Antiquities Section Selected Papers Volume VII Number 16

Fremont- An artifactual perspective

\h': V U , FREMONT: AN ARTIFACTUAL PERSPECTIVE by J. M. ADOVASIO University of Pittsburgh ABSTRACT Comparative attribute-oriented analyses of lour composition­al classes of artifacts putatively ascribable to the Fremont cul­ture of the eastern Great Basin indicate that only one of these classes, basketry, is relatively homogeneous both chronologi­cally and geographically. Conversely, chipped and ground stone as well as ceramics exhibit considerable geographical heterogeneity and temporal diversity. Despite these conflicting data, it is suggested that on the basis of the basketry alone it is possible to define a Fremont culture which is recognizably distinct from any of its contemporary "neighbors" or, indeed, any of its "successors" in the eastern Great Basin. The same basketry data conclusively indicate that the Fremont represent an in situ evolution out of a local Archaic base. INTRODUCTION Four compositional classes of artifacts occur through­out of the so-called "variants" of the Fremont "cul­ture" as described by Marwitt (1970). These include flaked and ground stone implements, ceramics, and i i u i v v v j U 1 1 U f - . l v / L I I I V J JIVJI1V. l l l l J J J V v l l l V , l l l O , L t i a i l UL basketry. It is the purpose of this paper to briefly ine each of these artifact classes in order to ascertain whether any one of them or any combination of them is sufficiently distinctive to define explicitly the Fremont phenomenon. exam- FLAKED STONE Flaked stone assemblages occur in every Fremont site which has ever been excavated or tested. Unfortu­nately, however, there is no single distinctive tool type or projectile point variety or any combination of tool types or projectile points which occurs in all or even most Fremont sites. A casual scrutiny of earlier syntheses (e.g. Adovasio 1970a) indicates that while highly distinctive chipped stone sites occur in certain Fremont variants, notably the Parowan Valley and the Great Salt Lake, the lithic assemblages from many of the other variants such as Sevier are amorphous to the point of being use­less as taxonomic indicators on the "cultural" level. Further, since some of the diagnostic lithics of indivi­dual Fremont variants such as the Parowan Basal-notched point to name but one do occur outside the Fremont area, occasionally in quantity, (see Shutler 1961) it is literally impossible to use any putatively Fre­mont flaked stone tool to separate Fremont from its neighbors. GROUND STONE In the Median Village report, Marwitt (1970) noted that the ground stone assemblage from that site "though large, is unremarkable." The same might be said for all of the ground stone from all of the Fremont sites. While certain types of ground stone artifacts such as cylindrical pestles, ground slate knives and incised tab­lets may be common to particular Fremont variants, in this case the Great Salt Lake, no ground stone imple­ment of distinctive configuration is common to all Fre­mont sites. Again, as with chipped stone, many allegedly Fremont ground stone forms occur outside the Fremont area and are similarly useless as "cultural" markers. 35 CERAMICS In the present context, little of consequence can be added to the thoughtful summary of Fremont ceramic diversity provided by Madsen (1970). As that work indi­cates, though the total area occupied by the Fremont culture can be divided into five more or less distinct geo­graphical regions based on ceramic typology, no single Fremont ceramic type or combination of types occurs across the entire Fremont range. Again as with flaked and ground stone, many of the majority Fremont gray ware types and some of the minority types also occur outside the Fremont milieu (see Marwitt 1970) and hence cannot be employed to define the parameters of that milieu with any precision. BASKETRY The term basketry herein encompasses several dis­tinct kinds of items including rigid and semi-rigid con­tainers or baskets proper, matting, and bags. Matting includes items which are essentially two-dimensional or flat, while baskets are three-dimensional. Bags may be viewed as intermediate forms because they are two-dimensional when empty and three-dimensional when filled. As Driver (1961: 159) points out, these arti­facts can be treated as a unit because the overall tech­nique of manufacture is the same in all instances. Specif­ically, all forms of basketry are manually woven without any frame or loom. Since all basketry is woven, it is tech­nically a class or variety of textile (see Emery 1966) though that term is sometimes restricted to cloth fabrics. In the following pages, the technical characteristics, distribution, origins and demise of Fremont basketry are discussed, and comparisons are offered with earlier, contemporary and later basketry assemblages from the same area. It