Classic Vernal Style Shield-bearers in Uinta Fremont Iconography

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Images of the Uinta Fremont (A.D. 0 - 1300)" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In recent decades, scholarship about pre-contact Plains and Pueblo shields have referenced a region in Utah’s Uinta Basin that is seemingly a hot spot for shield iconography among the Fremont (A.D. 300 - 1300). The rock imagery classification of Classic Vernal Style makes room for shields and shield-bearers as possibly a variant located in the westernmost extent of the type's geographic range, but has not addressed why this iconography would have such an intense and localized expression in the Uinta Basin. The Utah SHPO’s Northern Uinta Rock Imagery Project has examined over hundreds of shields, shield bearers, and related “round things” to determine cultural and temporal affiliation using stylistic analysis and superposition of specific elements. Shield iconography is a relatively late addition to the Fremont stylistic lexicon, a finding that consistent with observations made over 100 miles south in the Four Corners region during the Pueblo III period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Images of the Uinta Fremont (A.D. 0 - 1300)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52863