistoric Peoples and all overt interest in man's material leavings but rather is restricted in its scope to include only that which has as its primary objective the accumulation of documented information. In 1879, when the Indians apprehensively watched the Mormons blast through the Hole-in-the-Rock en route to settlement at Bluff, there was little knowledge of the area's earlier cultures. There were no books describing the peoples who had built and abandoned the thousands of ruined stone houses in the country, or the origins of the Utes, Paiutes, and Navajos who still occupied the area. Now, after a century of archaeological research, we have pushed the frontiers of our knowledge back beyond 11,000 years ago and are able to sketch in the bold outlines and many of the details of man's sojourn here prior to his first recorded history. The following discussion is intended to provide only a basic outline of San Juan County's prehistory. Those interested in pursuing the subject in greater depth and detail would find a convenient starting point in two recent Bureau of Land Management publications: Lloyd M. Pierson's Cultural Resource Summary of the East Central Portion of Moab District1 and Paul R. Nickens's Contributions to the Prehistory of Southeastern Utah.2 Together they provide a useful summary of the history and prehistory of most of San Juan County north of the San Juan River. This presentation is drawn largely from those syntheses. After decades of careful study of their languages, their ancient settlements, and their cultures, it has become clear that the ancestors of the Utes and Paiutes spread northeastward out of the southwestern Great Basin within the last 1,000 years and likely arrived in southeastern Utah sometime after A.D. 1200 or 1300. Linguistic and archaeological evidence indicates that the Navajos are also relative latecomers. Their earliest well-dated remains are localized in the Gober-nador area east of Farmington, New Mexico, dating to the early 1500s. But who preceeded the Utes/Paiutes and Navajos? Was 19 San Juan County the land abandoned and desolate, or was it occupied by another people? When the Utes and Navajos, and later the Euro-Americans, arrived, they found the land covered with the remains of thousands of crumbled stone houses. Neither the Indians nor the whites could tell who had built and lived in these houses, though all groups developed folklore stories, myths, and legends to account for them. Certain features in Navajo and Ute/Paiute stories hint that some of the houses were still inhabited when their people first arrived. By 1880, however, the ruins lay desolate, abandoned, reduced to rubble, their inhabitants forgotten. Who were these people, whom the Utahns call the "Moki" (after the Ute word "Mok-witz" for Hopi) and the archaeologists call the "Anasazi" (after the Navajo word "Anaasazi," meaning alien or enemy ancestor)? Years of study have revealed that these people were ancestors of the modern Pueblos and that they practiced a farming, village lifeway from the early centuries A.D. until they abandoned the Four Corners area abruptly in the late 1200s. But where did they come from? Did the earliest Anasazi move into the area from another place or evolve locally out of an earlier culture? Recent research traces their roots to the "Archaic" peoples, who practiced a wandering, hunting, and food-gathering life-style in the southeast from about 6000 B.C. until some of them developed into the distinctive Anasazi culture in the first centuries A.D. But the Archaic peoples were not the first in the area either. They were preceded by a series of hunting and gathering cultures during and immediately following the dying gasps of the last glacial period of the Ice Age. There are also hints of even earlier people in the American West - perhaps many thousands of years earlier - but the evidence for them is weak, spotty, and controversial. The early big game hunters (Figure 2) have come to be known as "Paleo-Indians," and virtually everything known about them has been learned somewhere outside of San Juan County (mostly in deeply buried campsites and big-game kill 20 The Prehistoric Peoples Figure 2. Typical big game species hunted by the Paleo-Indians with human figures for scale. Lower to upper: woolly mammoth, associated with Clovis subculture; giant bison, associated with Folsom subculture; and modern bison, associated with Plains subcultures. sites in the High Plains east of the Rockies and in the basin and range country of southern Arizona). Like all cultures, that of the Paleo-Indians changed slowly through time. After careful examination of numerous sites, it has become possible to identify a series of Paleo-Indian cultures, each recognizable by its distinctive artifact styles. The remains of each of these cultures tend to be associated with the remains of certain species of game animals, many of them now extinct. By the tenth millennium B.C. the Paleo-Indians were specializing in the hunting of the woolly mammoth, a hairy form of elephant which stood as high as twelve feet at the shoulder. Their primary hunting implement was a spear, tipped with a distinctive type of stone point whose style is called "Clovis." A thousand years later the mammoth had passed into extinction, and the Paleo-Indians were focusing their efforts on a giant, now extinct, form of bison and using a very 21 San Juan County handsome style of spear point known as "Folsom." During the eighth and seventh millennia B.C. a series of characteristic spear point styles succeeded one another in popularity, together forming part of what is known as the "Piano complex." Piano complex points, very handsomely flaked and of styles unlike those of later groups, are often found in association with modern large-game species, including the bison. Although no definite Paleo-Indian sites have been identified in San Juan County, there have been occasional isolated finds of the distinctive Paleo-Indian spear points. Fortunately, several of these finds have been documented and recorded, Hovenweep Ruin, 1979- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, Photogeo-graphics, Bountiful, Utah, © 1983. 