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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

adobe-embedded hair, Arrowhead Hill, Escalante, Utah, pit-house structure, Formative Period

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

Anthropology

Abstract

During the Spring Term of 2004, the BYU Archaeological Field School excavated a portion of Arrowhead Hill, a Formative (or early agricultural) Period site a few miles west of Escalante, Utah. Two intriguing finds were made during that field season: two pit-house structures of varying style situated within a few meters of each other and multiple large, deep, spherical underground pits. Diagnostic characteristics of Formative Period pit-houses are, among others, the style of structure construction and the style and type of ceramic vessels recovered on or near the original floor of the structure. From this, it was concluded that one residential pit-house was of Anasazi origin, the other, Fremont—two quite different cultural groups. Spatial data and multiple radiocarbon dates collected from the two structures showed them to be contemporaneous—both structures being occupied from about AD 900 to 1100. No site within the Great Basin is yet known to contain both Fremont and Anasazi occupations so close together in both space and time. The spherical underground pits, roughly 1m in diameter, are unprecedented within the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau. It is surmised that they functioned as some form of storage structure, possibly keeping food and other valuables cool, dry, and hidden away. Preliminary dates taken from charred corncobs found within the sediment that filled these pits extend back to AD 600—300 to 500 years prior to the larger Anasazi and Fremont residential structures. It is assumed that the Fremont inhabited the Escalante Valley as early as AD 200, but the dates from the storage pits were derived from the substances that filled them in, not from the actual structures themselves.

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