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Show FREMONT ORIGINS: A CRITIQUE MICHAEL S. BERRY Bureau of Indian Affairs ABSTRACT No one working in the Fremont area has come to grips with the theoretical issues involved in the analysis and explanation of cultural origins. As a brief historical presentation of the various Fremont origins hypotheses demonstrates, only two kinds ol explanations have ever been proffered; 1) the l-remont culture developed in situ from a Desert Archaic base, 2) the Fremont culture developed in some "external" area and found its way into Utah through migration. 1 will argue that both accounts are explanation-avoidance strategies and do not constitute explanations in any useful sense of the term. 1 will also argue that this state of affairs should come as no surprise since anthropological theory in general is inadequaie to the task of explaining cultural origins; The theoretical shortcomings evidenced in the Fremont literature arc the shortcomings of evolutionary anthropology in microcosm. INTRODUCTION According to Gunnerson (1969), the theoretical issues that underlie the search for Fremont origins are non-problematical and clear-cut. There are only two means of explaining the origin of a particular cultural entity and, this theoretic assertion accepted, the problem of determining which mechanism was responsible is an empirical one. As Gunnerson put it: There are two logical possibilities with regard to the origin of the Fremont culture. It could have developed m situ from a Desert culture base with the addition of Anasazi traits, a theory championed by Rudy (1953), Jennings and Norbeck "(1955), and Wormington (1955).' The second possibility . . . [is] that the Fremont culture represents a movement of people with a Puebloan culture into the area . . . (Gunnerson 1969:170). As will be seen, these are the only two kinds of argument that have been offered in explanation of Fremont origins, i-e., endogenous development stimulated by external sources of diffused culture traits or migration into the Fremont region from some external staging area. The Problem is that neither of these options constitutes an explanation of Fremont origins - at least not in any useful sense of the term. Rather, both approaches circumscribe an "area of interest" and then shift the locus of events requiring explanation to some external area. In the case of the in situ hypothesis, Archaic hunter-gatherers are thought to have occupied most of the state of Utah continuously from 8000 B.C. until A.D.500 or 700 (depending on interpretation) at which time they were transformed into the Fremont culture through the diffusion of Anasazi traits, e.g., pottery, pithouses, maize, etc. In all variations on this theme, evolutionary developments in the external Anasazi area are taken for granted and the concept of diffusion is employed as a linking mechanism to account for the principle, non-indigenous traits that distinguish the Fremont culture from the ancestral western Archaic. There are several things wrong with this scheme. Particular problems of empirical verification will be discussed later. For now it will suffice to note that any formulation of cultural origins founded on the concept of diffusion can be no more than a description of events since diffusion is decidedly not an explanatory mechanism. As Marvin Harris argues: . . . diffusion is admittedly incapable of accounting for the origin of a given trait, except by "passing the buck" back through an infinite regression: A -> B -^ C -> . . . ? As soon as we admit, as the archeology of the New World now compels, that independent invention has occurred on massive scale, diffusion is by definition not only superfluous, but the very incarnation of antiscience (Harris 1968a:378). While Harris' brand of evolutionism is equally ill-suited 17 to the task of explanation (Friedman 1971; Berry n.d), his anti-diflusionist arguments parallel Julian Steward's (1955a) and seem quite sound. In the case at hand, the attempt to account for, say, pottery and maize in the Fremont area by passing the buck to the Anasazi, thence to the Mogollon, thence to some unidentified source in Mesoamerica, reveals nothing more than the fact thai these two items occurred earlier in the south than they did in the north. But this much was known from the outset on empirical grounds and nothing is added to our understanding of the process by restating the facts in diffusionist terminology. This is especially true when we consider that the facts which typically lead to the inference that diffusion has occurred may actually be consequences of qualitatively different kinds of processes. Elman Service (1964) offers a clear statement of the problem in his "Archeological Theory and Ethnological Fact." 1 quote here at length; Historical reconstructions in archeology are based on comparisons of traits and attributes of traits representing different cultures. When there is a significant similarity