The Age and Function of Slab-Lined Stone Features Associated with a Fremont Foraging-Farming Landscape in Cub Creek, Dinosaur National Monument, Northeastern Utah

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.

Utah’s Fremont archaeological complex is well-known as a transitional foraging-farming society from AD 300–1300. Individual Fremont systems included a set of bundled agricultural niches with associated foraging ranges. In a recent survey above Cub Creek in Dinosaur National Monument, we discovered many slab-lined stone features in an upland area not well-suited for agriculture. This study presents the results of AMS radiocarbon dating and macrobotanical analyses to determine the age and function of the features. An initial AMS radiocarbon age indicates the features date to the early Fremont period prior to the intensification of maize agriculture and the formation of a settled pithouse community in Cub Creek from AD 840–1080. These open-air slab-lined features appear to have functioned as earth ovens where large volumes of plant foods could be prepared for immediate consumption or transported to the Cub Creek lowlands. These data complement the well-documented local foraging-farming transition where a mixed foraging-farming economy was a strategy for offsetting the effects of variable precipitation and provide a comparative framework for the function of slab-lined storage features common in the region from the Archaic through Fremont periods.

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): 37340.0