22 The Prehistoric Peoples thus making the knowledge of Paleo-Indian occupation here something other than folklore or rumor. Clovis points have been found in the Montezuma Canyon drainage, in Lisbon Valley, and just across the Arizona line on the Navajo Reservation. Folsom points have been found in the Montezuma Canyon drainage, on Lime Ridge near Mexican Hat, at Sweet Alice Spring west of North Elk Ridge, and in the Moab area. Piano complex points have been found in the Moab area, the Hovenweep area, and Comb Wash. Additional Paleo-Indian artifacts have been reported from areas surrounding San Juan County in all directions, and remains of the big game animals hunted by the Paleo-Indian have been reported from San Juan and adjacent counties. A notable example of the latter is a mammoth bone found in Butler Wash, now on display in the Blanding library. It is thus very likely that Paleo-Indian groups were present in what is now San Juan County, and it is probably simply a matter of time before a Paleo-Indian camp or kill site is recognized and, let us hope, properly excavated. It is difficult to recognize a Paleo-Indian site once the distinctive spear points have been removed. Since the points tend to be relatively large and attractive, it is likely that few have escaped the keen eyes of arrowhead hunters. Perhaps a number of sites now visible only as nondescript chipping debris and generalized stone tools are Paleo-Indian sites whose diagnostic points have been removed to a place of honor in someone's arrowhead display or cigar box. By 6000 B.C. the moist, cool conditions typical of the late Pleistocene, or Ice Age, had given way to a drier, hotter climate in the Southwest, and many of the large mammal species that had roamed America had passed into extinction. As the Ice Age and its large animals vanished, so also did the Paleo-Indian cultures. By 5000 B.C. the Archaic way of life (Figure 3), with a more generalized tool kit and subsistence base, had entirely replaced the Paleo-Indian cultures. Although the relationship between the two cultural complexes is not clear, there is mounting evidence that an Archaic lifestyle was established in the Great Basin and Far West before 23 San Juan County 7000 B.C. and that it displaced the Paleo-Indian life-style in the Four Corners states as the Paleo-Indians followed the surviving large herds of big game eastward onto the Great Plains.3 For over five millennia, the southwestern cultures evolved slowly within the generalized Archaic lifeway. Much like the Utah Paiutes and Goshutes of the 1800s, the Archaic peoples subsisted on wild foods, migrating from place to place through the course of the year as necessary to take advantage of the shifting availability of different wild foods. Grinding stones ("mano": handstone, and "metate": mil-lingstone) became a basic part of the survival equipment in Archaic times as the people made increasing use of grasses and other small seed foods. Excellent basketry, cordage, and Figure 3- Artist's conception of an archaic temporary camp. 24 The Prehistoric Peoples nets of hair and vegetable fiber assumed an important role. Point styles continued to evolve slowly through time, and it is possible to assign them and their associated sites to gross time periods.4 Little is known of Archaic houses, possibly because they were insubstantial brush huts much like Paiute wickiups and similar shelters used by desert, foraging people in other parts of the world. Numerous Archaic sites have been recorded and mapped in San Juan County, and typical Archaic points are commonly represented in private "arrowhead" collections. Very few sites with Archaic components have been excavated in the county, however. The most significant ones that have been excavated are Sand Dune and Dust Devil Caves near Navajo Mountain, excavated by the Museum of Northern Arizona as part of the Glen Canyon Dam project.5 The University of Utah has excavated another important Archaic site, Cowboy Cave, in Wayne County a few miles outside San Juan County northwest of the confluence of the Green and Colorado rivers.6 In late Archaic times, during the last centuries B.C., the people began to supplement their wild food gathering with maize horticulture. By A.D. 200 horticulture had assumed a significant role in the economy, and the late Archaic peoples of San Juan County were settling into the Anasazi lifeway. The Anasazi inhabited the Four Corners country for the next fifteen centuries, leaving a heavy accumulation of house remains and debris. Because their culture changed continually (and not always gradually) during that time, it is possible to slice up their 1,500-year occupation into periods, each with its characteristic complex of settlement and artifact styles. Since 1927 the most widely accepted nomenclature for the Anasazi sequence has been the "Pecos Classification," which is generally applicable to the whole Anasazi Southwest (northern Arizona, southern Utah, southeastern Colorado, and northwestern New Mexico). Although originally