Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear: Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands

Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear

Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands

EDITED BY

Robert H. Brunswig

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF COLORADO

Louisville

© 2020 by University Press of Colorado

Published by University Press of Colorado

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The University Press of Colorado is a cooperative publishing enterprise supported, in part, by Adams State University, Colorado State University, Fort Lewis College, Metropolitan State University of Denver, Regis University, University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, University of Wyoming, Utah State University, and Western Colorado University.

ISBN: 978-1-64642-017-9 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1-64642-018-6 (ebook)

https://doi.org/10.5876/9781646420186

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Brunswig, Robert H., editor.

Title: Spirit Lands of the Eagle and Bear : Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands / edited by Robert H. Brunswig.

Description: Louisville, Colorado : University Press of Colorado, [2020] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020010043 (print) | LCCN 2020010044 (ebook) | ISBN 9781646420179 (cloth) | ISBN 9781646420186 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Numic Indians—Colorado—History. | Numic Indians—Colorado—Social life and customs. | Numic Indians—Wyoming—History. | Numic Indians—Wyoming—Social life and customs. | Numic Indians—Antiquities. | Antiquities, Prehistoric—Colorado. | Antiquities, Prehistoric—Wyoming. | Excavations (Archaeology)—Colorado. | Excavations (Archaeology)—Wyoming. | Colorado—Antiquities. | Wyoming—Antiquities.

Classification: LCC E99.N97 S65 2020 (print) | LCC E99.N97 (ebook) | DDC 978.7/01—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010043

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020010044

Cover illustration by Eric Carlson.

Contents

List of Figures

List of Tables

1 Introduction to Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory

Robert H. Brunswig

2. The Shoshone Problem: Interpreting Ethnic Identity from the Edge of the Eastern Great Basin

Bryon Schroeder

3. Considering High Altitudes within the Numic Spread

Matthew A. Stirn

4. Northern Ute Origins and Holding the World Together

Byron Loosle

5. Prehistoric Villages in the Wind River Mountains, Wyoming

Richard Adams

6. The View from Promontory Point

John (Jack) W. Ives

7. Mountain Ute and Earliest Numic Colonization of the Southern Rocky Mountains: A New Perspective from the Sue Site (5JA421), North Park, Colorado

Robert H. Brunswig

8. Reconstructing a Prehistoric Ute Sacred Landscape in the Southern Rocky Mountains

Christine Chady, David Diggs, and Robert H. Brunswig

9. Ritual Places and Sacred Pathways of Ute Spiritual/Mundane Landscapes in the Southern Colorado Rockies

Robert H. Brunswig

10. Insights Regarding the Dating of Ute Occupation in West Central and Northwest Colorado: A Perspective from the Colorado Wickiup Project

Curtis Martin

11. Ute and Navajo Cultural Interaction during the Protohistoric and Early Historic Periods: A View from Western Colorado

Rand A. Greubel and John D. Cater

12. When the Mountain People Came to Taos: Ute Archaeology in the Northern Rio Grande

Lindsay M. Montgomery

13. The Return of the Native: Northern Ute Removal from and Return to Colorado Ancestral Homelands

Sally McBeth

14. An Afterword: Forging a Firmer Foundation for Understanding of Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the US Rocky Mountains and Borderlands

