Ute Ethnographic Cultural Landscapes in Southeast Utah

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The Nuche, or Ute people, have been in their homelands across Colorado and Utah since time immemorial. Southeast Utah formed part of the larger movements of the Ute bands with connections to the area, which in turn formed part of the overall Ute movements across the entire Ute homeland. The cultural landscape of southeast Utah serves as a microcosm of Nuche lifeways as a whole. The Abajos of southeast Utah, for example, not only provide nourishment of wild animals the Utes hunt, plants they gather, and crops they farm downstream, but also provide spiritual nourishment and cultural continuity. It proves vital then to not only consider specific archaeological sites, but how the entire cultural landscape formed a necessary part of Ute lifeways. A Utah BLM funded ethnographic study is showing the depth and variety of 32 tribes’ connections to southeast Utah, but this talk will specifically focus on Numic, both Ute and Southern Paiute, cultural landscapes in southeast Utah. Included in this discussion will be an overview of interdisciplinary ethnographic and archaeological documentation being conducted at a Numic petroglyph site, as well as how tribes and archaeologists can better collaborate to reach mutually beneficial outcomes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Transcending Modern Boundaries: Recent Investigations of Cultural Landscapes in Southeastern Utah   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25692