The fourth episode of Time Team America took the team to Range Creek Canyon in Utah. Range Creek Canyon possesses hundreds of archaeological sites attributed to Fremont peoples. The Fremont Indians occupied not only this area but were spread out all over Utah and also on the borders of nearby states such as Idaho, Colorado and Nevada. They lived here from around 700 CE through about 1300 CE. These people subsisted on a mixture of hunting/gather as well as farming. (More information about the Fremont can be found here and here) The previous owner of Range Creek Canyon, whose family has had possession of the land for generations, deeded the land to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resource, which will preserve and protect its resources. Due to the area's remoteness, very few people knew about the archaeological resources in the area until very recently. The area's dry environment has also done a wonderful job preserving invaluable artifacts and sites that would have otherwise been lost. Without its remoteness, dry environment, and excellent stewardship Range Creek Canyon might not be the amazing assemblage that we know today.
Time Team helped out on a site called Big Village, which consists of several pit houses, some of which can still be seen due to the circular pattern of rocks on the ground surface. The geophysics team really shined through at this site. With their techniques and equipment they managed to find what used to be the walls of one of the pit houses, along with a midden nearby. None of this could be seen on the surface and would have only been found otherwise by pure chance and hours of labor. Another unit that was previously thought to be some sort of a midden (trash pit) turned up evidence of being a structure so the team tried to figure out where the walls are and why it’s a different design than the other pit houses near by.
One of the more intriguing questions they look into at Range Creek is why the Fremont peoples built granaries on the cliff sides. In order to get a better understanding of these granaries a member of the team and a specialist decided to try to create their own granary based off ones present in the area. This is another example of experimental archaeology (which as been discussed more in-depth in a previous post) at work helping to understand how such structures were built and what they may have looked like at the time they were being used. The key difference here is that unlike earlier when experimental archaeology was used to reproduce tools, here you can see it being used to recreate structures through traditional methods. These granaries, as I mentioned before, where built on cliff sides and other places that were rather difficult to get too. They built these granaries all over in visible yet difficult spots to get to as a means of protection in order to ensure that they would always have a source of food for when times when it was not possible to hunt, gather or farm. It is really a quite interesting method of storing food but to learn how it was an effective means of protection you can go watch this episode and see for yourself.
An important thing that this episode shows, which is often lost in the more classical form of archaeological programming, is that fieldwork isn’t always comfortable. Here they had to deal with temperatures surpassing 100 degrees and long hours traveling to and from the site, among other difficulties. At previous sites they had to deal with bugs and rain. Dealing with the conditions at a site is an important reality that I think tends to get overlooked quite often when talking about archaeology. Even with perfect weather the process of excavation is still not always a comfortable one seeing as it involves a lot of physical labor. Having participated in an actual field school I think that the depiction given by Time Team America is probably one of the most accurate you will see through any sort of media, whether it be television or movies. Archaeology tends to be overly romanticized as can be easily seen in movies such as Indiana Jones. The actual practice of archaeology is not even close to what it is commonly depicted as. There is a lot more physical labor and effort that one would assume. Archaeology is also a lot more tedious than most would imagine. Because excavation destroys a site very detailed notes must be taken so that no information is lost. I think its important to realize that archaeology is often not the most comfortable or easy thing to do because it makes what we do have more important. It also makes that next exciting find that much more exciting knowing all the hard work that went into finding it.
More information about Range Creek can be found here.
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