Robert H. Brunswig

References Cited

About the Authors

Index

Figures

3.1. Location of Numic-expansion range and alpine-village sites mentioned in this chapter

4.1. Overview of northeastern Utah, showing the Uinta Basin and the Uinta Mountains

4.2. Both exterior halves of the Clegg vessel

4.3. Typical culturally modified scar shape and location on a ponderosa pine

4.4. Allen Corral plan map

5.1. Western United States, location of sites mentioned in the text

5.2. Cribbed versus conical wickiups in Wyoming

5.3. High Rise Village Site

5.4. Plan view and profile of a cut-and-fill lodge pad with wooden architectural elements

6.1. Promontory-phase sites and locations discussed in the text

6.2. East wall of 2013 excavations adjoining Steward’s Trench B area

6.3. Examples of Promontory moccasins

6.4. Promontory moccasins

6.5. Hide-working implements from Promontory Cave 1

6.6. Promontory pottery recovered by Steward from Promontory Cave 1

6.7. Rock-art figures from Promontory Cave 1 and Grotto Canyon

7.1. Sue site and Ballinger Draw Research Area

7.2. GIS-map of Ballinger Draw Research Area and its inclusive sites

7.3. Location map of 5JA421 excavation blocks

7.4. Photographs of intact and partially intact projectile points

7.5. Three rim- and lip-sherd profiles from the 5JA421 vessel

7.6. Refitted double-braided appliqué sherd, and refitted rim section with double-braid

7.7. Fingernail- and fingertip-impressed refitted sherd sections

7.8. Side and top views of the refitted ceramic handle

7.9. Sue-site obsidian-artifact source locations in American West regions

8.1. Examples of sacred-site features

8.2. Two models showing posterior probability of finding sacred features

8.3. Eight areas with high probability of locating sacred archaeological sites

8.4. Locations of newly discovered sites using GIS predictive modeling

8.5. Sacred landmarks and suspected sacred sites used in intervisibility analysis

8.6. Views from Mount Chiquita: toward (a) North Park and (b) Longs Peak

9.1. GIS map of the 1914 Toll trails through Rocky Mountain National Park

9.2. Ute territory in the southern Rockies, eastern Great Basin, and Colorado Plateau

9.3. Indigenous trails and trail corridors, northcentral Colorado Rockies

9.4. Rock-feature trail markers on North Park’s Pederson Ridge

10.1. A metal-ax-cut wickiup pole base

10.2. Uncompahgre Brownware vessel

10.3. Modern seed bead artwork

10.4. Comparison of earlier and later seed beads shown at the same scale

10.5. Camp-made iron projectile points from the Pisgah Wickiup Village

10.6. Plan view of the excavated area at the Feature 2 locus of site 5ME16097

10.7. Feature 2 locus with all basalt rocks deleted except those over 25 cm in diameter

10.8. Feature 1, wickiup, at site 5DT1895, looking east

10.9. Plan view of Feature 1, wickiup, at 5DT1895

10.10. Feature 2, semicircular arrangement of sandstone cobbles, site 5DT1895

11.1. Northwestern New Mexico and southwestern Colorado

11.2. Eastern Ute core area and maximum extent of Eastern and Western Ute territory

11.3. Core area and maximum extent of Navajo occupation during the Dinétah phase

11.4. Core area and maximum extent of Navajo occupation during the Gobernador phase

11.5. Core area and maximum extent of Navajo occupation during the Cabezon phase

11.6. Collapsed forked-stick hogan

11.7. Ute wickiup, Structure 1 at the Simpson Wickiup site (5SM2425)

11.8. Dinétah Grayware, plain variety

11.9. Dinétah Grayware, indented variety

11.10. Uncompahgre Brownware, plain variety

11.11. Uncompahgre Brownware, indented variety

11.12. Distributions of Ute and Navajo sites, based on inventory data

12.1. Distribution of Ute sites by site type

12.2. Ute encampment with Plains-style tipi and brush shelter

12.3. Distribution of brownware pottery based on cultural affiliation.

12.4. Mobility cycle of the Muache Ute

12.5. Distribution of petroglyph sites in New Mexico by cultural affiliation

12.6. Manby Hot Springs site with rock-art panels

12.7. Brownware sherds located at the Manby Hot Springs site

12.8. Petroglyph panels from Manby Hot Springs

13.1. Leaning wickiup, 1915–1916

13.2. Helen Wash and Loya Arrum offering tobacco in RMNP

Tables

5.1. Selected artifact and feature types at Wind River Mountain Villages

5.2. Radiocarbon dates from the High Rise Village and Burnt Wickiup sites

6.1. AMS results for Promontory Cave 1 (42B01) basketry

7.1. Sue-site radiocarbon date data

7.2. Correlation and calendar-date ranges based on radiocarbon and cultural-assemblage analysis

7.3. Residue-analysis results of the Sue-site Uncompahgre Brownware potsherd

10.1. Luminescence-dating results, Colorado Wickiup Project and ancillary studies

10.A.1. Dendrochronological dating results from the Colorado Wickiup Project

11.1. Thermoluminescence dates on ceramics from western Colorado Ute sites

11.2. Comparisons: Habitation structures and use of site space

11.3. Comparisons: Lithic technology

11.4. Comparisons: Plainware ceramics

11.5. Comparisons: Subsistence and settlement patterns

1

Introduction to Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory

Robert H. Brunswig