intended to represent a series of developmental stages, rather than periods, the Pecos Classification has come to be used as this 25 San Juan County period sequence: Basketmaker I: pre-A.D. 1 (an obsolete synonym for Archaic) Basketmaker II: approx. A.D. 1 to 450 Basketmaker III: approx. A.D. 450 to 750 Pueblo I: approx. A.D. 750 to 900 Pueblo II: approx. A.D. 900 to 1100 Pueblo III: approx. A.D. 1100 to 1300 Pueblo IV: approx. A.D. 1300 to 1600 Pueblo V: approx. A.D. 1600 to present Pueblo IV and V are absent in the Four Corners country, which was abandoned by the Anasazi at the end of the Pueblo III period. The other periods, as represented in San Juan County, will be described below, following a brief overview of Anasazi geography. As the Anasazi settled into their village farming life-style, there emerged a series of recognizable subcultures, each with its own territory. These are outlined in the accompanying map (Figure 4). Note that San Juan County lies largely within the area occupied by the Mesa Verde Anasazi (a misnomer - the cultural heartland seems to be the mesa-canyon country between the foot of the Mesa Verde and Comb Wash), with the southern (south of the San Juan River) and extreme western part of the county joining northern Arizona to form the Kayenta Anasazi culture area. West of the Colorado River, the Kayenta culture grades gradually and imperceptibly into the Virgin Anasazi subculture of southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona. To the north of the Anasazi peoples - north of the Colorado and Escalante rivers - Utah was the home of a heterogeneous group of small-village dwellers known collectively as the Fremont. Since neither the Virgin Anasazi nor the Fremont played a significant role in the prehistory of San Juan County, they will not be discussed here. The following discussion pertains primarily to the Mesa Verde and secondarily to the Kayenta Anasazi. Although they continued to move around in pursuit of 26 The Prehistoric Peoples seasonally available foods, the earliest Anasazi concentrated increasing amounts of effort on the growing of crops and the storage of surpluses. They made exquisite baskets and sandals, for which reason they have come to be known as "Basket- Figure 4. Map of the Four Corners region during mid to late Anasazi times (AD. 500-1300) showing approximate distribution of cultures and subcultures mentioned in the text. 27 San Juan County makers." They stored their goods (and often their dead) in circular cists - small pits often lined with upright stone slabs and roofed over with a platform of poles, twigs, grass, slabs of rock, and mud. Basketmaker II houses were apparently somewhat more sturdy than those of the Archaic, rather like a Paiute winter wickiup or a Navajo hogan. Very few have been excavated. At a very important site near Durango, Colorado, however, a Basketmaker II village was excavated during the 1940s.7 Houses there were found to consist of a dome of cribbed large sticks or small logs positioned over a shallow dish-shaped floor with a central heating pit and diverse storage pits. The heating pit was not a fireplace but rather a repository for hot rocks heated in a fire outside the house. Other shallow pithouses that may date to early Basket-maker times have been identified around the head of Grand Gulch, in Castle Wash to the west of Grand Gulch, and in the Hovenweep area.8 Sites of this time period have been excavated in Glen Canyon, near Navajo Mountain, in the Kayenta area in Arizona, and on Castle Wash.9 Numerous major sites of this period in dry caves were ransacked by collectors in Grand Gulch and Butler Wash during the 1890s, but none was adequately reported. By A.D. 500 the early Anasazi peoples had settled into the well-developed farming village cultural stage that we know as Basketmaker III (Figure 5). Although they probably practiced some seasonal moving and continued to make considerable use of wild resources, they had become primarily farmers living in small villages. Their houses were well-constructed pithouses, consisting of a hogan-like superstructure built over a shallow pit, often with a small second room or antechamber on the south or southeast side. Settlements of this time period are scattered widely over the canyons and mesas of San Juan County, in small hamlets of one to three houses, and occasionally in villages of a dozen or more. By about A.D. 700 evidence of the development of politico-religious mechanisms of village organization and integration appears in the form of large, communal pitrooms. 28 The Prehistoric Peoples Figure 5. Artist's conception of a typical Basketmaker III pithouse hamlet in the Alkali Ridge area about AD. 700, looking northward toward the Abajo Mountains and Bears Ears. One such structure, with a diameter of forty feet, has recently been excavated next to the old highway in Recapture Creek by archaeologists from Brigham Young University.10 Three other important changes took place before A.D. 750: the old atlatl, or spear thrower that had been used to propel darts (small spears) from time immemorial, was replaced by the bow and arrow; the bean was added to corn and squash to form a major supplement to the diet; and the people began to make pottery. By A.D. 600 the Anasazi were producing quantities of pottery of two wares: gray utility ware and black-on-white painted ware. Late Basketmaker settlements have been excavated and described from Milk Ranch Point on Elk Ridge, the Highway U-95 right-of-way west of Comb Wash, the Highway U-191 right-of-way west of Bluff, the Energy Fuels excavations on