between assemblages of traits then it may be asserted that there is a significant relationship between the respective cultures. But what is meant by "relationship?" Similarities in two lists of traits could suggest any of three distinct kinds of occurrences: (1) The traits might be similar because they represent two descendenl cultures of one homogenous parent culture; that is, surviving elements of the same cultural tradition are now found in two separate manifestations. The link between them is thus ancestral culturally phylogenetic. (2) Similarity may also have been created in certain respects by diffusion or trade between two otherwise historically distinct societies. (3) Some similarities may be chance parallelisms or adaptive convergences to like environmental or historical influences. A major methodological problem is revealed here: How can comparisons of traits and attributes be made so that a conclusion is reached as to which of the above possibilities is responsible for the similarities? (Service 1964:5). Service offered no solution to the problem other than advising archeologists to read more ethnology so that they might, in future, avoid some of the more embarrassing inferential errors. In the archeological literature, Bin-ford (1968) has essentially paraphrased Service's arguments but, again, offers no feasible solution. Of course, the recognition of this source of interpretive ambiguity is by no means a recent phenomenon and can be traced back at least as far as 1889 when Francis Galton raised the issue in response to F.B. Tylor's paper on the cross-cultural survey method (Naroll 1961). It has thus been dubbed "Galton's problem" and has so lar defied solution though there has been no shortage of attempts (Naroll 1961; Vermeulcn and Ruijter 1975; Strauss and Oransl975). In sum, not only is diffusion of limited utility as an explanatory or heuristic concept, but even the fact of its occurrence cannot, in most cases, be demonstrated unequivocally on the basis of archeological data. 11 we wish to explain Fremont origins - or, for that matter, the origins of any culture whatsoever - it seems advisable to approach the problem without recourse to the diffusionist crutch. As for the second of the "two logical possibilities" cited by Gunnerson, i.e., migration, there is little in the way of convincing evidence. And if there were, this scheme would not constitute a useful explanation of Fremont origins per se. Rather, such a theory takes for granted the emergent evolution of the Fremont culture in some external region, and requires only that the migration itself be explained. While neither the "in situ development-plus-diffusion" type of hypothesis nor any of the various migration hypotheses is theoretically adequate, these two kinds of argument - taken singly or in combination - are exhaustive of the ideas to be found in the Fremont literature. As will be seen in the brief survey which follows, debates on the subject of Fremont origins have centered on the discovery of the "true" sources of migrating populations or diffused traits. In short, the theoretical underpinning has been assumed to be essentially correct and the search for origins has been treated as an empirical question. On the contrary, the problem is, and has long been, a theoretical one. The present paper is, as stated in the title, a critique. It was my original intent to follow the critical review of past ideas with yet another model of Fremont origins. However, a careful reading of the earlier literature on the subject led to the realization that I had nothing of conceptual significance to offer. 1 have therefore opted to stick to the review format and forgo this opportunity to speculate on the nature of Fremont emergence. FREMONT ORIGINS: AN HISTORICAL REVIEW The intent of this section is to provide an overview of the development of the main lines of thought on the subject and to assess the positions of the various students involved in terms of the framework sketched out in the introductory statement. So while this review is, in a sense, "historical," no attempt has been made to summarize the views of every scholar who has concerned himself with the problem. Nor have 1 made any rigorous effort to keep the order of discussion in strict correspondence with the sequence of publication dates, though the two are in general agreement. Julian Steward's "Native Cultures of the Intermon-tane (Great Basin) Area" (Steward 1940) serves as an excellent starting point for the present discussion. Steward designated what is now called the Fremont area as the "Northern Periphery" of the Anasazi area. This he subdivided into the "Sevier Desert Region Pueblo" and the "Upper Colorado Plateau Pueblo." These 18 regions correspond, respectively, to the eastern Greai Basin and Colorado Plateau physiographic provinces within the state of Utah. As the term Northern Periphery indicates, Steward felt that the cultural content of this region was derived primarily from the San Juan Anasazi through diffusion or migration. However, Steward maintained that the Intcrmontane area as a whole (and the Northern Periphery subdivision in particular) constituted a distinctive culture area, interrelated but analytically separable from adjacent areas. 