This volume’s subtitle, Numic Archaeology and Ethnohistory in the Rocky Mountains and Borderlands, closely reflects its thematic content: prehistoric origins and cultural (archaeological, linguistic, and ethnographic) nature of Native American populations in the American West connected by a broadly common language background (the Uto-Aztecan language family) and permutations of broadly shared social and spiritual beliefs and practices. Early Euro-American encounters with those populations in postcontact times began with the Spanish in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (Bolton 1950; Montgomery, chapter 12, this volume) and continued with early ethnographic fieldwork by the late-nineteenth-century (1868–1880) John Wesley Powell–directed exploring expeditions among the Ute, Paiute, Goshutes of Utah and Colorado (Fowler and Fowler 1971; Powell 1874, 1971). These encounters established an early historic and ethnographic baseline of Native culture and lifestyles. Powell himself, from ethnographic consultations with tribal members, described variations of the term Numa as referring to a great family of tribes speaking different dialects or languages of the same stock, now known as Uto-Aztecan (Fowler and Fowler 1971:5). Nearly a century later, ethnolinguist Sydney Lamb (1958, 1964) used the term Numic to describe native populations speaking Uto-Aztecan languages and dialects in the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains. His analysis of those languages, using the historical-linguistic statistical technique of glottochronology, led to him to propose the hypothesis that historically documented and modern Numic language speakers migrated (spread) into major expanses of the Great Basin and Rockies from a homeland in the far southwestern Great Basin beginning around 1000 BP and either assimilated or displaced earlier (pre-Numic) Native American inhabitants.

Lamb’s Numic-spread hypothesis, writ large, has since prompted decades of debate, hypothesizing, and research on the reality, scope, and historical-archaeological-ethnographic context of that migratory diaspora. Robert Bettinger and Martin Baumhoff (1982, 1983), among early leading scholars on Numic-spread topics, emphasized the role of advanced, high-efficiency (wide-spectrum foraging) subsistence strategies (and technologies) employed by Numic hunter-gatherers, strategies that gave them a strong competitive advantage over preexisting, or pre-Numic, native populations in the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains.

In 1992, David Rhode, David Madsen, and P. Barker co-chaired a Numic roundtable at Lake Tahoe, California. The roundtable’s most significant outcome was an edited volume on the Numic spread, Across the West: Human Population Movement and the Expansion of the Numa (Rhode and Madsen 1994). That volume, containing 23 diverse, often competing, papers on Numic-spread topics, was organized within four thematic sections: (1) literature reviews and summaries of earlier publications on the spread debate, (2) theoretical and methodological issues, (3) regional perspectives, and (4) summary of the roundtable’s varied interpretations, analytical points, and conclusions (see published reviews of the volume by Connolly 1996; Delacourt 1996; and Wilde 1997). A concluding chapter (24) by the volume’s editors summarized the then-current state of theory and evidence for assorted Numic-spread models and listed areas of roundtable consensus, alternate perspectives, and agreed-upon directions for future research (Rhode and Madsen 1994). Key elements of that consensus are concurrent with many of today’s research agendas regarding Numic studies: geography and chronology (Where and When), processes and mechanisms involved in the migration (How and Why), and identification and distinguishing Numic culture and language bearers from non-Numic (including pre-Numic) populations in the archaeological-historical record (What).

Over the past two decades, many Numic-focused research categories discussed by Across the West authors and roundtable participants continued to evolve and, in some cases, were enhanced by new lines of inquiry, theoretical frameworks, and emerging methodologies. More recent Numic-associated archaeological studies in the Great Basin and Rocky Mountains, focused on advancing chronology knowledge and dating techniques, statistical analysis, and material culture (ceramics, lithics, stone-tool material sourcing, etc.) have made important contributions and advances (R. Adams 2006, Bettinger and Eerkens 1999; Cater 2002, 2003; Eerkens et al. 2002; Eighmy 1995; Finley et al. 2015, 2017; Greubel 2002, 2005; Martin 2016, 2017; Middleton et al. 2007; Scheiber and Finley 2011b; Simms et al. 1997). Genetic (DNA and mtDNA) and ancient-populations research comparing modern Numic and non-Numic tribes with prehistoric and early historic non-Numic and pre-Numic populations first emerged in the late 1990s and have made important progress in identifying demographic and genetic patterns germane to testing Numic-spread models (Cabana et al. 2008; Kaestle and Smith 2001; O’Rourke et al. 1999; Parr et al. 1996; Raff et al. 2011). Although Numic-related genetics research is in an early phase of its probable long-term potential, current results support reality of the spread as a prehistoric event, indicating that at least some pre-Numic populations, including the Fremont, were distinct from, and not significantly engaged in genetic interchange with, incoming Numic migrants.

