Laserfiche WebLink
<br />figures, and gray coil-made pottery--traits not always found <br />together (Madsen 1989:9-11). <br />Regionally, the Fremont apparently retained many Archaic <br />subsistence strategies such as relying more on the gathering <br />of wild plants and having less dependence on domesticated <br />ones--corn, beans, and squash. Maize horticulture was <br />practiced throughout the area, however, as indicated by <br />excavations in east central Utah and west central Colorado. <br />Lister and Dick (1952) and Wormington and Lister (1956) <br />documented the presence of "Fremont-Basketmakers" as they <br />uncovered unbaked, molded clay figurines and evidence of corn <br />horticulture at rock shelter sites in Glade Park, southwest of <br />Grand Junction, Colorado. These and other sites in Glade Park <br />also are known for their splendid Fremont rock art of the <br />Classic Sieber Canyon style (Conner and Ott 1978). <br />Fremont ceramics are occasionally found in west-central <br />Colorado, often in association with Anasazi decorated and <br />corrugated Puebloan wares. Anasazi wares have been recovered <br />from the Mesa/Collbran area and were comparatively dated <br />between A.D. 1000-1300 (Annand 1967:57). Groups I and II of <br />the analyzed pottery in Annand's study were not assigned a <br />cultural affiliation but, from the descriptions given, may be <br />Fremont. <br />The end of the Fremont Culture in the region is roughly <br />coincident with the drought of A.D. 1275-1300 and the ensuing <br />influx of people from the Southwest into the Great Basin and <br />Colorado Plateau. The newcomers, now named the Utes, were-- <br />and are--part of a larger group of Numic Speakers (Shoshonean) <br />of the Uto-Aztecan language phylum (Smith 1974:10). Linguists <br />are fairly certain that the Numic speakers were in south- <br />western Colorado by A.D. 1300. Their appearance in the <br />Fremont territory ca. A.D. 1200 is based on finds of Shoshone <br />pottery mixed with the upper Strata of Fremont artifacts in <br />many cave sites in Utah (Jennings 1978:235).. Unfortur_ately, <br />evidence of their early cultural material is scant, which <br />precludes a precise description of their lifeway. <br />As shown in the studies by Jennings, a specific pottery <br />type is a chronological indicator of early Ute sites. It is a <br />crude brownware made with a coarse temper of crushed rock and <br />fired at low temperatures. The local variant was first named <br />by Buckles as Uncompahgre Brownware and was stratigraphically <br />assigned a date of A.D. 1550 to 1881 (Buckles 1971:505). <br />However, the date for the pottery is being pushed back by <br />recent finds. Grand River Institute recently recovered <br />• charcoal and Uncompahgre Brownware from a washed out hearth <br />8 <br />