1 o recognize, however, that the lntermontane area was in a broad sense "western" and that it had drawn heavily upon neighboring culture centers does not justify either classifying it with any of these areas or splitting it between them. The elements that link it with neighboring areas occur predominantly along its margins, rapidly disappearing - inhibited no doubt by the slender local resources - toward its center . . . But much of the culture was unlike that of neighboring areas (Steward 1940:450). As for the Northern Periphery, Steward's opinions on the overall similarities with the Anasazi culture were tempered by the observation that significant differences also occurred. But other Pueblo traits, though known in the Western Periphery, were not accepted in the Northern Periphery. Absence of domesticated cotton, the loom, twilled baskets, sandals, and probably of the domesticated turkey may represent a continuation of the local preference for articles of hide. It is more difficult to explain the failure of grooved stone axes and mauls and thin metates placed in bins to spread northward. Not entirely dependent on the Southwest, the Northern Periphery developed some distinctive traits: The "Fremont moccasin," hide shields, pecked stone balls, small, rectangular gaming (?) bones, a remarkable elaboration of anthropomorphic petroglyphs, picto-graphs, and unbaked clay figurines, the "Utah metate," and such ceramic traits as stuck-on and punched (false corrugated) decoration (Steward 1940: 472). These differences led Steward to formulate a rather complex model of Northern Periphery origins. First, he formulated two temporal phases of development. Phase I consisted of a "blend" of Basketmaker and early Pueblo traits which was introduced to the Northern Periphery through diffusion rather than migration. While Steward made no specific comments on the topic, this interpretation implies the existence of indigenous Northern Periphery populations. The same is implied by Steward's reference to " . . . a continuation of the local preference for articles of hide . . ." in the passage quoted above. No actual migration occurred until Phase II which corresponds to Pueblo II, and even then Steward aid not emphasize population movement as a major factor. The problem with the Phase I diffusion account was that no such "blend" of Basketmaker and eariy Pueblo was known to exist. This led Steward to assume that t he requisite blending had occurred outside the North-e r n P e nPhery, most likely ". . . on the northern fringe ol the San Juan area in western Colorado from which it spread northward and westward" (Steward 1940:468). The bigger problem is, of course, that this could not possibly constitute an explanation of Northern Periphery origins. As discussed in the introduction, this sort of argument merely shiits the locus of the evolutionary explanandum event to some external - and, in this case, archcologically unknown - area. Finally, it should be noted that Steward was the first to postulate a relationship between the Promontory culture of the northeastern Great Basin and northwest Plains Athabaskans. According to Steward, the Promontory populations were primarily dependent on hunting and, . . seem to have arrived in the Great Salt Lake region while it was still occupied by the Pueblo farmers and to have remained there an undetermined length of time after the latter had disappeared. These data cannot now be interpreted conclusively but tempt speculation (Steward 1940: 473). Huscherand Huscher (1943) carried the argument a bit further, suggesting that the Fremont culture as a whole was a product of Athabaskan migration. Little significant research was accomplished during the war years and it was not until the publication of Rudy's "Archeological Survey of Western Utah" that speculation over the origins of the Northern Periphery villagers was reinstituted. Rudy's synthesis was based primarily on survey work conducted from 1949 through 1952 and was restricted in areal extent to that portion of the eastern Great Basin lying within the state of Utah, i.e., Steward's "Sevier Desert Region Pueblo." While Rudy had a considerably greater quantity of data on which to base his inferences than did Steward, there was no qualitative difference in data patterning. Like Steward, Rudy recognized a hunter-gatherer period which antedated the "Puebloid" occupation. And, again like Steward, Rudy identified post- Puebloid hunter-gatherer cultures as proto-historic and historic Shoshonean. However, unlike Steward, Rudy designated the makers of Promontory ware (Steward's Promontory culture) as proto-Shoshonean and, further, he postulated that the entire western Utah