Another area of progress since the 1992 Numic roundtable has been research that better defines differences and parallels in subsistence-economic systems of Numic hunter-gatherer foragers (Mono, Tümpisa, Ute, Western and Eastern Shoshone, Goshutes, Comanche, Northern Paiute), mixed forager-farmers (Southern Paiute), and non-Numic groups (Fremont, Northern Anasazi) (Arkush 1999; Bright and Ugan 1999; Hockett 2009; Hockett et al. 2013; Metcalf 2002; Morgan et al. 2012; Morgan and Bettinger 2012; Scheiber and Finley 2010b; Simms 2008: 167–270; D. Thomas 2013a, 2013b). There is a growing body of research that models and tests evidence for economic systems embedded in forager-collector, communal hunting (e.g., Great Basin and Rocky Mountain game drives), ecological carrying capacity, ecological patch theory, GIS-based predictive site-location analysis, and seasonal migratory transhumance theory frameworks (Arkush 1999, 2015; Bettinger 2012; Brunswig 2015b; Hockett 2009; Hockett et al. 2013; Metcalf 2002; A. Reed 1997a; Scheiber and Finley 2010b; Stirn 2014a). With exception of southern Paiute forager-cultivators (Stoffle and Zedeno 2001), most historically documented Numic populations, were small-group (bands), residentially mobile hunter-gatherers. Reconstruction of their economic (as well as social and religious) adaptations in ecologically and topographically varied landscapes of the Great Basin and Rockies is of high interest.

A central objective, and hopefully an achievement, of this volume is not simply to duplicate and advance research on previously articulated Numic-Spread concepts, although several of the contributing chapters here do address earlier Across the West themes of chronology, material culture, distinguishing Numic from non-Numic ethnicity in the archaeological record, and reconstruction of settlement patterns and subsistence systems (see Schroeder, chapter 2; Stirn, chapter 3; Loosle, chapter 4; Adams, Chapter 5; Greubel and Cater, chapter 11; Montgomery, chapter 12).

In geographic terms, this volume largely shifts its attention to the study of Numic archaeology and ethnohistory largely outside the Great Basin, centering that attention toward the central and southern Rocky Mountains and only the eastern fringes of the Great Basin, the Colorado Plateau, and the northern Southwest boundary regions. Historically documented Numic groups residing in those regions were (and are today) tribes and bands of the Northern and Eastern Shoshone and Ute. Several volume chapters provide up-to-date case studies of individual or collective site summaries with detailed scientific evidence for known or inferred Ute and Shoshone material culture (ceramics, lithics, features and structures, and long-distance movement [e.g., through trade or seasonal migration] of source-identified lithic materials such as obsidian), chronology (dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, thermoluminescence), and subsistence systems (hunting camps, game drives, food sources [faunal and botanical evidence]) (Stirn, chapter 3; Loosle, chapter 4; Adams, chapter 5; Brunswig, chapter 7; Martin, chapter 10; Greubel and Cater, chapter 11; Montgomery, Chapter 12).

Distinguishing different hunter-gatherer ethnic groups (e.g., Late Fremont [Gateway Tradition]/Ute and Shoshone, early Navajo/Ute and Shoshone) who co-occupied, or interacted within each other’s territories through trade, raiding, or seasonal subsistence migrations (transhumance) is, as noted by Ives (chapter 6) and Greubel and Cater (chapter 11), a daunting task, particularly since the archaeology primarily involves ephemeral short- to medium-term-stay hunter-gatherer sites. Even the presence of ceramics, an extremely rare commodity in such sites, can be misleading when tradewares are involved or, as is the case with the northcentral Colorado Sue site (Brunswig, Chapter 7), an Uncompahgre Brownware pot with atypical traits (a handle and braided appliqué) may suggest a synthesis of technical traits from differing ceramic traditions (possibly Late Fremont and Ute). That vessel’s mixed traits, hypothetically evolved from its maker, presumably a female potter, could derive from the potter’s integration into a Ute band by marriage exchange or capture in a raid. Even when identifiable ceramic types can potentially point to a site’s likely cultural group affiliation—such as Uncompahgre Brownware (Ute) or Intermountain Ware (Shoshone)—both Numic and non-Numic hunter-gatherer sites with ceramics represent a very small percentage of recorded sites. Most such sites are primarily lithic scatters with tools and features that are nearly always ethnically indistinctive (see Schroeder, Chapter 2; Greubel and Cater, Chapter 11).