White Mesa, in the Recapture Reservoir location northeast of Blanding, and from Alkali Ridge and Montezuma Canyon east of Blanding.11 Others have been identified and documented 29 San Juan County in surveys for government inventories and in advance of chaining projects, mineral exploration activities, and construction projects. Much of the information on this period in San Juan County derives from conservation-motivated projects mandated by law in advance of public developments. By A.D. 750 these farming, pottery-making people in their stable villages were on the threshold of the life-style that we think of as being typically Puebloan. From this time on we call them Pueblos. The period from about A.D. 750 to 900 is called Pueblo I by archaeologists. During this period the Anasazi settled even more comfortably into a village farming life-style. Although the population continued to be scattered widely in small hamlets over the landscape, some very large villages developed. One such village, excavated by Dr. Brew of Harvard University in the 1930s, is located on Alkali Ridge and has over 160 known rooms (Figure 6). Still larger villages of this period are presently being excavated near Dolores, Colorado, in advance of construction of the McPhee Dam and reservoir. Perhaps the most significant developments in Pueblo I times were: 1) the replacement of pithouse habitations with large living rooms on the surface; 2) the development of a sophisticated ventilator-deflector system for ventilating pit-rooms; 3) the growth of the San Juan redware pottery complex; and 4) some major shifts in settlement distribution. Whereas the pithouses had been the dwelling places in Basketmaker times and surface rooms consisted only of relatively small storage cists, some of the surface rooms began to be used for habitation during part or all of the year. The pithouses were excavated deeper, and where the Basket-maker houses had had a secondary small room known as an antechamber, there was later only a chimney-like ventilator shaft. As the heat from the central fireplace rose through a smokehole in the pithouse roof, it drew fresh air through diis ventilator shaft into the room where a large deflector slab caused the draft to disperse throughout the room. This system became a standard feature of pit structures in this and 30 The Prehistoric Peoples 31 San Juan County all later periods of Anasazi culture. In late Basketmaker times a new pottery technology had appeared in San Juan County, producing very fine, thin-walled, orange-fired pottery with black or red designs, of fine workmanship. During Pueblo I times this pottery was in great demand throughout the Anasazi country and was being exported for hundreds of miles. There is good reason to believe that most, if not all, of this pottery was manufactured in central San Juan County, perhaps between (south) Cottonwood Wash and Montezuma Canyon.12 The previously mentioned large site on Alkali Ridge appears to have been a manufacturing center for Abajo red-on-orange, a distinctive type of pottery with red designs on an orange background, during early Pueblo I times. The black-on-white decorated pottery became more refined in finish and design during this period, and the culinary grayware jars were frequently embellished by leaving several coils unobliterated just below the mouth. Some interesting shifts in the distribution of Anasazi settlements occurred during Pueblo I times. Large areas appear to have been abandoned, while others experienced dense populations. In San Juan County the Grand Gulch Plateau had been inhabited by a significant population of Basketmaker peoples but seems to have been abandoned during Pueblo I.13 At the same time, in the brushy points and foothills of Elk Ridge between 7,000 and 8,000 feet elevation, there is a remarkable density of small Pueblo I sites.14 It is not yet known whether these small sites were seasonal settlements of specialized function or more permanent base settlements, though they were likely the former. Nor is it known what resources the people were exploiting. It is interesting to note that the sites are concentrated in the transition zone, which is a major ecotone between the Upper Sonoran pinyon-juniper- sage ecological zone and the tall forests of the Canadian zone. Such environments are characterized by a diversity of wild plants and animals, and it may be that the density of Pueblo I sites there reflects a resurgent emphasis on the gathering of wild species. 32 The Prehistoric Peoples Sr 7 r^% Figure 7. Artist's conception of a late Pueblo II or early Pueblo III unit-type pueblo about AD. 1100 on the Grand Gulch Plateau near Comb Wash, looking northeast toward the Abajo Mountains. The structure at the far right is a circular tower. Pueblo I sites have been located and documented over much of southern San Juan County, with the exception of the area west of Comb Wash as noted previously and the Dry Valley country north of the Blue Mountains.15 Excavations of Pueblo I sites in the county have been conducted on Milk Ranch Point, at the Energy Fuels mill site and city sewage lagoon locations on White Mesa south of Blanding, at Alkali Ridge east of Blanding, and in Montezuma Canyon southeast of Blanding.16 Other important excavations have been conducted in Pueblo I sites near the Utah-Colorado border in the Ackman-Lowry area, at Mesa Verde National Park, in the Dolores area, and in the La Plata Valley southeast of Mesa Verde.17 The two-hundred-year period subsequent to A.D. 900 is known as Pueblo II. The tendency toward aggregation 33 San Juan County evidenced