Cholla Bud Roasting in St. George, Utah during the Early Pueblo II Period

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Cactus-bud procurement is not typically associated with Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan subsistence systems. Yet, when I visited a small artifact scatter on the apex of a rocky, cholla-covered hill near St. George, Utah, I was reminded of cactus-procurement landscapes on the Tohono O’odham Reservation in southern Arizona. Subsequent data recovery investigations proved my suspicions correct, revealing several slab-lined roasting pits that had been used to cook cholla buds. This paper describes those excavations and our experience gathering and processing cholla buds with Southern Paiute Tribal members to study the cholla bud nutritional values and return rates.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Hot Rocks in Hot Places: Investigating the 10,000-Year Record of Plant Baking across the US-Mexico Borderlands

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Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23857