sequence from pre-Puebloid hunter-gatherers through the Puebloid period to the historic Shoshoni constituted a Shoshonean cultural continuum. With regard to Puebloid origins, Rudy offered the following: In summary, it may be said that the diagnostic features of the western Utah Puebloid culture are not so much distinctive individual traits, but a distinctive combination resulting from indigenous developments plus the selection, modification, and blending of traits characteristic of the Anasazi Basketmaker and early Pueblo periods (Rudy 1953:167). The foregoing suggests that the Puebloid culture was adopted by one or more groups of Great Basin gathering-hunting peoples. Perhaps these Puebloids were a group of prehistoric Shoshoni. The similarities in the culture patterns of the prehistoric gathering-hunting cultures of the Great Basin and the historically known Shoshoni make this hypothesis seem acceptable if this assumption is correct, what probably took place is that sometime alter the Anasazi Basketmaker-Pueblo culture developed in the Southwest various of its traits difluscd northward. As groups of the Basin peoples became acquainted with these new things they accepted some and adapted them to their existing mode of life. The groups of people closest to the Anasazi area wcrc thc first to accept and modify the traits. These groups in turn passed the traits on to peoples more distant from the Anasazi center and the traits became further modified. As this process of diffusion continued, a range of variation of the Pueblo traits developed throughout Utah and the surrounding areas. This accounts for the variations found in the Puebloid culture in the Great Salt Lake region, the Sevier Desert region, central Utah, the Fremont River area, and southern Utah and Nevada (Rudy 1953:168). As for the demise of the Puebloid culture, Rudy relied on the then popular Great Drought theory as a convenient stress mechanism to explain the reversion of the Puebloids to a hunting and gathering society identified as the immediate precursors of the historically known Shoshoni. Steward's (1955b) review of Rudy's work raised several important points. The first that deserves mention is an apparent inconsistency in Steward's culture history construct. In the process of attacking Rudy's notion of a Shoshonean continuum, Steward made reference to his own, earlier construct (Steward 1940) which purportedly stated that: . ... there were 4 distinct cultural periods in western Utah - pre-Puebloan hunters, Puebloan farmers, Promontory hunters (in the north), and Shoshonean hunters and gatherers . . . (Steward 1955b:88; emphasis mine). It is clear in the context of the review that Steward intended "4 distinct cultural periods" to mean four culturally unrelated and/or temporally discontinuous populations. But, as noted earlier, Steward's 1940 synthesis asserted that the origin of the Puebloan farmers was best explained by diffusion rather than migration, hence there must have been a strong thread of continuity with some indigenous population. It is impossible, then, to accept in toto Steward's 1955 claim that his 1940 model was comprised of four distinct culture periods since at least two - the pre-Puebloan hunters and the Puebloan farmers - were, by implication, culturally and biologically continuous. However, to admit of one connection is a far cry from accepting all the periods as continuous and Steward's criticism of the linguistic implications of Rudy's model was quite appropriate. Rudy's speculations that the Puebloids were essentially hunters and gatherers, probably Shoshoneans, who adopted Basketmaker and Pueblo traits . . . assumes incredible permanency of a language group (Steward 1955b:88). This of course, is a criticism that might be leveled against a number of prehistoric reconstructions that assert linguistic and cultural continuity for millenial periods (e.g., Swanson 1972; Irwin-Williams 1967, 1973). When we consider the great difficulty encountered in the attempt to demonstrate continuity between historic groups and even the most recent prehistoric remains in the same geographic region (Ezell 1963), the gratuitous nature of bolder claims comes immediately to the surlace. While linguistic continuity between two sequent prehistoric cultural entities cannot be positively demonstrated, it is sometimes possible to demonstrate that such continuity is highly improbable. In the case at hand, Steward adduced the then unpublished works of Sidney Lamb and Morris Swadesh, the results of which implied that the Shoshoneans could not have entered the Puebloan area until A.D. 1000 or later. Since the Puebloid occupation was thought to have spanned the period from A.D. 500 to 1200 (Rudy 1953), the lexico-statistical evidence seemingly eliminated the Shoshoneans from the list of probable ancestors. This, by the way, was the first attempt to apply the so-called "Lamb hypothesis" (Lamb 1958; Miller 1966) to Great Basin prehistory. A second