33 Utah Archaeology 27(1), 2014, pp. 33–56 COPYRIGHT © 2014 USAS and UPAC
B
etween about A.D. 500 and 1300, the
Fremont lived in much of modern Utah and
parts of Colorado, Nevada, and Idaho (Talbot
2000a:278). Fremont people used ceramics
which are different than those used by other
Southwestern groups (Watkins 2009), cultivated
and consumed maize while still relying on
some wild resources (Simms 1986), and, by at
least A.D. 1050, sometimes lived in aggregated
villages (Talbot et al. 2000; Johansson et al.
2012; Wilde and Soper 1999). While the term
Fremont is currently used to encompass both
farmers and foragers who used a distinctive style
of artifacts, we focus here on Fremont farmers,
speciically those who congregated in distinct
village communities. Within these communities,
the Fremont built structures in a variety of shapes
and sizes, using several different construction
methods. Regional and temporal variability
can account for some of these differences,
but architecture is also highly variable among
contemporaneous structures within many
Fremont villages.
Wolf Village (42UT273) is a Fremont site
located south of Utah Lake on a series of ridges
and adjacent south-facing slopes just north of
the mouth of Goshen Canyon on the west side of
Currant Creek (Figure 1). From 2009 to 2013,
Brigham Young University’s Archaeological
Field School excavated nine structures at Wolf
Village (Allison and Janetski 2012). Radiocarbon
dates suggest that all of the excavated structures
were occupied within a few decades in the 11th
or early 12th centuries A.D., yet house forms
include both pit and surface structures, and
structure size ranges from less than 20 to over
70 m
2
(Table 1; Figure 2). This article describes
the architecture of the excavated structures at
Wolf Village as an example of the high degree of
architectural variability present at Fremont sites.
Our goals are largely descriptive and our analyses
preliminary, but we also discuss how intrasite
variation at Wolf Village and at other Fremont
Wolf Village (42UT273): A Case Study in Fremont Architectural Variability
Lindsay D. Johansson
Department of Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder
The Brigham Young University archaeological ield school has spent ive ield seasons excavating at Wolf Village
(42UT273), a large Fremont site in Utah Valley. Wolf Village is a blend of typical Fremont architectural traits
and unique or rare characteristics. This blending is exempliied in the two adobe surface structures, which are
the only well-documented adobe structures in Utah Valley; the residential pit structures, which include features
such as multiple ventilation entrances and are abnormally large; and the 80.5 m² pit structure, which is the
largest Fremont structure found to date and was likely used for communal activities. Despite the differences
in construction, radiocarbon dating suggests that all these structures date to a relatively short time period in
the A.D. 1000s. Exploring architectural traits and variation at Wolf Village and other Fremont sites gives new
insights into community and interaction within the Fremont world.
Katie K. Richards
James R. Allison
Department of Anthropology, Washington State University
Department of Anthropology, Brigham Young University