in Pueblo I sites reversed itself in this period, as the people dispersed themselves widely over the land in thousands of small stone houses. With the exception of some of the more arid areas north of the Abajo Mountains and west of Grand Gulch, Pueblo II is represented in almost every canyon and mesa in the county below 8,000 feet. During Pueblo II, stone masonry replaced the pole and mud architecture of Pueblo I, the surface rooms became year-round habitations, and the pithouses (now completely subterranean) assumed the largely ceremonial role of the pueblo kiva. It is during (his period that the house style known as the unit pueblo (Figure 7) and the ubiquitous small cliff granaries became popular. In the unit pueblo the main house is a block of rectangular masonry living and storage rooms, located immediately north or northwest of an underground kiva, immediately southeast of which is a trash and ash dump, or midden. The fallen masonry buildings comprise the Moki mounds that dot the countryside, and the kivas have slumped and filled until they are visible as mere shallow depressions. The trash middens (sacred to the Pueblo Indians and used by them for burial of the dead) have been almost completely ransacked by artifact hunters, many so long ago that they now look deceptively undisturbed. The redware pottery industry continued to flourish, as a fine, red-slipped ware with black designs was traded throughout much of the Colorado Plateau. Sometime during the middle of the Pueblo II period, however, the redware tradition ended in the country north of the San Juan River and blossomed in the area south of the river. Virtually all the red or orange pottery found in San Juan County sites postdating A.D. 1000 was made south of the San Juan River in the Kayenta Anasazi country. The reasons for this shift are unknown, and the problem is a fascinating one. Production and refinement of the black-on-white and gray (now decorated by indented corrugation) wares continued uninterrupted in both areas, but the redware tradition migrated across what appears to have been an ethnic boundary. This, together with the almost 34 The Prehistoric Peoples complete absence of black-on-white pottery in the aforementioned Pueblo I site on Alkali Ridge, suggests that the San Juan County redwares were made by a few specialists who moved en masse in the A.D. 1000s. The styles of stone artifacts also changed somewhat during Pueblo II. The beautiful barbed and tanged "Christmas-tree" style point that had been popular since late Basket-maker III times was replaced by a more utilitarian, often cursorily flaked, style with side notches and square base. By the end of the period, the old trough-shaped metate that had been popular for half a millennium was relaced by a flat slab form with no raised sides. The change in grinding technology appears to have accompanied a change from a hard, shattering, flint corn to a soft, non-shattering flour corn. This permitted use of smaller metates, thus increased efficiency of floor space.18 Pueblo II sites are ubiquitous in San Juan County, comprising the majority of the small-house ruins known colloquially as "Moki mounds.' Sites of this period have been excavated in Glen Canyon, in the Navajo Mountain area, on Grand Gulch Plateau, in Butler Wash southwest of Blanding, at the Edge of the Cedars pueblo in Blanding, at the White Mesa Energy Fuels mill south of Blanding, in Recapture Wash northeast of Blanding, on Alkali Ridge east of Blanding, in Montezuma Canyon southeast of Blanding, and in Beef Basin, northwest of the Abajo Mountains.19 During the 1100s and 1200s the Anasazi population began once again to aggregate into large villages, as it had done during Pueblo I times. This period is known as Pueblo III, and it lasted until the final abandonment of the Four Corners country by the Anasazi during the late 1200s. Numerous small unit pueblos continued to be occupied during this period, but there was a tendency for them to become more massive and to incorporate the kivas into the room block. A number of very large villages developed, of which the "Ten-acre Ruin" on Alkali Ridge and the big mound in Cottonwood Wash are representative examples. It was also during this 35 San Juan County period that most of the cliff villages such as the famous examples at Mesa Verde National Park and Navajo National Monument, were built. Pueblo III sites have been excavated on Alkali Ridge east of Blanding, in Westwater Creek southwest of Blanding, in Montezuma Canyon southwest of Blanding, at Poncho House on Chinle Wash southwest of Bluff, and in Poncho House. USHS Collections 36 The Prehistoric Peoples Woodenshoe Canyon west of Blanding.20 During Pueblo III times the Mesa Verde Anasazi developed the thick-walled, highly polished, incredibly beautiful pottery known as Mesa Verde Black-on-White. They continued to make corrugated gray pottery, different only in detail (notably rim shape) from that produced earlier. Red-wares, often with two or three-color designs ("polychromes"), continued to be imported north of the river from the Kayenta country. Arrowheads continued largely as before but were often very small and more finely made. Starting sometime after A.D. 1250 the Anasazi packed up and moved out of San Juan County, often walking away from their settlements as though intending to return in a few minutes - or so it looks. Why did they leave behind their beautiful cooking pots and baskets? Perhaps because they had no cars, pickup trucks, or horses, and made nearly everything they owned. When forced to migrate a long distance, it was more