should be noted that this author has exam­ined virtually every piece of Fremont basketry in exis­tence, in both public and private collections, and it is upon this analysis that the following comments are pre­dicated. TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS Two of the three major sub-classes of basket weaves are represented in the Fremont basketry assemblage. These include coiling and twining. The third sub-class, plaiting, is wholly absent. The salient technical features of Fremont coiling and twining are presented below by sub-class. (Those unfamiliar with the descriptive termi­nology employed herein are advised to consult Adovasio [1977].) COILING Coiling is the numerically dominant sub-class of Fremont basketry and is represented at all Fremont sites where basketry has been preserved. All extant ex­amples of Fremont coiling were analyzed by this writer, where feasible, for the following attributes: 1. Basket wall (foundation) technique 2. Stitch type 3. Method of starting 4. Work direction 5. Work surface 6. Rim finish 7. Splice type 8. Decorative patterns and mechanics of decoration 9. Form 10. Wear patterns/ function 11. Material The partial results of the attribute analysis summarized above indicate the following: Basket wall (foundation) technique. Eight basket wall or foundation techniques are represented in Fre­mont coiling. The frequency of these techniques by site is presented in Table III. As indicated, four founda­tion types (close coiling, half rod and bundle stacked foundation; close coiling, half rod and welt stacked foundation; close coiling, whole rod foundation; close coiling, three rod bunched foundation) account collec­tively for 95.47% of the sample. Of these, one technique, close coiling, half rod and bundle stacked foundation accounts for 50% of the entire sample. This particular foundation is represented at all but two Fremont sites and appears to be the preferred or standard Fremont coiling technique. (See Adovasio 1970b, 1971, 1974.) The four remaining coiling foundations are statistical­ly insignificant and, as will be shown below, are prob­ably intrusive. Stitch type. Five types of stitches occur in Fremont coiling. These include interlocking, non-interlocking, split intentionally on the non-work surface, split on both surfaces, and intricate-interlocking. Of these the most common are non-interlocking, split intentionally on the non-work furface, and interlocking. The latter stitch type is restricted entirely to whole rod foundation basketry which is sewn with no other type of stitch. 36 TABLE HI Distribution of Fremont coiling foundation techniques by site. 7 v> - ;c ;o es C 3 Sites iZ . Hogup Cave Promontory Caves Evans Mound Median Village 7 Paragonah Caldwell Village 7 : Fremont River Area .-..- Yampa Cannon Old Woman Etna Cave • O'Malley Shelter Little Lost River Cave Pence Duerig Cave Jack Knife Cave Spring Creek Cave Daugherty Cave Clydes Cavern Swallow Shelter TOTAL Open Coiling, Whole Rod Foundation 1 1 2 4 Close Coiling, Two Rod and BuhdieBunched Foundation 3 3 Close Coiling. Rod in Bundle Foundation A \ \ . 2 Close Coiling, Bundle Foundation 2 •« 2 4 Close Coiling, Three Rod Bunched Foundation "5 .6 1 8 20 Close Coiling, Whole Rod Foundation 1 5 20 18 ' • ' 4 ' - 31 . 1 . 1 m -C 7 « c " S | i* a" c ••r.a. wj-b 7C:.B i s . * is O o sat 4 21 P :.?': 2 1 30+ Close Coiling, Half Rod and Bundle Stacked Foundation 9 7. 15 1 ('?) P 27 II 325 hi 22 2 1 5 2 79 6 144 + 13 19 12 56 1 P 747 15 56 3 27 2 8 T7 3 1 3 II 17 288+ P = present, exact frequency unknown. Methods of starting. All extant Fremont coiled bas­kets have been initiated with a normal or continuous coil center. Work direction. In the vast majority of Fremont coiled baskets (80%), the sewing proceeds from right to left though the reverse technique is not unknown. Work surface. All Fremont trays are worked on the concave surface as are shallow bowls, while deeper bowls and carrying baskets are worked on the convex surface. Rim finish. Most Fremont coiled baskets are fin­ished with self rims though false braid rims either in a 1/1 or 2/2 herringbone do occur occasionally. Splice type. Marked preferences for specific splice types are readily discernible in Fremont coiling. In all instances, the preferred splicing techniques are identical to those employed by preceding Desert Archaic popula­tions from the same area. Dominant types include fag ends and moving ends bound under, fag ends clipped short and moving ends bound under, and less common­ly, fag ends and moving ends clipped short. Decorative patterns and mechanics. Only two bas­kets in the entire sample are decorated in any way. These include a bowl fragment with a chevron design produced by sewing feathers onto the convex surface and a tray fragment with a single circuit of stitches which have been dyed red. Form. The Fremont produced a wide range of vessel forms