In fact, a key problem that retards distinguishing Numic (Uto-Aztecan speakers with a broadly shared ideological tradition, see below) from non-Numic populations is archaeologically identifying ethnicity (if that is even an appropriate term; see Schroeder, chapter 2). In making such a distinction, it is important to recognize Numic people were not the only contemporary inhabitants (permanently or seasonally) of what are historically known as their traditional homelands. They regularly interacted through late prehistoric and earlier historic periods, peacefully or in competitive conflict, with other Native American cultures. In the fourteenth through eighteenth centuries, migratory streams of Athapaskan hunter-gatherer bands moved along the western (ancestral Navajo or Dené) and eastern (ancestral Apache) margins of the central and southern Rockies and crossed through Numic-occupied lands (Brunswig 1995, 2012a; Seymour 2004, 2012a, 2012c; Gilmore and Larmore 2012; Greubel and Cater, chapter 11, this volume).

Although distinguishing Numic from Athapaskan hunter-gatherer sites in the archaeological record is often difficult or even, in some cases, impossible, well-preserved material culture from Utah’s Promontory Point sites (Ives, chapter 6, this volume) provides compelling evidence of ancestral Navajo/Dené bands passing southward toward their now-traditional homelands in the northern Southwest. Even among different Numic subgroups such as the Shoshone and Ute (and in early historic times, the branching off and eastward migration of an Eastern Shoshone offshoot, the Comanche), there is evidence of regular contact, trade, and movement into and through their respective, historically documented mountain territories (Loosle, chapter 5, and Brunswig, chapter 7, this volume).

Distinguishing Numic from non-Numic site archaeology in the later historic period is difficult as well. With the spread of postcontact horse culture and Euro-American expansion pressure on northern plains tribes, many Ute and Shoshone traditional mountain territories were subject to periodic intrusions and economic resource competition by Navajo and Apache in the south and Arapaho, Cheyenne, and Sioux from the north and east (Brunswig, chapter 7; Brunswig, chapter 9; Martin, chapter 10; Greubel and Cater, chapter 11; Montgomery, chapter 12). And, as noted by McBeth (chapter 13), even after tribes were restricted to reservations in the 1860s and 1870s, many members periodically returned to traditional mountain lands for hunting and revisiting ancestral places, leaving behind recent archaeology as camp sites, wickiups, and peeled trees well into the early twentieth century (see Martin, chapter 10).

Assessing chronological origins and spread of Numic hunter-gatherers from the central and western Great Basin into the Rockies is a daunting task. Radiocarbon dating of Ute and Shoshone brownwares can be skewed by use of hearth-wood charcoal (or appearing as potsherd soot residue) that can survive for decades or centuries after originating trees, branches, or sagebrush have died, resulting in anomalously old wood dates (Martin, chapter 10). However, old-wood dating errors are, in some cases, subject to differences in geography and environment. AMS radiocarbon dates of stratigraphically equivalent pottery-carbon residue, hearth charcoal, and animal bone (used as control dates) determined an absence of an old-wood problem at the Sue site (Brunswig, chapter 7). In general, early pottery-associated Ute sites from the Colorado Plateau to the Front Range Rocky Mountains provide a reasonably secure ceramic-based radiocarbon chronology from ca. AD 1300 to 1850, with some earliest outlier dates, possibly skewed by old-wood use, at ca. AD 1100 (A. Reed and Metcalf 1999:155; Martin, chapter 10).

Another important research question, discussed earlier, relates to the limited number of Numic sites more clearly identifiable as Ute, Shoshone, or Paiute through the presence of ceramics and the difficulty that often unclear identity presents in constructing a reliable chronological framework. Dating the expansion of Numic subgroups into the eastern margins of the Great Basin and central and southern Rockies is still largely dependent on radiocarbon, dendrochronological, and thermoluminescence dating of ceramic-associated sites. One intriguing trajectory of research is field studies of high-mountain (alpine) hunter-gatherer villages that formed the warm-season end of annual transhumance migration cycles from the western Great Basin (California and Nevada) to the central Rocky Mountains (Wyoming) (see Stirn, chapter 3, and Adams, chapter 5, this volume). Current chronological evidence suggests the possibility that early Numic (ancestral Shoshone) hunter-gatherers may have been occupying such villages earlier in the central Rockies than in the Great Basin, thus reversing prevailing views of the timing and direction of a Numic Spread. On the other hand, as discussed in this volume’s afterword (chapter 14), the alpine-village evidence described by Stirn and Adams could just as well show a postspread cultural transmission of an effective high-mountain transhumant subsistence strategy back along the original west-to-east Numic migratory pathway.

