Utah site reveals a new past By Katy Human

“Something big” happened in this part of the world about 1300, said Kevin Jones, Utah’s state archaeologist: The Fremont people and their Anasazi neighbors abandoned agriculture. The Anasazi retreated to Mesa Verde’s easily defended cliff homes. The Fremont living in Range Creek also may have retreated to steep cliffs – radiocarbon dates aren’t in yet.

Many researchers suspect burgeoning populations and other cultural changes left those ancient North Americans vulnerable to a years-long drought about 1250.

“We generally know that environmental conditions got rough. We know that social conditions got rough … I wouldn’t be surprised if disease was involved,” Jones said. “Whatever it was, we may be able to find out here.”

After their third field season at Range Creek, a once-private ranch put under federal and state protection last year, archaeologists still haven’t put a shovel to dirt.

But in Range Creek Canyon, they’ve found more artifacts, more untouched mounds of trash, and bigger stores of corn than at any other Fremont site.

And the items are in stranger places: At some point, the Fremont in Range Creek chose to live in homes perched hundreds of feet up sheer cliffs rather than in the stream-fed valley below.