efficient to leave the bulky items and replace them after they got to their destination. We know that they moved south. Classic late Mesa Verde style settlements can still be recognized in New Mexico and Arizona, in high, defensible locations in areas where the local Anasazi sites look quite different.21 By A.D. 1400 almost all the Anasazi from throughout the Southwest had aggregated into large pueblos scattered through the drainages of the Little Colorado and Rio Grande rivers in Arizona and New Mexico. Their descendants are still there in the few surviving pueblos, still very much Anasazi. Consider the magnitude of the event: a large population of people whose ancestors had been in the area for thousands of years, whose sacred places were here, who were intimate with and very much a part of this land, suddenly abandoned it forever. What tremendous trauma must have accompanied the move. Why did they leave? It is impossible to find a single cause that can explain it, but there appear to be several that contributed. First, the climate during the Pueblo III period was somewhat unstable, at least in parts of the 37 San Juan County Water pocket and prehistoric ruins in Bullet Canyon, 1979- Photograph by G. B. Peterson, Photogeographics. © 1983- Southwest, with erratic rainfall patterns, arroyo cutting, and periods of drought. This weather problem climaxed with a thirty-year drought starting about 1270. Perhaps the people had expanded in population and pressed the limits of the land's capacity to support them so that they were unable to survive the climatic upheavals of the thirteenth century. Could they have been driven out by nomadic tribes, such as Utes or Navajos? No direct evidence exists of either group, or any other like them, being in the area that early. There is mounting evidence, however, that the Numic-speak-ing peoples, of whom the Utes and Paiutes are part, had spread northwestward out of southwestern Nevada and were in contact with the Pueblo-like peoples of western Utah by A.D. 1200. It is certainly possible that they were in San Juan County shortly after that, especially since Ute and Paiute sites are very difficult to distinguish from Anasazi campsites, and we may not be recognizing them. Navajos were in northwestern New Mexico by 1500, but we do not know where they were before that. Perhaps the answer lies in a combination of the bad-climate and the arriving-nomads theories. 38 The Prehistoric Peoples It is interesting to imagine foraging groups looking with covetous eyes upon the material wealth and bounteous storehouses of the pueblo villages as they came in to trade skins or wild products for produce or woven cloth. They may have been inclined to help themselves to the storehouses to the extent that they became a nuisance. Demographic pressures from nomadic hunting-foraging groups may well have combined with the thirteenth-century climatic disturbances to create an environment not amenable to the continuation of the Anasazi cultural system. Although we do not yet know the answers to these questions, there is good reason to believe that we will some day if archaeologists are able to excavate enough of the right sites before the relic collectors do. Virtually nothing is known of San Juan County archaeology between A.D. 1300 and 1700. There are hints of light Hopi usage of the western part of the county, but their presence appears to have been intermittent and limited to short visits. As stated previously, evidence of the Ute/Paiute peoples is lacking, perhaps due to the ephemeral and hard-to-recog-nize character of their sites. Navajos were definitely inhabiting the county as far north as Elk Ridge by the late 1700s and possibly as early as 1620.22 Later Navajo sites are known from the Canyonlands and Lisbon Valley country dating to the late 1800s or early 1900s. In conclusion, a century of archaeological study permits us to adumbrate the basic outlines of a succession of San Juan County's inhabitants since the end of the Ice Age. The Anasazi, or Moki, culture whose ruins dominate our perception of San Juan prehistory, was a relatively late development, appearing nearly 10,000 years after the arrival of the first known inhabitants. By the time the Anasazi departed about A.D. 1300, however, their ancestors had been in the area for thousands of years. The Navajos and Ute/Paiutes are relative newcomers to the Four Corners, with a tenure measured only in centuries. In a very real sense, the western Mesa Verde and northwestern Kayenta Anasazi are the only true natives of San 39 San Juan County Juan County, their culture having evolved out of ancestral Archaic groups in this area over hundreds of generations. Clearly, then, to love the San Juan country is to love the Anasazi, whose remains are as essential a part of the country as are the canyons, sage flats, and juniper woodlands. Although we are able now to broadly outline the lost ninety-eight percent of San Juan County's cultural history, we have only just begun. Disappointingly little is known about the details of the cultures and lifeways of our predecessors, and the science of archaeology is only just beginning to mature into a discipline capable of pursuing these problems. For every question that has been answered, there are a thousand significant questions that remain unanswered. How dense was the population at different periods of prehistory? How was the population distributed over the landscape at different periods? Were all the Anasazi house sites occupied year round, or were some used seasonally? If some were used seasonally, which ones were the