Our earliest likely Numic sites in the Great Basin, southern and central Rocky Mountains, and northern Southwest, identified by Numic brownwares, tend to be no older than AD 1000 and most postdate ca. AD 1300. Finley et al. (2017) recently utilized luminescence-dating methods on Numic-associated brownware ceramic, attempting to trace movement of Numic ceramic technology from the eastern Great Basin into the central Rocky Mountains. They concluded Numic bands adopted and modified ceramic ancestral Pueblo and Fremont pottery technology as part of a broad pattern of adaptive resource-intensification shortly before and after AD 1200, a working hypothesis that supports the above-cited chronology. It is considered possible by this author that earlier Numic populations in the eastern Great Basin and central and southern Rockies, as highly mobile hunter-gatherers, only sparingly adopted and actively used ceramic technology from agricultural populations they encountered (e.g., the late Fremont, their much earlier resident relatives, the Paiute, or Anasazi populations in the northern Southwest). Some early groups may even have elected not to adopt ceramic technology, remaining effectively (or at least archaeologically) aceramic, leaving behind sites with no chances of incorporating pottery into their archaeological inventories. The presence of what are interpreted as uninterrupted short-term seasonal hunting occupations sans ceramics that postdate a Ute ceramic-bearing stratum at the Sue site, might conceivably reflect such an aceramic Numic phase (or non-ceramic-using hunter-gatherer bands) which predated the region’s Ute acquisition (or utilization) of ceramic technology (Brunswig, chapter 7).

Another central theme of this volume involves investigations of Numic (primarily Ute) spiritual beliefs and their archaeological and ethnographic evidence with parallel evidence for Numic and non-Numic subsistence and material culture technology (e.g., the Sacred and the Mundane). Although ethnographic and archaeological studies in Numic religion were fairly common prior to the 1992 roundtable meeting (Hultkrantz 1961, 1974a, 1974b; Jorgenson 1964; Lowie 1909, 1924a, 1924b; Miller 1983; Reagan 1929, 1935a, 1935b; W. Reed 1986; Shimkin 1938, 1942, 1947, 1986a; A. Smith 1974, 1992; Steward 1932, 1938, 1940, 1943, 1955a, 1970; Stewart 1942), many focused on Great Basin rock-art archaeology (Heizer and Baumhoff 1962; P. Schaafsma 1980, 1994), an area of research that has since advanced in both sophistication and geographic scope (e.g., beyond the Great Basin) over the past two decades. The Great Basin has a rich and diverse rock-art tradition extending well into the Paleoindian stage (Whitley and Dorn 2010, 2012) but its limited inclusion in Across the West chapters suggests roundtable participants did not, at the time, consider it a critical defining cultural phenomenon relevant to the Numic spread.

Since the 1992 roundtable, numerous studies on Numic religion and archaeology, frequently supplemented by ethnographic and ethnohistoric documentation and modern-day Native American consultations, have brought greater clarity and holistic cultural insights to Numic prehistoric and historic lifeways throughout the American West (Brunswig 2013c; Brunswig et al. 2011; Brunswig, Diggs, and Montgomery 2009; Brunswig, McBeth, and Elinoff 2009; Diggs and Brunswig 2006, 2009, 2013; Duncan and Goss 2000; Francis and Loendorf 2002; Garfinkel and Austin 2011; Garfinkel et al. 2007; Gulliford 2000; Keyser and Whitley 2006; Loendorf 1999, 2004; Loendorf and Stone 2006; Naranjo and Lujan 2000; Whitley and Dorn 2010). Although often controversial (see Quinlan 2000 and Whitley 2000), such research frequently centers on such beliefs and related ritual activities as shamanic trance-dreaming (vision-questing), channeling natural world and Numic mythic spirits for hunting success, healing, prophecy, and protection from evil spirits. Studies of rock-art sites in eastern California’s Coso Mountains and the Dinwoody region of northwestern Wyoming provide compelling arguments that later (late prehistoric and early historic) examples of rock-art images in those regions reflect Numic shamanic spirit-dreaming rituals. This author (and volume editor), along with several research colleagues, and after nearly two decades of Ute and Arapaho tribal representative and elder consultations, have identified, classified, and GIS-sacred-landscape-modeled rock-features (e.g., vison-quest walls, prayer circles, astronomic alignments) comparable to Coso and Dinwoody ritual rock-art in northcentral Colorado’s Rocky Mountains (see Chady et al., chapter 8, and Brunswig, chapter 9, this volume).

