Fair 27° F

Home > Archive > Apr 19, 2007

Archaeologists Dig the Past in Southern Utah
By Katrice Schimbeck
Staff Writer

Inhabitation by people always leaves evidence. We change and shape things to meet our needs. Our things will leave evidence of our passing, whether we keep them or throw them away. It wasn’t so different long ago, and there are hundreds of sites around Southern Utah significant to archeology. Rapid development in Southern Utah requires these sites to be dealt with. This brings opportunity to find out more about inhabitants living here thousands of years ago.
One such area under study is near Sand Hollow Reservoir, where the Sand Hollow Resort is being built. There were excavations when the reservoir was built, and there are 13 sites currently slated for digging, originally identified in 1995 by the Bureau of Land Management. Subsequent surveys were done in anticipation of a land exchange for private development and determined the sites had research potential. 
Because of this potential, developers hired Bighorn Archaeological Consultants to excavate the sites prior to building. This is required under the National Historic Preservation Act. Dale Gourley, co-owner of Bighorn, wrote up the plan for the sites and began excavation in October. Bighorn has until August to complete the project.
Because of the time constraints, a backhoe was used to dig a trench across the site, and areas were determined for digging according to what was found. Areas are marked in a grid of one-meter squares. Squares are then dug in 10-centimeter levels.
The best indicator of past occupation is a charcoal stain. Indians in this period, the Late Archaic Period, 2,000 to 4,000 years ago, lived mostly in caves and wickiups. A wickiup is a structure very similar to a domed tent built with willow sticks put into the ground and bent and then covered. These organic structures are long gone, but the charcoal stains from fires remain.
When a charcoal stain is discovered, several samples are taken. One is for C-14 dating, one is for a floatation sample to find seeds, and one is to test for pollen. When these tests are complete, we have a picture of what these pre-Anasazi Indians ate and what their environment was like.
The people who lived in the area of present-day Sand Hollow were primarily a hunter/gatherer society. They gathered stones from the riverbed and elsewhere and traded with other Indians. They wove baskets very tightly, lined them with pitch from trees and carried water in them. Their life was very hard. Gourley talked about finding a burial site in Fort Pierce Wash. The man’s teeth were ground flat from sand in their food. For this reason, a good hard grinding stone was important. The harder the stone, the less sand was in the food.
“These were Archaic people who were out here hunting and gathering -- a lot of gathering,” Gourley said.
One site in the project has approximately 50 charcoal stains to be studied. Most of the evidence gathered at this dig is fire-cracked mano and metate stones (grinding stones), cutting stones, arrow points, and flakes from shaping stones. The arrow points are atlatl points they attached to throwing sticks. Archaeologists also found a few animal bones, mostly rabbit, a drill, and some pottery sherds from the Anasazi. An Anasazi storage place is carved into the residual rock.
“There is more Archaic information here than in a lot of the Southwest,” Gourley said.
Digging a site is very slow and labor intensive. Each meter is dug by hand, sometimes with trowels and brushes. Buckets are filled, and researchers keep track of which area they came from. The soil, or sand in this case, is then sifted through a mesh screen to find anything missed during digging. Researchers keep a careful record of what is found and where. Larger rocks are left in place and mapped, as they might indicate a fireplace, or other structure archaeologists call a “feature.”
“When we find the arrowheads, that’s pretty exciting,” Malory Kellar said. She is a Brigham Young University student working on the dig.
Bighorn has contracted with BYU to help complete the dig on time. Bighorn currently has 16 projects in various stages from pre-start to final writeup. With all these projects, there still will be only a 5 percent sample taken of all archaeological sites in the area.
There is no local chapter of the Utah Statewide Archaeological Society; the closest one is in Iron County, but volunteers are welcome to work at the dig site. For more information, contact Dale Gourley at 656-1647 or dgourley@bighornarchaeology.com.

---