I
recently started as the Curator of Archaeology at the Utah State
University-College of Eastern Utah Prehistoric Museum in Price, UT. Price, perched on the northwestern edge of
the Colorado Plateau, is a great vantage to survey and report on the
archaeology of Eastern Utah. A range of
incredibly beautiful landscapes, including the San Rafael Swell, Tavaputs
Plateau, Wasatch Mountains, and Castle Valley, are all an easy drive of Price. Each of these regions has a rich
archaeological record, with sites ranging from Ice Age hunting sites to
historic Ute encampments. This blog will
bring to life many of the different cultures that have called Eastern Utah
home.
The focus of this blog will include the various
archaeological happenings associated with the museum as well as general reports
of interesting archaeological research in the region and recommendations for
trips to museums and publicly accessible sites.
The remainder of this first post will present some background on me as
both an archaeologist and a person.
I was raised in the Great North Woods of Michigan, living near
Charlevoix, a small community in the northern Lower Peninsula until I was 5,
then moving to the Kalamazoo-Battle Creek Metro Area in Southwest Michigan. Frequent camping trips as a kid inoculated a
fascination with the natural world, as well as those cultures that made a
living in a more direct manner from their environment. I was particularly fascinated by the cultural
exchanges that took place with the expansion of European settlement across the Americas. I was also very interested in science as a
student, and attending the Kalamazoo Area Math and Science Center during high
school exposed me to a number of disciplines, including biomedical science,
engineering, and geology. With one foot
firmly entrenched in the natural sciences and the other in history and the social
sciences, I went to college at the University of Chicago with the intent of
earning a degree in history and geophysical science.
My college experience opened my eyes to the varied
opportunities for academic study as well as to the diversity and beauty of the
world. Early in my second year, I took
an elective course titled Ancient Celtic Societies because of my interest in
aspects of my European heritage. This
course was an archaeology course focused on the trade and interaction of the
Roman Empire with Celtic peoples across Western Europe. The combined analysis of the written records of
the Romans and the material culture left by the Celtic peoples seemed a much
more complete approach of the history of these peoples than a simple
examination of the written record of their literate neighbors by itself. This course led to another, which led to a reexamination
of my choice of major. Archaeology
seemed to mix many of the aspects of history and natural sciences that had
attracted my attention in the first place.
I decided to go to an archaeological field school to see if I enjoyed
the practice of archaeology as much as the coursework.
This field school, located on the east face of the Sandia
Mountains near Albuquerque, NM, was focused on a Pueblo structure that was
re-occupied after Spanish settlement of the region. The reoccupation, though smaller than the
original occupation, saw the creation of an animal pen and a copper smelter,
both economic activities unknown in the Southwest prior to the arrival of the
Spanish. Written records also indicated
that this site may have been a visita, a village incorporated into the
traveling round by priests from an associated mission, where a priest was
killed. This combination of economic
integration and politico-religious insurrection immediately intrigued me. While many aspects of the archaeological
fieldwork were tedious, the ability to work outside in such a beautiful setting
and use both my mind and body was the perfect task for me. I was hooked.
I went back to Chicago intent on changing my major to anthropology,
the study of humankind, a discipline that includes archaeology, the study of
material remains of past human activity.
I enjoyed the coursework immensely and went back to the field the
following summer, this time in an independent study focused on the use of wild
plants as food among the post-contact Puebloan population. This led to a senior honors thesis focused on
the carbonized evidence for wild plant resources from the site. My interest in paleoethnobotany, the study of
past human-plant interactions, continues to this day.
Next blog post, Out in the wide, wild world of Cultural
Resource Management.