Within the geographic expanse encompassed by this volume’s contributions, Numic subgroups (Ute and Shoshone) were primarily mountain people who, in the historic era, self-identified as not only residing in the Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana high mountains, viewed by them as traditional lands, but claimed various mountain localities as mythic and sacred origin places (Chady et al., chapter 8 and Brunswig, chapter 9). In historic and modern times (and almost certainly in the late prehistoric period, post–AD 1000AD), they viewed traditional mountain homelands as sacred landscapes defined within the ideological context of a broadly shared, vertically layered, cosmological world-view (Francis and Loendorf 2002:120–122, figure 6.36; Goss 2000:42–49, figure 3; Loendorf 2004:213–215, figure 10.10; Chady et al., chapter 8). Although native definitions of Numic spiritual-world levels vary slightly, depending on which Numic subculture is referenced, they range from a lowest-level underworld through a water world and an earth (or ground) world, to the sky world and the heavens (stars) above, each inhabited by its own spirit people (little people, water ghosts, eagles, owls, mountain lions, wolves, and so on) and mythic spirit gods. The Numic (Ute and Shoshone) spiritual world in the Rockies and their borderlands highlighted important spirit beings of the sky world (the eagle) and upper-earth world (the bear) and embedded them into rituals and ceremonies celebrating the seasonal cycle of life and nature throughout the year. Early historic rock-art with Ute symbolic imagery, interpreted as reflecting shamanic spiritual practice and Numic cosmology, also occurs in northeastern New Mexico at the edge of the southern Rockies (Montgomery, chapter 12).

2

The Shoshone Problem

Interpreting Ethnic Identity from the Edge of the Eastern Great Basin

Bryon Schroeder

This chapter’s goal is to outline ways ethnicity is interpreted in the archaeological record. It provides a brief synopsis of how the discipline of archaeology has dealt with ethnicity, starting with the Binford-Bordes debate. I begin by contextualizing the polarizing perspectives of ethnic interpretations in the archaeological record but admit that the use of ethnicity has a much longer history than can be captured with ongoing ethnicity in archaeology debate arguments. However, I argue that the debate broadly encompasses fundamental aspects of both objectivist and subjectivist approaches to ethnic studies in archaeology. To further contextualize these approaches, I rely heavily on S. Jones (1997) whose work offers a thorough review of Binford-Bordes interpretive paradigms. It seems most archaeological interpretations have favored the objectivist approach (which I sardonically refer to as the John Wayne approach, after his ability to look at an arrow and infer the arrowmaker’s tribe), which has been favored over subjectivist modes of interpretation.

Understanding the topic of ethnic identity, and, specifically the Eastern Shoshone, is critical to research topics presented in this volume, because that Numic subgroup is associated with a suite of archaeologically recovered materials throughout the central Rocky Mountains and Great Basin (see R. Adams 2010; or Larson and Kornfeld 1994 for a list of materials). The strong consensus is that cultural materials found in certain archaeological contexts are traceable to Shoshone ethnic affiliation because of their close temporal association to historically recorded living Shoshone groups (Newton 2011; Scheiber and Finley 2010b). For most researchers in the central Rocky Mountains, these materials represent the end of a human migration known broadly as the Numic spread (often argued within the context of population replacement).

For clarification, the Numic spread is a proposed migration of linguistically related groups that has been debated for years by scholars interested in the prehistory of the Great Basin, and less so in the Wyoming region (R. Adams 2010; C. Davis 1975; Dominick 1964; Eakin 2005; Frison 1971; Holmer 1994; Husted and Edgar 2002; Janetski 1994; Larson and Kornfeld 1994; Nabokov and Loendorf 2004; Spath 1988; K. Thompson and Pastor 1995; also see Brunswig, chapter 1 in this volume). Historically, groups who spoke dialects of a related language family (Uto-Aztekan) were encountered from Death Valley in California to the western slopes of the Wind River Range in Wyoming (R. Adams 2010). The debate focuses on historically encountered groups (i.e., ethnicity groups) as proxies for both linguistic studies and archaeologically defined cultures (the latter seems to create the former in this argument). In this chapter, I venture into the Numic-expansion debate by paying close attention to how ethnicity is used in its various discussions. The questions that drive this review are (1) is it possible to comment accurately on ethnic groups in the past using the archaeological record—that is, did the Shoshone occupy the sites proposed for analysis in this research? and (2) is it appropriate for archaeologists to use ethnic affiliations for diagnostic archaeological cultures, or are we just inventing ethnic heritages? To answer these questions, a brief overview of ethnic studies in prehistory is needed.

