Cady Waldrom and Dr. Joel C. Janetski, Department of Anthropology
An important aspect of the archaeological record is the stone tool technology that ancient people incorporated into their life. Different tools such as projectile points, bifaces, scrapers, drills and choppers enabled ancient people to perform necessary daily tasks. Raw materials for making stone tools consist of different types of rocks that are found in various formations and locations. Specific materials were favored among ancient people, and the ability to find where the sources being exploited are located will help archaeologists better understand the trade and interaction amidst formative peoples.
Brigham Young University’s Field School of Archaeology has conducted research in the Escalante Basin since 2000. BYU has excavated numerous archaeological sites with different research questions in mind. One specific research question concerns the interaction of the ancient cultures of the Fremont and the Anasazi. One way to gain insight into the question of whether these formative groups were interacting would be to examine the sources of stone exploited to make tools. By identifying the sources of the raw materials that the Fremont and Anasazi used for making stone tools, we establish a better understanding of the possibility of trade interaction among the two groups. These insights show if the ancient people traveled far to get specific, more effective material, or if they used materials nearby their settlements. My project entailed making a comparative collection of raw tool stone (consisting of Boulder Jasper, Morrison Petrified Wood, and Paradise Chert) which Phil Geib, an archaeologist at NAU, identified as materials that formative peoples used. I then compared the artifacts from the collected samples with lithic debitage and stone tools discovered in association with the floor of Structure 1 at the Overlook site (42GA1585) in Escalante, Utah.
During the 2003 field season, as a crew chief I helped Dr. Janetski and the BYU Field School of Archaeology incorporate a community outreach program that allowed people to learn about the research we were doing and take a tour of the excavation sites. Through this outreach program, we met Cal Porter, an amateur archaeologist who had worked on the Glen Canyon Project in the late 1950s. Porter has lived his entire life in Escalante and is familiar with the archaeological sites and also many of the different geologic formations that surround the Escalante Basin. As I talked to Porter about some of the different possible sources of raw materials, he was anxious to show Dr. Janetski and me in situ locations of the rocks. Porter became our local informant regarding native material sources. Porter was able to help us find sources of Boulder Jasper, near Boulder Mountain. I took a GPS (Global Positioning System) reading and recorded characteristics of the surrounding environment. I gathered and bagged samples to put into a material type collection.
A Morrison Petrified Wood raw material source was located near BYU Field School’s camp. I gathered and bagged representative specimens for the raw-material type collection. I recorded the characteristics of the surrounding environment and the GPS location. Dr. Janetski and I had received information from Porter and Doug McFadden (the archaeologist from the Bureau of Land Management who conducted research in the Escalante area) about the possible location of Paradise Chert. We did not definitely find any Paradise Chert specimens, but we collected possible samples in hopes that Phil Geib would be able to verify the material.
Analysis began without the Paradise Chert. From the Overlook site I collected (42GA1585) thirty field specimen bags containing 574 lithic artifact debitage pieces, 22.8% of lithic artifacts came from Morrison Petrified Wood material, 4% from Boulder Jasper and 1.4% from what I thought might be Paradise Chert, and 71.8% of the artifacts were other types of stone such as quartzite or other cherts. Other artifacts were unidentifiable stone sources. I also collected fourteen stone tools and of those two artifacts were made of the Morrison Petrified Wood material, one tool was made of Boulder Jasper, and two tools were made of Paradise Chert.
Geib confirmed that what I thought was Paradise Chert indeed was not the same material that he had defined as the source material. He sent samples of good specimens for my type collection. After attaining the new source material for Paradise Chert from Geib and analyzing one field specimen bag with 56 pieces of lithic debitage, I found that 53.5% of the artifacts were from the Paradise Chert source. It is important that I go back and re-analyze the artifacts – I feel if many of the materials placed in the ‘other’ category are identified as Paradise Chert, this has implications that there was trade or extensive travel made by the Fremont people to the resource of Paradise Chert. The Paradise Chert source is not close to where the Fremont lived in the Escalante Basin. If the Fremont exploited Padadise Chert, which is in Anasazi territory, it may imply that these two cultures were interacting or trading with each other. I was not surprised to find reasonable amounts of Morrison Petrified Wood, as the Fremont were practically living on top of the source. The presence of Boulder Jasper was only a trace – I expected a more widespread presence. After reanalysis and improved familiarity with the three different types of these cultures’ raw material sources, I will develop new insights shedding light on what sources were being exploited most heavily in the ancient Escalante Basin.