including very shallow circular trays, shal­low to moderately deep globular bowls and deep cir­cular carrying baskets. Of these, the nearly flat tray is the most frequently encountered form. Wear patterns/function. Analysis of wear patterns on Fremont coiling indicates that virtually 100% of the shallow trays were employed in parching while the other forms seem to have been used for general storage and transportation. No indications of cooking in bas­kets are apparent. As noted elsewhere (see Adovasio 1970b, 1970c) half rod and bundle, close coiled baskets are naturally watertight due to the expansion of the bundle when damp, hence the use of containers pro­duced via this technique for water storage may be safe­ly inferred. Material. Throughout the range of the Fremont culture, the preferred material both for rods and stitch­ing in the manufacture of coiled basketry was Salix. Bundles were generally composed of Apocynum or Asclepias or, more rarely, of Juniperus or Yucca. TWINING Basketry produced by twining techniques is rela­tively uncommon in most Fremont sites and frequent­ly is not represented at all. All extant Fremont twining was analyzed for the following attributes: 1. Number and composition of warps engaged at each weft crossing 2. Number and composition of wefts 3. Spacing of the weft rows (open or close) 4. Pitch of the weft rows (S or Z) 5. Method of starting 6. Insertion of new elements 7. Selvages 8. Form 9. Wear patterns/function 37 10. Decorative patterns and mechanics of decoration 11. Material The partial results of the attribute analysis of Fre­mont twining arc presented below. Construction techniques. Seven basic twining tech­niques were employed by Fremont weavers. The in­cidence of these techniques by site is presented in Table IV. As noted, only one technique, open diagonal twin­ing with Z-twist wefts, occurs with any frequency and then only at a single site. The remaining techniques occur in very limited numbers, and only one technique, open diagonal twining, S-twist weft, occurs in as many as three sites. The greatest variety in twining is apparent in the assemblage from Yampa Canyon, where four techniques occur followed by Hogup Cave and the Promontory Caves represented by three techniques respectively. Warps are generally single elements in all types of simple twining and paired in all instances of diagonal twining. Wefts are inevitably paired in all types of twin­ing with no example of trebled or other multiple weft patterns present. Cordage is commonly utilized for wefts in the construction of matting. Though both S-and Z-twist wefts occur in Fremont twining with marked preferences notable from one site to another, S-twist generally predominates in the assemblage. Space does not permit discussion of other construc­tion details such as method of starting, insertion of new elements, etc. (For these particulars the reader is encouraged to consult Steward 1937; Burgh and Scog-gin 1948.) However, some commentary on selvages is warranted. Fremont selvages tend to be extremely varied with no one side or edge finish clearly in the majority. At most sites, warps are simply truncated after the final weft row or folded back into the body of the fabric and then truncated. More elaborate end selvages occur in the Promontory Caves assemblage including a variety of reinforced edges sewn with cordage. (See Steward 1937.) Side selvages and mats invariably have weft rows folded down parallel to the lateral margins and sewn back to form the next weft row. Form/wear patterns/function. The majority of Fre­mont twining is in the form of matting or, more rarely, flexible bags. Rigid twined containers are virtually un­known. No diagnostic wear patterns are apparent on any type of twining, though frequent indications of mending, notably in the bags, attest to heavy use and subsequent reuse. Decorative patterns and mechanics of decoration. As with Fremont coiling, the use of any decorative embellishment, with the exception of modified selvages, is wholly lacking in the twining industry. Material. Warps in Fremont twined matting are generally made of Scirpus americanus or, much more TABLE IV Distribution of Fremont twining techniques by site. * • w - a a • •-!•" • " E o • i i i - . li Sites (- Hogup Cave Promontory Caves Evans Mound Median Village Paragonah Caldwell 'Village Fremont River Area Yampa/. '.Canyon Old Woman Etna Cave O'M alley Shelter . Little Lost RiverCave Pence. Duerig •Cave Jack Knife Cave SpringCreek Cave Daugherty Cave CJydes ; Cavern Swallow Shelter TOTALS W 5 '•E H "5 • c e : OTD M)> tV> 3 3 c J 0.17 O N 31 P 31 + Open Simple Twining, Z-Twist Weft 7 1 '8" c • 'c '% h - • (A « • & ' * .2+7 UN P Open Diagonal Twining, S-Twist Weft 1 1 1 3 Close Diagonal Twining, S-Twist Weft . 2 2 P 4+ Open Simple Twining, S-Twist Weft 1 4 5 bo'v'7 C •• '••£.• ' * ;'•• H : .*s1* s*cj ii- 2+7 Utrt • ••• 4-* •2..; < 4 41 ', • ;. :"5-' >2 + 6 • '5 .', . -.. 