primary, home-base winter villages? How were the people organized socially, politically, and economically? Is it possible to recognize communities among the thousands of Anasazi house sites? How specialized were the Anasazi artisans (potters, weavers, builders, hide workers, flint knappers, etc.), and what systems and mechanisms operated by which local artisans interacted in local, regional, or even continental trade networks? What details can be learned of Anasazi farming methods and their relationship to the natural environment? What changes in social organization, economic systems, settlement location distribution, and technology took place from period to period? Why did those changes take place? An endless series of such questions could be asked about the Anasazi, and we know much more about them than we do of their Archaic and Paleo-Indian predecessors. The more one begins to ask these kinds of questions, the more interesting they become, and every question inspires several more. After a century of sometimes arrogant, sometimes hesitant, always experimental, sometimes sadly inept, and sometimes 40 The Prehistoric Peoples Prehistoric Anasazi basket from Westwater Ruin, 1977. USHS Col lections. very good archaeology, the outline of that ninety-eight per cent of our prehistory that was once forgotten is again discernible. But all of that is merely preliminary to the important work. Now comes the challenge, the real intellectual excitement, as we move on to the questions whose answers will breathe life and color into our understanding of San Juan County's prehistory. Answers to a great many of these questions were once preserved in prehistoric remains. Unfortunately, so much of that patterning has been disturbed, blurred, or completely obliterated by relic collectors, chaining projects, and inept archaeology, that answers to some questions may be permanently lost. Our ability to answer others will be determined by the attitude of San Juan County's citizens during the next two decades. NOTES 'Lloyd M. Pierson, Cultural Resource Summary of the East Central Portion of 41 San Juan County Moab District. Cultural Resource Series No. 10, Bureau of Land Management, Utah State Office, Salt Lake City, 1980. 2Paul R. Nickens, A Summary of the Prehistory of Southeastern Utah, Contributions to the Prehistory of Southeastern Utah, Cultural Resource Series No. 13, BLM, Utah, 1982. 3Cynthia Irwin-Williams, "Post-Pleistocene Archeology, 7,000-2,000 B.C.," in Handbook of North American Indians, vol. 9, Southwest, ed. Alfonso Ortiz, (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian Institution, 1979), pp. 31-42. ^Cynthia Irwin-Williams, The Oshara Tradition: Origins of Anasazi Culture, East-ern New Mexico University Contributions in Anthropology (1), Portales, 1973. 5Alexandar J. Lindsay et at, Survey and Excavations North and East of Navajo Mountain, Utah, 1959-1962, Museum of Northern Arizona Bulletin No. 45, Flagstaff, 1969. 6Jesse D. Jennings, Cowboy Cave, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 104, Salt Lake City, 1980. 7EarI H. Morris and Robert F. Burgh, Basketmaker II Sites Near Durango, Colorado, The Carnegie Institution of Washington Publication 604, Washington, D.C, 1954. 8William D. Lipe, "Anasazi Communities on the Red Rock Plateau, Southeastern Utah," in Reconstructing Prehistoric Pueblo Societies, ed. W. A. Longacre (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1970), pp. 84-139; and Joseph C Winter, Hovenweep 1974, Archaeological Report No. 1, San Jose State University, San Jose, Calif., 1975. 9Floyd W. Sharrock et at, Excavations, Glen Canyon Area, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 73, Salt Lake City, 1962, 1964; Lindsay et al., Survey and Excavations North and East of Navajo Mountain, Utah, 1959-1962; S. J. Guernsey and A. V. Kidder, Basketmaker Caves of Northeastern Arizona, Peabody Museum Papers 8 (2), Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1921; and Lipe, "Anasazi Communities on the Red Rock Plateau." l0Marian Jacklin, Recapture Wash, Report on BYU Excavation of 42Sa8895, in preparation. "Winston Hurst, BYU Excavations at Milk Ranch Point, FS158, Bruce Louthan, assembler, MS on file with USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Region, Ogden, Utah, 1974; Gardiner F. Dalley, Highway U-95: Comb Wash to Grand Flat, Special Report, MS on file, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1973; Curtis J. Wilson, assembler and editor, Highway U-95 Archaeology: Comb Wash to Grand Flat, vol. II, Special Report, MS on file, Department of Anthropology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1974; Robert B. Neilly, Basketmaker Settlement and Subsistence along the San Juan River, Utah: The U.S. 163 Archaeological Project, MS on file, Utah Division of State History, Salt Lake City, 1982; William E. Davis, 1981 Excavations on White Mesa, San Juan County, Utah, MS submitted to Energy Fuels Nuclear, Inc., by Piano Archaeological Consultants and Abajo Archaeology, 1983; Asa S. Nielsen, in preparation; Report on BYU Excavations at Site on Recapture Dam and Reservoir; John Otis Brew, The Archaeology of Alkali Ridge, Southeastern Utah, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology No. 12, Cambridge, Mass., 1946; and Diana Christensen, "Excavations at Cave Canyon, 1978, Montezuma Canyon, Utah" (MA. thesis, Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, Brigham Young University, 1980). l2William A. Lucius and David A. Breternitz, "The Current Status of Redwares on the Mesa Verde Region," in Collected Papers in Honor of Erik Kellerman Reed, ed. by A. H. Schroeder, Papers of the Archaeological Society of New Mexico No. 6, 1981, pp. 99-111. '^William D. Lipe and R. G. Matson, "Human Settlement and Resources in the 42 The Prehistoric Peoples Cedar Mesa Area, Southeastern Utah," in The Distribution of Prehistoric Population Aggregates, ed. George J. Gumerman, Prescott College Anthropological Reports No. 1, Prescott, Ariz., 1971, pp. 126-51. 