criticism raised in Steward's review dealt with Rudy's rejection of the term "Northern Periphery" (Steward 1933a: 1940). Rudy objected to the term because it implied that, . . .Utah was culturally marginal to the Anasazi area during the complete time span of the Anasazi culture. There is evidence that Utah did not constitute an area culturally subordinate to the Anasazi except during the period of Anasazi expansion. Evidence of a pre- Puebloid culture in the Great Basin is well documented . .. Simple reference to Utah as the Northern Periphery serves chiefly to submerge and obscure the individuality of the Utah cultures (Rudy 1953:168). It seems clear that this point was not well thought out. The existence of pre- and post-Puebloid remains is wholly irrelevant to the question of whether or not the Utah Puebloid culture should be considered peripheral to coeval Anasazi cultural development. Steward (1940) was well aware of the fact that the eastern Great Basin had been occupied for a very long time - perhaps since the close of the Pleistocene - and it is clear in context that his "Northern Periphery" designation was applicable only during the relatively brief period (A.D. 500-1200) marked by primary reliance on agricultural products. This being the case, there is little doubt that Puebloids were the "recipients" rather than the "donors" of maize, domestic architecture, and ceramics. In this sense, Utah most assuredly was "culturally marginal" to the Anasazi area. As Steward reminded us, Culture area taxonomy . . . is based on the concept of climax, center, typical manifestation or major intensity, and the corollary concept of marginality. If western Utah is properly classifiable with the Anasazi or Pueblo tradition, it is obviously marginal in that it borrowed some but not all diagnostic features from the climax area (Steward 1955b:89). 20 The point of all this may be simply stated, //"discussion is to be conducted in the culture area idiom, and //the discussants agree that the major features which set the Puebloid (or Puebloan or Fremont) culture apart from its ancestral form were derived from the Anasazi area, then the Puebloid region is properly referred to as "marginal" or "peripheral." Those who take exception to these terms are obliged to find some other idiom of discourse or demonstrate that the diffusion of significant traits was in the other direction. I am not, here, defending either culture area terminology or its atten-dent theoretical orientation, i.e., diffusionism. 1 am merely pointing out that within the context provided by culture area formulation, Steward was "correct," i.e., internally consistent, while Rudy and those "who similarly have balked at the thought of classifying the Utah villagers as peripheral were "incorrect," i.e., inconsistent in the application of culture area principles. In the same issue of American Antiquity that carried Steward's review of Rudy, appeared Jennings and Norbeck'sinfluental synthesis of Great Basin prehistory (Jennings and Norbeck 1955). Following Rudy's lead, they rejected the term "Northern Periphery" and concluded that, . . . horticulture, grafted onto an older life pattern, existed in the Great Basin for only a relatively brief period. Its disappearance was followed by a resumption, with little alteration, of the pattern of life of the old Desert culture, a pattern which had never wholly died out. The same sequence of events also occurred in the area of the old Fremont culture (Jennings and Norbeck 1955:6). They differed from Rudy only in leaving the problem of language identification as an open question. That same year saw the publication of H.M. Wormington's "A Reappraisal of the Fremont Culture" (Wormington 1955). By this time, the areal extent of the Fremont culture had been expanded considerably beyond Morss' (1931) original definition to include a region coextensive with Steward's "Upper Colorado Plateau Pueblo." Wormington maintained the distinction between Fremont and Rudy's Puebloid area and arrived at essentially the same conclusions as Rudy (1953), and Jennings and Norbeck (1955) with regard to cultural origins. Comparative data would suggest that the Puebloid and Fremont cultures sprang from the same variant of the generalized Basin Culture and that both acquired certain Anasazi traits, but that, due to different environmental conditions, separation by physiographic barriers which favored independent development, a*nd exposure to different influences, they did not develop in entirely the same way (Wormington 1955:180). While Wormington warned against the ". . . false impression of real knowledge . . ." fostered by the "glib" usage of diffusion as an explanatory concept, it is the most visable connective mechanism in her construct. Jennings (195b; 1957) late, reiterated the "in situ dcvclopmcnt-plus-difliisinirhypothcsis with few additional elaborations beyond a slight shift in terminology i.e., "Puebloid" was replaced by "Sevier-Fremont." Taylor (1957) lollowed this convention as well as the general "in situ" story line. James H. Gunnerson's work (Gunnerson 1960, 1962, 1969) comprised an interesting combination of previously developed theories and a complete shift to a migra-tionist position. Unlike all previous researchers, Gunnerson asserted that neither t h e Fremont culture of the Colorado Plateau nor the Sevier culture (Jennings' Sevier-Fremont) of the eastern Great Basin emerged as archcologicaliy recognizable entities until A.D. 950 or later. According to Gunnerson, the immediate ancestors of the Fremont and Sevier cultures were Virgin branch Anasazi populations that expanded into Utah at some time during the tenth century under the impetus provided by the introduction of a highly productive race of maize (1969:179). The initial rendering of this hypothesis was "loose" enough to make it at least partly compatible with the "in situ development-plus-diffusion" model. It seems probable that the distinctive flavor of the Fremont culture, however, resulted from blending of Virgin traits with the Desert culture traits of a sparse indigenous population (Gunnerson 1960: 378). This made it sound as if the difference between Jennings, Rudy, Taylor and Wormington, on the one hand, and Gunnerson, on the other, was merely one of emphasis, with Gunnerson stressing the effects of external cultural influence more strongly than the others. However, Gunnerson's later writings left no room for conciliation. The proto-Fremont and proto-Sevier populations were the Virgin branch Anasazi and if there were any indigenous Archaic populations living in Utah at the time of the Anasazi expansion, their presence was of no great consequence. . . . the in situ transition from Desert culture to Fremont has nowhere been demonstrated archeologically. Moreover, the manifestations of the Fremont culture are remarkably similar throughout its time span, suggesting that this Puebloan complex entered the area after it was already developed, and as a unit. Such a phenomenon is more likely to be effected by a migrating population than by diffusion . . . Nor is there any need to look to the Desert culture for the "early" traits in Fremont, since they are all present in the Virgin culture. In short, Fremont is probably no more directly derived from Desert culture than is Mesa Verde or Kayenta (Gunnerson 1969:170). This major difference noted, the remainder of Gunnerson's model was an elaboration of Rudy's earlier suggestions. . . . it was postulated that the area occupied by the Virgin branch of the Anasazi was the homeland of the proto-Plateau Shoshoneans, that some of them moved out of the Virgin area into the Fremont area at ca.A.D. 950, and that, at about the same time, others moved 21 into the Sevier area. Here they lived by means of horticulture combined with hunting and gathering until ca A.I).1200, when drought forced them to abandon then crop lands and disperse as hunter gatherers to the limits of the area occupied by Plateau Shoshoneans in early historic times (Gunnerson 1969:195). Unlike Rudy's model, this was compatible - at least in the temporal sense - with the Lamb hypothesis owing to Gunnerson's A.D.950 estimate for the beginning of the Fremont and Sevier cultures. This estimate has, of course, been invalidated by subsequent work in both regions. But even if it had not, Gunnerson's account would eventually have been recognized as inadequate for the same reasons mentioned earlier in connection with Steward's initial formulation. Even though Gunnerson adhered to a migrationist rather than a diffusionist position, he employed the same explanation-avoidance strategy, i.e., a shift in the locus of critical events to some external and, preferably, little known area. In Steward's case, the postulated area of development was the northern San Juan region of western Colorado. For Gunnerson, it was the Virgin branch-an area which was, and still is, very poorly understood in terms of cultural content and practically devoid of temporal controls. In 1966, Ambler (1966; 1969) redefined Gunnerson's Fremont and Sevier cultures under the heading of Fremont in order to contrast the entire area with the adjacent Anasazi and establish the Fremont culture as taxonomically equivalent to the traditional Anasazi, Hohokam, and Mogollon divisions. Concerning origins, Ambler followed Gunnerson in deriving Fremont from the Virgin branch area but opted for diffusion as the ". . . principal means by which Anasazi traits were transmitted to the Fremont area (1966: 266)." Ambler was even more conservative than Gunnerson in his estimate of Fremont antiquity, asserting that, . . . the Fremont culture did not exist as a recognizable archeological entity prior to 1050 or after 1200, perhaps giving or taking a few years either direction al each end (Ambler 1966:261). This was based on Ambler's critical assessment of the then available radiocarbon and tree-ring dates. His arguments for the