57, P - present, exact frequency unknown. rarely, Phragmites communis, Rhus trilobata, or Salix. Wefts are usually formed of Juniperus utahensis or, in the case of cordage wefts, Asclepias, Apocynum or Artemisia. Salix is likewise used occasionally for wefts. In the production of bags, Scirpus again is the favored material for both wefts and warps. DISTRIBUTION, CHRONOLOGY AND INTERNAL CORRELATIONS Distribution. Typical Fremont coiled basketry is represented in all five of the Fremont regional variants defined in Utah (see Marwitt 1970) as well as in south­eastern Nevada and northwestern Colorado. Beyond the 38 "normal" limits of the Fremont culture proper, Fremont coiling has been recovered in southern Idaho and south­western Wyoming. As reported elsewhere (Adovasio 1972), Fremont coiling is virtually never encountered south of the Colorado or Virgin rivers, nor is it known in northeastern Nevada. Fremont twining is severely limited in occurrence and is generally confined to northern Utah and north­western Colorado. While it is reasonable to conclude that twining was manufactured throughout the range of the Fremont, evidence to that effect is lacking. Chronology. Coiled basketry was produced throughout the entire time span of the Fremont culture, that is, from ca A.D.400 to A.D. 1300. The industry disap­peared or was replaced by intrusive industries (see below) differentially becoming extinct in the Uinta area around A.D. 950 and in other areas by the end of the thirteenth century. Presumably, twining was also produced over this time span, at least in the northern sectors of the Fremont range. Certain developmental trends are discernible over the 900-year period during which Fremont coiled basket­ry was produced. Notable among these are the gradual shift from mixed to almost uniformly right-to-left work direction, the increasing preference of half rod and bundle foundation to all others and the tendency to employ non-interlocking or intentionally split stitches on the non-work surface to all other types. At present, it is not possible to delineate any trends which may have been operative in the twining industry. Internal correlations. Though not extremely pro­nounced, regional preferences definitely existed among the various populations of Fremont basket makers. As Table III indicates, whole rod foundation coiling was somewhat more common in the Uinta Basin and the Parowan Valley than elsewhere. Half rod and welt stacked foundations likewise enjoyed differential popular­ity again being common in the Parowan Valley and somewhat scarce, or absent, in other Fremont regional centers. Preferences for specific stitch types are also discern­ible. Interlocking stitches are generally more common in the northern Fremont variants while non-interlocking stitches are clearly favored in the south, particularly in the Parowan Valley. The uneven distribution of S- and Z-twist wefts in the Fremont twining industry as well as the generally northern distribution of twining may also reflect regional specialization, though this is tenuous at best. EXTERNAL CORRELATIONS The basic affinities of Fremont basketry, both twined and coiled, are to earlier Desert Archaic industries from the same area. All of the basic Fremont coiling attributes including preferred foundations, stitch types, rim Finishes, method of starting, work direction, forms, material pre­ferences, and particularly splice types, are duplicated in earlier Archaic assemblages from Utah. Similarly, all of the twining attributes may be observed in Archaic assemblages from the eastern Great Basin (see Adovasio 1970b.1970c,1971,1974). While the persistence of one or another of the aforementioned technical attributes from late Archaic into Fremont times could be dismissed as fortuitous, their persistence in toto constitutes a power­ful body of evidence that Fremont basketry is derived part and parcel out of local Archaic industries. Herein, it should be forcefully stressed that it is com­pletely immaterial whether or not there was an occupa­tional hiatus (see Madsen and Berry 1975; Aikens 1976; Madsen 1978) between the end of the Late Archaic in the Eastern Great Basin and the beginnings of Fremont. If the Eastern Great Basin was uninhabited prior to the crystallization of Fremont, which I do not for a moment believe, then the first formative "colonists" in the area "returned" with a basketry technology exactly the same as that present in the area before the alleged hiatus. Moreover, this technology is utterly dissimilar to bas­ketry technologies elsewhere in the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau and the Southwest. In short, whoever the ancestors of Fremont were and whenever they en­tered the eastern Great Basin, their basketry was genet­ically eastern Great Basin Archaic in origin and not de­rivable from any other Great Basin, Colorado Plateau