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Show ARCHAEOLOGY IN SOUTHEASTERN UTAH San Juan County Celebrates Utah Archaeology Week April 1988 11-1- 7, Ice Age Hunting Camps in Southeastern Utah and landscape. Dr. Larry Argenbroad of Northern Arizona University and Dr. Julio Betancourt of the University of Arizona are both making important contributions to our understanding of the Pleistocene environment in southeastern Utah. Dr. Agenbroad has analyzed mammoth dung found in Cave in the Glen Canyon desert near the Colorado River. Based on radiocarbon dates, the dung was deposited between 11,670 and 16,000 years ago. Laboratory analyses show that the dung contains plant species such as dogwood, Be-cha- by William E. Davis and Deborah Westfall Recent archaeological investigations near the towns of Bluff and Green River, Utah have documented the first e definite Paleolndian hunter) campsites on the Colorado Plateau. These sites, the Lime Ridge Clovis Site and the Montgomery Folsom Site, are the rare remains of hunting camps that have sur. (Ice-Ag- big-gam- e vived intact for over 9,000 years. For most people, archaeology in southeastern Utah brings to mind the numerous ruins of the prehistoric Anasazi culture that existed from about A.D. 500 to A.D. 1300. The Anasazi were not the first people to inhabit the area, however. Archaeologists have documented campsites of Archaic foragers of the wild foods, who inhabited the area for thousands of years before the first Anasazi planted com. Now the Lime Ridge and Montgomery sites have revealed that even older prehistoric cultures existed in southern Utah: the Clovis and Folsom cultures of the e Paleolndian hunting tradition which dates back to the Pleistocene epoch, over big-gam- 9.000 years ago. Along with these discoveries of Paleolndian campsites, new advances in scientific methods have enabled archaeologists to reconstruct prehistoric now-extin- ct 4 Unsolved Mysteries in the by Les Wikle Piecing together the fragments of the unrecorded past is the challenge of archaeology and a painstaking and job. The U. S. Forest Service is a participant in this effort, along with other federal and state agencies, universities, museums, private archaeologists, and interested citizens. During the last few years, the Monticello Ranger District of the Manti-LaSa- l Forest has stabilized (strengthened) several ruins, conducted surveys to discover and record its archaeological resources, and conducted limited excavations in some of its ruins. time-consumi- ng en- vironments as they might have existed 12,000 to 10,000 years age. By understanding how the environment conditioned human behavior, we learn how past events have contributed to our heritage. The search for early man sites in North America began when a few were discovered in the High Plains states. Over time, additional sites were found in other parts of North America. East of the Rocky Mountains and deep down in the Southwest, early man sites were found with the bones of the camel, mammoth elephant, and ground sloth. At several locations buried deep under many feet of soil, distinctive Clovis spear points were found embedded in the rib cages of mammoths. Carbon-1dates consistently indicated the age of the sites to be almost 12,000 years old. More refined Folsom spear points were discovered in association with remains of an extinct type of bison, and found to be over 9.000 years old. Manti-LaS- al Last summer, the Forest Ser- vice sponsored initial excavations in a small, 1100 year old Anasazi settlement site in South Cottonwood Wash. The site was excavated because it is being damaged by traffic on a dirt road. More work is planned in the site this year, and work may continue for several years to come. Although the site is small and unimpressive by some standards, it has already provided useful data about Anasazi subsistence strategies in that area and other traditional archaeological questions, and is raising new questions as well. For instance, the excavation well-travele- d The recognition of the Clovis and Folsom cultural traditions is now an accepted part of our American heritage. However, for many years archaeologists believed that these early people did not venture into southeastern Utah, due to the areas roughness and canyonland barriers. The lack of reported early man artifacts and the animal rarity of extinct bones in this highly eroded area led one University of Utah professor to state that these Paleoice-ag- e lndian cultures were not pre- sent in Utah. That misconception has been laid to rest by the discovery of the Lime Ridge Clovis and Montgomery Folsom sites. The Lime Ridge Clovis site is situated on a high point overlooking a canyon which flows into the San Juan River. The site contained 294 stone artifacts, several of which are typical fluted Clovis points. At present, Lime Ridge is a bleak, landscape of semi-barre- n gravel terraces and sand stone buttes that could not have supported a population of large animals such as the Pleistocene mammoths. In order to understand the archaeological evidence, it is necessary to try to reconstruct the ancient climate Forest revealed that there was at least one episode of cannibalism at the site. The evidence for this was a concentration of broken human bones with distinctive butchering marks, piled in one comer of a room. Did the people (person) commit cannibalism out of a desparate need for nourishment? (This was a time of increasing drought.) Was cannibalism practiced for ceremonys sake? Was this the work of an individual, an Anasazi Jack the Ripper? We dont know the answers to these questions right now, or the answers to many others. We do know that similar evidence (Continued on page 3) an blue spruce, birch, wolfberry, rose, saltbush, sagebrush, cactus, sedges and grasses. Dr. Betancourt has analyzed h packrat midden from Cave in Butler Wash, about 15 miles north of the Lime Ridge Clovis site. The midden has been dated to 12,770 years ago and contains portions of blue spruce, limber pine, rose, dogwood, and Rocky Mountain juniper. None of these plant species grow in these locations today. The climate of southeastern Utah was certainly considerably cooler and wetter during the Pleistocene than it is now. There can be no doubt that mammoths existed in the area. A fossilized mammoth legbone was found in Butler Wash some decades ago by Clyde Barton of Monticello, and is currently on exhibit in the foyer of the Fish-mout- library in Blanding. It is reasonable to assume that Pleistocene mammoths concentrated along streams and other sites well-watere- d such as the canyons of the San Juan. The location of the Lime Ridge Clovis site on a high point overlooking a tributary canyon of the San Juan River suggests the canyon provided access for large animals mov- ing from the river flood plain to the upper ridgetop grasslands. The Montgomery Folsom site is situated on a terrace overlooking the Green River, a few miles south of the town of Green River. In addition to a number of distinctive Folsom points, artifacts at this site included scrapers, borers, gravers, and a variety of cutting tools that were used to butcher and process game. Although no bones were found at the Montgomery Folsom site, bones of the extinct bison commonly hunted by Folsom hunters have been found elsewhere in Utah. It is reasonable to assume that the Montgomery site inhabitants were hunting these animals along the terraces of the Green River. e Modem hunters realize that in order to be successful at the hunt, one has to become familiar with the way animals behave in the hunting area. The hunter can then apply the hunting strategy that has the best chance of success. The Lime Ridge Clovis and Montgomery Folsom sites are evidence of such hunting practice. Their high perches overlooking drainages are ideal for monitoring the movement of large animals. These sites are probably just two rare surviving examples of many hunting stands used by the Paleolndian hunters in what is now southeastern Utah. big-gam- |