Book
Cowboys & cave dwellers: basketmaker archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch
School of American Research Press ; Distributed by the University of Washington Press • Santa Fe, N.M. • Published In 1997 • Pages:
By: Blackburn, Fred M., Williamson, Ray A..
AbstractBrief abstract written by HRAF anthropologists who have done the subject indexing for the document
This book mixes the story of the exploration of Grand Gulch, Utah in the 1890s by cowboy archaeologists Richard Wetherill, his brothers, and other interested antiquarians with the more recent explorations in the late 1980s to early 1990s by avocational archaeologists of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project. Richard Wetherill had excavated in the caves and rockshelters of Grand Gulch for prehistoric artifacts. Through his excavations Richard Wetherill realized there had been two groups of people living in these canyons and he called them 'Basket Makers.' The Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project's goal was to do reverse archaeology; to locate the artifacts dug up in the 1890s, photograph them, and provenience them (find out exactly which cave or rock shelter they had been excavated from). Grand Gulch is located in an area known as canyon country, where each canyon has canyons of its own, many rockshelters, shallow alcoves, and a few caves, so it was not an easy task to locate the locations of these early excavations. Some of the artifacts were eventually located at Chicago's Field Museum and the American Museum of Natural History in New York. One chapter of this book is an overview of Basketmaker culture.
- SubjectsDocument-level OCM identifiers given by the anthropology subject indexers at HRAF
- Reviews and critiques
- Artifact and archive collections
- Historical and archival research
- Culture summary
- Identification
- traditionCulture name from the Outline of World Cultures (OWC)
- Basketmaker
- HRAF PubDateThe date HRAF published the document
- 2010
- RegionThe area the document pertains to
- North America
- Sub RegionThe more specific area the document pertains to, which is located within the Region
- Southwest and Basin
- Document TypeMay include journal articles, essays, collections of essays, monographs, or chapters/parts of monographs
- Book
- Evaluation
- Creator TypeThe type of person writing the document, e.g. Ethnographer, Missionary, Archaeologist, Folklorist, Linguist, Indigenous Person, and so on.
- Unknown
- Document Rating A ranking done by HRAF anthropologists based on the strength of the source material on a scale of 1 to 5, as follows: 1 - poor; 2 - fair; 3 - good, useful data, but not uniformly excellent; 4 - excellent secondary data; 5 - excellent primary data.
- 4: Excellent Secondary Data
- 5: Excellent Primary Data
- AnalystThe HRAF anthropologist who subject indexed the document and prepared other materials for the eHRAF culture/tradition collection
- Sarah Berry; 2009
- Field DateThe date the researcher conducted the fieldwork or archival research that produced the document
- 1981, 1986-1990, 1992-1994
- Coverage DateThe date or dates that the information in the document pertains to
- 3500-1250 BP (1500 BC-AD 750)
- Coverage PlaceLocation of the research culture or tradition (often a smaller unit such as a band, community, or archaeological site)
- Colorado Plateau; Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah; United States
- NotesAdditional notes
- Fred M. Blackburn & Ray A. Williamson
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 171-181) and index
- LCCNLibrary of Congress Control Number
- 96029572
- LCSHLibrary of Congress Subject Headings
- Basket-Maker Indians--Antiquities
- Indians of North America--Utah--Antiquities
- Grand Gulch (San Juan County, Utah)--Antiquities