Marriage Patterns and Material Culture: A Pueblo/Fremont Test Case Using Basketry

Summary

At various times, archaeologists have proposed that the Great Basin Fremont, who lived in Utah and nearby areas between AD 500 and 1250, were Pueblo colonists, a purely indigenous Great Basin development, intrusive Athabaskans, or something in between. Fremont material culture is generally not very different from that of their neighbors, except in a few cases. Four artifact categories distinguish the Fremont: rock art and pottery depictions of trapezoidal figures; grey coiled-construction utility pottery made using local materials; uniquely constructed leather moccasins; and one-rod-and-bundle coiled basketry. Fremont basketry is distinctly different from that of their contemporary neighbors and from the later Numic-speaking peoples who may have replaced them. One possible explanation for the suite of Fremont material attributes is a differential marriage pattern between Great Basin peoples and the Ancestral Pueblo, wherein only Pueblo men or Pueblo women married into Fremont groups. In our initial analysis to examine this hypothesis, we focus on basketry attributes and distribution.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Excavating the Museum: New Research on Old Collections

Keywords

Spatial Coverage