rejection of all radiocarbon dates earlier than A.D. 1050 were well formulated and logically valid. However, subsequent work has produced a large number of well-controlled dates that cumulatively render his temporal framework untenable. As for the ancestors of the Fremont, Ambler offered the following: In order to have Anasazi traits spread into central and northern Utah, there must have been someone living there in the first place. Until very recently, it has been generally agreed . . . that pre-Fremont culture in. this area could be classed within the generalized Desert Culture, perhaps with some Basketmaker overtones. Aikens (1966b) has recently questioned this view, postulating that the proto-Fremont people were culturally and physically much more closely allied to the Plains, and specifically, Athabascan groups. I feel that his idea has a great deal ol merit, although needing further proof (as Aikens admits), and would question his timetable for the movement ol Athabascans into the area (Ambler 1966b: 267). The Aikens model alluded to by Ambler was, indeed, an interesting one if for no other reason than it offered a refreshing alternative to the long established trend of pointing to the Anasazi as the source of all significant introduced traits. As noted earlier, Huscherand Huscher (1943) were the first to suggest Athabaskan origins for the Fremont, but the idea received no serious consideration until it was revamped and more fully elaborated by Aikens (1966b). His model relied on a combination of migrationist and diffusionist processes as revealed in the following passages. The proto-Fremont people were a group of Northwestern Plains origin, probably Athabaskans. They moved southward and westward into Utah at approximately A.D. 500 . . . The new population may have encountered and assimilated a sparse Desert Archaic-culture population which had already begun to acquire some Southwestern Anasazi traits . . . The immigrants synthesized from the Northwestern Plains and Anasazi elements a mixed horticultural-hunting economy, the distinctive Fremont rock art, and a pottery tradition in which traits of both Anasazi . . . and Plains . . . ceramic traditions were incorporated (Aikens 1966b: 205). The Fremont abandonment, according to Aikens, was a consequence of "Shoshonean pressure" which forced the Athabaskan Fremont populations eastward, back onto the Plains where they constituted "the unique complex known as the Dismal River aspect (attributed to Plains Apache) of western Nebraska and Kansas and eastern Colorado and Wyoming (Aikens 1966b: 205)." Aikens' model was subsequently assailed on numerous fronts (Armelagos 1968; Armelagos, Dewey and Carlquist 1968; Husted and Mallory 1967; Wedel 1967; Swanson 1972). This, in combination with the evidence of Archaic-Fremont continuity at Hogup Cave, eventually led Aikens to accept the "in situ development-plus- diffusion" argument. Accordingly, the biological and cultural roots of the Fremont were once again sought in the various, local Archaic substrata. As for the effects of diffusion: The probable importance of differential external influences can be noted in the fact that most of the archeological traits cited as evidence in hypotheses relating Fremont closely to the southwestern Anasazi come from the Sevier, Parowan, and San Rafael variants of the Fremont, which are geographically contiguous to Anasazi culture provinces, while most of those thought to link Fremont with the northern and western Plains come from the vicinity of the Great Salt Lake and from the Uinta Basin, which lie significantly further to the north and are geographically open to the north and east (Aikens 1972: 64). Since this was the last paragraph in Aikens' article, the implication is that propinquity constitutes a sufficient if not necessary, explanation of cultural similarities. The tendency for adjacent cultures to possess more 22 traits in common than widely separated ones is a statistical generalization of moderate strength. This much is true, but statistical generalizations arc things to be explained. They do not constitute explanations in any meaningful sense. Archeologists have made this poini so many times, it is in danger of becoming cliche. Yel propinquity has somehow managed to retain its popularity as a pseudo-explanation of inter-regional similarities of trait complexes. John P. Marwitt's "Median Village and Fremont Culture Regional Variation" (Marwitt 1970) can safely be considered the standard work on the Fremont culture. It is an excellent summary of the state of the art as of 1970, and his regional typology of Fremont variants has continued in use as the medium of discourse among the majority of students. As for Fremont origins, Marwitt accepted the "in situ development-plus-diflusion" scheme and, following Jennings (1966), he suggested but did not push the possibility that the source of diffusion might be the Mogollon rather than the Anasazi. Whether or not specific "proto-FremnnC-Mogol-lon correspondences can be demonstrated, the data permit the descripiion of Fremont culture as the product of a Desert Archaic base to which was added. before A.D 500, a horticultural village or farmstead component (Marwitt 1970:156). Marwitt cited Aikens' work at Hogup Cave as adequate confirmation of Archaic-Fremont continuity and, although the Hogup sequence has been questioned by Madsen and Berry (1975), it appears that (rightly or wrongly) most students have followed Marwitl in accepting Aikens' interpretations. Little of significance has been said on the topic of Fremont origins since the publication of "Median Village." Berry and Berry (1976) developed the idea that the Fremont culture as a whole grew out of a wide-spiead "Basketmaker 11-like" horizon. This suffered Irom the same explanation-avoidance symptoms already discussed with regard to Steward's and Gunnerson's models. Madsen and Lindsay (1977) have, in ef- Icct, stated thai all the various hypotheses are probably correct in the sense that different combinations of migration and diffusion lrom different external sources might account for the internal variation demonstrated in the archeological record. This is a bit too eclectic for my tastes and 1 doubt that the adherents of particular hypotheses have grown so complacent that they are willing to accept Madsen and Lindsay's compromise position. Also worthy of mention is Goss' (1977) reassessment of the Lamb hypothesis. The implications of Goss' paper are as yet unexplored, but it seems clear that hypotheses concerning the nature of Numic-Fre-mont relationships will have to be re-evaluated. So, how far have we actually progressed toward an understanding of Fremont origins since Steward's 1940 paper? The only detectable motion has been the pendulum swing back and forth between diffusionist and migrationist extremes with much finger pointing at variously proffered external sources of "stimuli." To be sure, we know a great deal more than Steward about Fremont architecture, artifacts, and subsistence practices. It could hardly be otherwise considering the vast quantity of pithouse fill that has been processed in the past four decades. But the conceptual structure for modeling cultural origins has remained unchanged, and in that regard we are unable to say anything more theoretically enlightening than was said by Steward nearly forty years ago. As stated at the outset, 1 attribute thi's stasis to ihe fact that the search for Fremont origins has been treated as an empirical problem when, in fact, the question ol cultural origins in general is an unresolved theoretical problem of the greatest importance. DISCUSSION AND PROSPECT It is a relatively easy matter to criticize an extant paradigm but quite another to create a new perspective. The "new archeology" of the 1960s and 70s has leaned heavily on "General Systems [sic] Theory" as a possible means of freeing archeological theory from its traditional culture history constraints (e.g., Hill 1977; Flan-nery 1968; Clarke 1968; Plog 1975; Glassow 1972.) The bulk of this work has been seriously flawed since virtually all of those who have attempted to use systemic constructs have followed Flannery (1968) and Clarke (1968) in erroneously equating General System Theory with cybernetics. It is the former and not the latter which contains the theory of open systems, cybernetics being the theory of information-tight, conceptually closed,self-regulalory"machines"(Bertalanffy 1968; Ashby 1956). It has been shown that cybernetics is little more than a formalization of anthropological function-alism (Wood and Matson 1973; Berry n.d.) and is therefore subject to the same devastating critiques leveled by Jarvie (1964, 1968), Hempel (1965), Nagel (1961), and others. So, not only has the potential of systemic modeling not yet been realized, but the most appropriate type of model, i.e., the open system, has yet to be employed. Nothing that properly may be called a "new" perspective has been generated despite all the efforts and claims. Diffusion and migration are still the only available means of accounting for cultural origins, the protestations of the processualists nothwitstanding. My reasons for mentioning all this should be clear. Students of the Fremont culture have remained on the "Northern Periphery" of the main line of theoretical development emanating from the Southwestern "centers" (cf. Schiffer 1978). Apparently unaware, unconcerned, or uncommitted, no one associated with Fremont studies has "gone public" on the major theoretical issues. This confers certain advantages, not the least of 23 which is what Service tlOfWtt raiic .u « • k,» i J uvouj calls the nnvi ei>r ,->( hackwardness." Now thai th,» < .u ' " m , ^ c <>' made all t h . L C S o u , nwcsternists have specia.,s,s a r c , n a n c x c c | l e n , p o s . | o n t o .n ^ ^ ^ ^ "'»< wen, „ „ bclW- "ncm s i , ' ' 5 " ^ °' , h c »"'rk |()4), '"t m <i>ahlms and .Service I9«l: •«%.. 24 |
