Did Arroyo Formation Impact the Occupation of Snake Rock Village, a Fremont Dryland Agricultural Community in Central Utah ca. AD 1000 through 1200?

Summary

This is an abstract from the "The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers" session, at the 88th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Fremont farmers of the northern Colorado Plateau grew maize at the margins of cultivation in western North America. Like other Indigenous farmers throughout the American Southwest, Fremont farmers used bundled agricultural niches where alluvial floodplains were the largest available site for cultivation. But dryland floodplains are a risk to the sustainability of farming communities because the development of steep-sided arroyos lowers water tables, rendering them unusable for growing maize. This study tests the relationship between the occupational timing of Snake Rock Village AD 1000–1200 and the formation of a major 4.5 m deep arroyo. We present a high-precision AMS radiocarbon chronology of the village occupation paired with an AMS radiocarbon and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) reconstruction of the Ivie Creek floodplain 400 m upstream from the site. The results of this study provide a direct test of arroyo formation as a cause for the abandonment of Fremont agriculture by AD 1300.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• The Socioecological Dynamics of Holocene Foragers and Farmers   •
• Society for American Archaeology 88th Annual Meeting, Portland, OR (2023)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 36904.0