Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Experimental Archaeology in Range Creek Canyon, Utah" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 2013, staff and students of the Range Creek Field Station (RCFS), eastern Utah, have been studying Fremont farming techniques by conducting actualistic farming experiments. These experiments are designed to understand the costs and benefits of irrigating and storing maize under modern environmental constraints. By farming small plots of maize at the RCFS, we are able to build expectations about what past farmers would have done. One experiment looks at the productivity of maize (yield) depending on amount of water given to each plot. A second experiment measures the costs of irrigation by constructing a simple surface irrigation system using only simple tools available 1,000 years ago to Fremont farmers. A third experiment records the rooting depth of maize plants watered at varying depth. A fourth experiment measures the costs and benefits of constructing small replica storage structures used by the Fremont. The posters in this session will discuss the results of these experiments and how the results inform on the archaeology of Range Creek Canyon and other desert farmers. The topics include actualistic experiments, excavation of historic ditches, changes in rooting depth of heirloom maize varieties, and variability in maize starch when watered different amounts during the growing season.