14Evan I. DeBIoois, The Elk Ridge Archaeological Project: A Test of Random Sampling in Archaeological Surveying, Archaeological Report No. 2, USDA Forest Service, Intermountain Region, Ogden, Utah, 1975. 1'Richard A. Thompson, A Stratified Random Sample of the Cultural Resources in the Canyonlands Section of the Moab District, Cultural Resources Series No. 1, BLM, Utah, 1979. 16Davis, 1981 Excavations on White Mesa, San Juan County, Utah; Richard Talbot, Allison Bingham, and Asa S. Nielsen, Archaeological Excavations at 42Sa9937 (Aeromatic Village) in San Juan County, Utah, MS on file, Cultural Resource Management Services, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1982; John Otis Brew, The Archaeology of Alkali Ridge, Southeastern Utah, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology No. 12, Cambridge, Mass., 1946; Gregory R. Patterson, "A Preliminary Study of an Anasazi Settlement (42Sa971) Prior to A.D. 900 in Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Southeastern Utah" (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1975); and Blaine A. Miller, "A Study of a Prudden Unit Site (42Sa971-N) in Monteuzma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1976). l7Paul S. Martin, Archaeological Work in the Ackmen-Lowry Area, Southwestern Colorado, 1937, Field Museum of Natural History, Anthropological Series, vol. 23, no. 2, Chicago, 1939; Alden C. Hayes and James A. Lancaster, Badger House Community, Mesa Verde National Park, Publications in Archaeology, 7E, Wetherill Mesa Studies, U.S., Department of Interior, National Park Service, Washington, D.C, 1975; William Lipe and Cory Breternitz, Approaches to Analyzing Variability among Dolores Area Structures, A.D. 600-950, Contract Abstracts, l(2):21-28; and Earl H. Morris, Archaeological Studies in the LaPlata District, Southwestern Colorado and Northwestern New Mexico, The Carnegie Institution of Washington, Publication No. 19, Washington, D.C. 1939. It should be noted that Brew, Martin, and Morris all report good Pueblo I sites as "modified Basketmaker" or "Basketmaker III" sites. 1 "Phillip L. Shelley, personal communication. l9Jesse D. Jennings, Glen Canyon: A Summary, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 81, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1966; Lindsay et at, Survey and Excavations North and East of Navajo Mountain, 1959-1962; Sharrock et al., Excavations, Glen Canyon Area; Dalley, Highway U-95: Comb Wash to Grand Flat; Wilson, Highway U-95 Archaeology: Comb Wash to Grand Flat, vol. II; Paul R. Nickens, Woodrat Knoll: A Multicomponent Site in Butler Wash, Southeastern Utah, MS on file, Department of Anthropology, University of Denver, Colorado, 1977; Dee F. Green, First Season Excavations of Edge of the Cedars Pueblo, Blanding, Utah, MS on file, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Weber State College, Ogden, Utah, 1970; Davis, 1981 Excavations on White Mesa, San Juan County, Utah; Nielsen, Report on BYU Excavations at Site on Recapture Dam and Reservoir; Brew, The Archaeology of Alkali Ridge, Southeastern Utah; Craig Harmon, Cave Canyon Village: The Early Pueblo Components, Publications in Archaeology, Department of Anthropology and Archaeology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1979; Donald E. Miller, "A Synthesis of Excavations at Site 42Sa863, Three Kiva Pueblo, Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah" (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, 1974); Miller, "A Study of a Prudden Unit Site (42Sa971-N) in Monteuzma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah"; and Jack R. Rudy, Archaeological Excavations in Beef Basin, Utah, University of Utah Anthropological Papers No. 20, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, 1955. 43 San Juan County 2l)Alfred V. Kidder, Explorations in Southeastern Utah in 1908, American Journal of Archaeology, 2d ser., vol. 1 , Norwood, Mass., 1910, pp. 337-59; Brew, The Archaeology of Alkali Ridge, Southeastern Utah; La Mar W. Lindsay, Excavations of Westwater Ruin 42Sal4, San Juan County, Utah: First Field Season, MS on file, Utah Navajo Development Council, Blanding, Utah, 1978, and Big Westwater Ruin, Excavation of Two Anasazi Sites in Southern Utah, 1979-1980, Cultural Resource Series No. 9, BLM, Utah, 1981; Miller, "A Synthesis of Excavations at Site 42Sa863, Three Kiva Pueblo, Montezuma Canyon, San Juan County, Utah"; Samuel J Guernsey, Explorations in Northeastern Arizona, Papers of the Peabody Museum of American Archaeology' and Ethnology (vol. 12, no. 1), Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1931; and J. Terry Walker, "A Description of ML1147, an Undisturbed Archaeological Site, Manti-LaSal National Forest, Utah" (M.A. thesis, Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, 1977). 21E. L. Davis, "Anasazi Mobility and Mesa Verde Migrations" (Ph.D. diss., Department of Anthropology, University of California, Berkeley, 1964). 22J. Lee Correll, "Navajo Frontiers in Utah and Troublous Times in Monument Valley," Utah Historical Quarterly 39(1971): 145-61; and Clyde Benally, Dineji Nahee' Naahane'; A Utah Navajo History (Monticello: San Juan School District, 1982). 44 |
