July 31: A Change of Plans

We decided to postpone our excursion into Nine-Mile Canyon rather than risk flash floods.  We had not counted on so much rain.  We have had more overcast days than clear days so far.

But we did not let the day go to waste.

Price, Utah, is a college town with a great little museum of pre-historic America. Price also has a United Methodist Church on Main Street.

The Museum of the College of Eastern Utah has two wings.  Everyone and their kids heads to the dinosaur exhibits.  This is serious dinosaur country.  I mean real ones, not metaphorical ones like us.  The Cleveland-Lloyd Dinosaur quarry nearby claims to have supplied 85% of the dinosaur exhibits in American natural history museums.

We headed to the Fremont Indian exhibit.  The curator at the museum is a highly respected scholar of the Fremont culture.  The museum has a laid-back atmosphere (perhaps because it’s staffed by college students), and I had no problem taking pictures—experimenting a bit with the settings on my new camera.

The hunter using the pre-bow and arrow weapon called an atlatl was impressive, though emaciated.

 The atlatl was a powerful, hinged spear throwing mechanism that applied a great deal of force to the spear point.

The reconstructed pithouse shows that the Fremont Indians continued to live the way the ancient “Basketmaker” culture of the early Anasazi lived.

 The curator of the museum suggested that anthropologists have overlooked the overlap between the Anasazi and Fremont cultures.

The museum also displayed a shaman’s headdress found in the Fremont area that bears striking resemblance to many rock art headdresses.

The coiled basket is a reminder that the people were skilled weavers (using yucca fibers) and continued using a tradition that Anasazi people abandoned in favor of pottery—though the Fremont could produce undecorated pottery too.

The most famous (deservedly so) exhibit was the one showing the “Pilling figurines” from around 1000 A.D., found a few decades ago.

  They are Fremont, unlike anything in Puebloan culture and virtually identical to many of the figures in Fremont rock art that we were about to see.

A cradleboard was unearthed that used one of these kinds of figurines in place of a child.

 Perhaps this was some sort of religious fetish.

The museum makes an important point in telling visitors that archeologists no longer remove objects from sites in order to provide “show and tell.”  Once removed from their context, these objects lose all relevance to future researchers.

After the very informative museum visit, we set out for Vernal, Utah, 120 miles to the northeast.  Although we still had to traverse canyons, at least the road was paved.

We set up camp at the KOA (hot showers, laundry, and dishwashing facilities)

 and prepared to hike to Fremont rock art sites.