Fremont Archaeology

In his 1931 publication of The Ancient Culture of the Fremont River in Utah Noel Morss provided the first description of an archaeological assemblage (tools, pottery, rockart, architecture) that would define the Fremont Archaeological Complex, distinguishing the people that left these artifacts behind from their Ancestral Puebloan neighbors to the south. 

The name was taken from the river in south central Utah along which he had found artifacts left behind by a prehistoric people whose name for themselves is lost to history and whose ultimate fate is unknown. 

What we do know is that between about CE 300 – 1300, across most of what is now Utah and parts of Nevada, Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado, the way people had been living changed.  They added corn, beans, and squash to their diet that had previously been based on the wild resources they could hunt or gather.  However, unlike the Ancestral Puebloan who relied heavily on farming, wild resources continued to be a significant part of the Fremont diet.  Along with a reliance on farming came more settlements, sturdier more permanent houses (pithouses), and food storage facilities (granaries and cists) made of stone and mud.