Cady and I were talking today about Fremont mortuary practices. After digging for 4 years in Escalante, we didn't find one Fremont burial. Does that strike anyone else as strange? Similarly, in the 10 years of digging that UCLA did in the Parowan Valley, they found maybe 10-15 burials, of which only a few were "formal" internments. We really don't find too many burials at all do we? Were there even any found in all of Clear Creek?
What if the Fremont were burying most of their people outside of the residential sites, you know, maybe just out in the woods or something. Here's how it could be tested.
1. Compile a database of known Fremont burials, Yoder style. I bet there are less than 200 known, it wouldn't be that hard to do. The most important field would be "burial context" (i.e., house floor, midden, etc).
2. Calculate a per capita ratio of people buried in village contexts / number of residential structures.
3. Do the same calculation for some contemporary PII sites. Include some big pueblos as well as some unit pueblos.
4. Compare the two figures.
Essentially, we'd have a rough idea of how many Fremont and Anasazi folks were buried within their settlement per household. The Anasazi numbers are going to be through the roof when compared to the Fremont. We think that per household, there were far fewer individuals buried within the village, and that they had to be buried somewhere else. Ideas??
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For 512, we went and visited SHPO. It was pretty interesting. At the end of the tour, Ravishing Ron Rood, took us down to their new lab where he had several human remains. He talked about how Fremont burials are found in weird out of the way places, and told a story of two boys in Salt Lake who were digging in a vacant field near Red Butte Gardens to make a fort. As they were digging, they hit a Fremont burial just sitting there. There were no other asociated features, it was just out in the field.
Maybe they wanted their dead as far away as possible...contrast that with the Snazi who buried some of their dead in the floor.
You know I've thought about looking at Fremont burial practices before just because there doesn't seem to be any real formulated research on the subject out there. I think what is particularly weird is that you have burials from different context. Think about Steinaker Gap and the Elsinore Burial site-both in what looks like old storage pits. One apparently out in the middle of no where the other close to a semi-permanent site. Then there's burials in the middle of nowhere like the one Aaron just talked about and in other places (up in the Uinta Basin) there's residential sites where there are burials in the floors of the pithouses. It seems pretty variable to me. But it would be cool to take a systematic look at it and see if any patterns showed up through time or space. Comparing it to the Snazi would be cool, but you would have to take into account that the Snazi were probably sedentary for a lot longer and to a greater degree than the Fremont. They may have wanted to build up some ownership of prime location so buried their dead on site, where early Fremont might have been moving around more and burying their dead as they went. Course that might change in the later period as they became more sedentary. It could make for some interesting research. Now if any of us could just find the stinking time.
I just thought of something else, after the visit to SHPO and RRR, I talked to Jim about Madsen's perspective on the Fremont and Rich's perspective on them (ie seperate groups living in the same region vs a more culturally cohesive group)(if I understand the theories correctly). Jim feels that the Fremont lie somewhere in the middle. He went so far as to say that if a soco had access to the Fremont, he would find that there were many different tribal or familial groups in the Basin and Plateau similar to the numic speakers.
If that is the case, it could explain some of the diversity in burial practice.
In other words, Joe Fremont's family/tribal group may have felt that a burial in an old storage cyst is the right place to bury their dead.
Fred Fremont's family/tribal group might want their dead as far away as possible.
Who knows? Just another idea, one which couldn't be completely determined with out a Yoderistic study.
I think that there is some Basin - Plateau dichotomy, but not as much as Jim thinks. Rich argues in the Cap Reef report that much of the differences are scalar -- nucleated villages never forming on the plateau. I also buy some material culture variation (rock art, ceramics, etc), but what does it really mean to be Fremont?
Important things on both sides that may be indicative of cultural affiliation:
1. Figurine cult
2. Material culture stuff (Distinctive anthropomorphic figures, One rod-and-bundle basketry, Hock-style moccasin, thin-walled, grayware ceramics of the same form, etc.)
3. Pithouse dwelling farmers
4. Probably more...
The two people who are in the best position to discuss real distinctions are Madsen and our own Massah Talbot (and Lane). They've done 10 times more fieldwork than any of these other schmoes. Rich once told me that things look pretty similar on either side.
What makes a Fremont anyway?
Chris, I am very excited to see your answer on what makes a Fremont. When will your thesis be available online with the BYU library?
I'm handing it into Joel a week from Monday. I hope it will be avaialable online in January.
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