Developing High-Precision Chronologies for Fremont Foraging-Farming Transitions in Western North America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fremont societies represent the northernmost adoption of agriculture in Western North America. Research on the Fremont provides one of the few opportunities in the world to understand the processes behind both the adoption and the abandonment of agriculture. Decades of research have illustrated how variability is a hallmark of Fremont societies. Understanding variability in Fremont societies requires the development of high-precision chronologies that enable researchers to break down region-wide processes into their various site-specific components. This paper explores the potential for developing high-precision chronologies in Fremont research. We focus specifically on the northeastern-most distribution of Fremont societies. Results indicate challenges provided by the large numbers of low resolution radiocarbon samples currently available to researchers, and the need for new high-precision samples in order to fully understand the processes behind Fremont variability and the conditions the led to the adoption and eventual abandonment of agriculture. We argue that the importance of Fremont research for understanding the adoption and abandonment of agriculture is diminished by sole reliance on coarse-grained, low-resolution chronologies.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Constructing Chronologies II: The Big Picture with Bayes and Beyond   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32060