or Southwestern source! In marked contrast to the Fremont/Desert Archaic basketry "connection" is the general lack of technical ties to any contemporary or later industries. Despite Gunnerson's (1969) allusions to the contrary as well as the occurrence of some basic Basketmaker-Anasazi coil­ing foundations in Fremont sites (including all four of the minority types listed in Table III), none of the stan­dard P I-II1 techniques ever appear in any frequency anywhere in the Fremont area. Similarly, the apparent preference for closely packed, non-interlocking stitches like those of the Virgin Branch Anasazi by the Parowan Valley Fremont basket makers is more than offset by the utter lack of Anasazi splicing techniques or any other attribute in any of the Fremont regional variants. The technical discontinuity between Fremont and Anasazi basketry is paralleled to the north and west of the Fremont area where virtually no similarities to con­tiguous industries can be discerned. As for later assemblages, notably the basketry of the Numic speakers, connections are nil. The basketry of the Numic populations who entered the eastern Great Basin after A.D. 1300 is so qualitatively different from that of their Fremont predecessors as to preclude any historical relationships. In retrospect, the Fremont twining and coiling in­dustries represent the culmination of a long develop­mental continuum localized in the eastern Great Basin and relatively isolated from similar developments in adjacent areas. The absolute disappearance of Fremont basketry after A.D. 1300 thus signals not only the end of the Fremont as a cultural entity but also the extinction of a technological tradition thousands of years old. 39 CONCLUSIONS The data presented above require little summation. While the lithic and ceramic evidence does not lend itself individually or collectively to the recognition of a Fremont culture distinctive from and basically unrelated to contemporary groups like the Anasazi, this is not the case with the basketry data which is of, in and by itself conclusive. As noted previously (Adovasio 1975), Fre­mont basketry, though it exhibits some internal varia­tion, constitutes as a unit the most distinct variety of prehistoric basketry in the entire Great Basin with the possible exception of Lovelock wickerware. (See Adovasio 1970b, 1970c, 19.71, 1974.) Since it is an established fact (see Mason 1904, Adovasio 1977, 1978; Adovasio and Gunn 1977) that basketry is the single most sensitive indicator of prehis­toric or ethnographic cultural integrity in the artifactual record, and further, since no two prehistoric or ethno­graphic cultures ever produced exactly or even nearly the same kinds of basketry with the same range of con­structional attributes, the definition of a distinctive Fre­mont basketry industry is at once a recognition and delineation of a Fremont cultural entity. More specifically, the basketry of the Fremont is as unique and taxonomically distinct as the basketry of the Anasazi, Hohokam, or Mogollon; hence, Fremont warrants the same level of taxonomic distinction (cf. Marwitt 1970). If Anasazi or Hohokam or Mogollon are valid prehistoric cultures, so is Fremont. While it may seem naive or outrageous to some (Madsen, personal communication) to define a prehis­toric culture on the basis of a single industry or craft, namely basketry, such is my thesis in this case. Stated most simply, if it is accepted that Mono, Paiute, Panamint, Ute or any other variety of ethno­graphic or prehistoric basketry can be taxonomically distinguished and recognized as the product of distinct cultural entities, so can Fremont basketry. While this thesis will be uncomfortable for many, particularly in light of the internal diversity within Fremont as regards other aspects of material culture, subsistence practices or architecture, it should be remem­bered that even greater diversity exists within Anasazi (Adovasio, Gunn et al. 1979), Mogollon, or Hohokam. In closing, the student of FYemont is advised to con­sider the basketry of a well known ethnographic, lin­guistic, and ethnic entity in the Southwest known as the Apache. While great differences in material culture and subsistence practices are evident from band to band not­ably as one moves west to east, the basketry of any or all of these groups is still recognizably Apache (Douglas 1934). Apache basketry cannot be confused by a specialist with the basketry of any of its neighbors despite very close similarities in many other aspects of material cul­ture. This is also the case with Fremont. While 1 am in no way suggesting any relationship whatsoever between Fremont and Apache (in fact there is none) I am stating that for comparative purposes their situations are similar. By definitionthen, any band who makes Apache basketry is per force Apache, while any population which con­structs Fremont basketry is Fremont. 40