Many early practitioners of archaeology determined ethnicity using the John Wayne approach (more appropriately labeled the hyperobjectivist approach), characterized by reading ethnic affiliation from discarded cultural materials. This approach may have its roots in the work of Lewis Henry Morgan (1877) but is probably more attributable to the 1916 excavations of Nels C. Nelson at Tano Ruins (Nelson 1916). While the main goal of Nelson’s excavations was to build chronological sequences, his interpretations tilted the analytic lens of archaeology toward the representational power of artifact classes, and, as a result, invented the concept of archaeological cultures based on artifact classes (Jones 2007). The culture-history approach, as it later became known, first viewed artifacts classes as datable materials and later as tangible markers for distinct cultural groups. Dissatisfaction with the culture-history paradigm was eventually the foundation of a now infamous debate between François Bordes (1973) and Lewis Binford (1973).

Bordes proposed four distinct Mousterian ethnic groups based on his initial work at Le Moustier, a Paleolithic site in southwestern France (Wargo 2009). He called these cultural groups facies (Typical, Charentian, Denticulate, and Mousterian of Acheulean) and based them on percentages of specific artifact classes present on sites (Bordes 1973; Wargo 2009). The explanation Bordes offered for the differing tool assemblages was Mousterian tribal groups (Wargo 2009). As Wargo (2009:73) states, "Bordes thought the Mousterian facies he identified in his taxonomy were reflective of some tangible prehistoric reality and that those facies had some inherent cultural meaning in the past. The counterargument from Binford was a functional explanation for the various tool types (Binford 1973). Binford saw Bordes’s Mousterian tribes as functional camps or specific activity areas of a single culture spread across the landscape, not culturally or ethnically distinct groups. However, Binford did (1973:245) admit, among contemporary peoples ethnicity is more frequently directly demonstrable through morphological variations between different localized groups with respect to roughly analogous functional classes of tools. In Binfordian-speak, this meant ethnicity might be visible in the archaeological record as functional classes of tools found in localized" groups (i.e., people living in similar environmental conditions during the same periods) (Binford 1973).

Furthering this argument, Binford thought for an item to have ethnic or social significance it must be immediately perceived as being different by another culture (Binford 1973). As he states, I find it difficult to imagine that something as remote as a scraper index could have direct ethnic or social symbolic significance (1973:245). For the issue of the archaeological visibility of ethnicity, it is important to note the Binford-Bordes debate was in part how much the function/use of an artifact biased our interpretation. Outside of the functionality argument, neither opponent denied that ethnicity was impossible to interpret in the archaeological record. They just disagreed on how ethnicity was interpreted. This debate is important because it frames how many archaeologists view ethnicity in the archaeological record: impossible on one end and naturally bound in the material of archaeological cultures at the other (S. Jones 1997). But what is ethnicity, and how do anthropologists approach it in living groups?

Ethnicity Defined

The Binford-Bordes debate was not the only attempt to approach ethnicity in archaeology but it typifies its identification and use of ethnicity. Bordes’s (1973) position views ethnicity as a bounded entity embedded in material culture, and specific ethnic groups are specific culture-bearing units. Binford suggests that ethnicity is outside the focus of a technological/behavioral-oriented analysis. Furthermore, since it is an internal cultural construct (what he would call the ideotechnic), ethnicity must be approached with caution, if at all. However, Binford’s dissatisfaction with Bordes never addressed living ethnic groups, an issue Bordes never really addressed either. This is interesting because during their debate a Swedish cultural anthropologist, Fredrik Barth, developed the very definition of ethnic groups many anthropologists still use today.

Fredrik Barth’s early work on ethnic boundaries is the most widely cited work dealing with ethnicity. Barth (1998:10–11) saw ethnicity as defined in the anthropological literature of the time as a population that

1. is largely biologically self-perpetuating,

2. shares fundamental cultural values, realized in overt unity in cultural forms,

3. makes up a field of communication and interaction, and

4. has a membership that is identified by others as constituting a category distinguishable from other categories of same order.

However, Barth (1998:11) saw this definition as similar to the prevailing idea of race = culture = language, solidifying the idea that specific societies were pelagic islands, and did little to address the maintenance of ethnic groups. He was largely focused on how ethnically distinct groups maintain their boundaries while freely moving across them to contact other groups (conventionally, ethnicity was thought to be a product of isolation). For Barth, the social boundary of an ethnic group needed to remain fluid internally while externally projecting differences to other groups. Members of these groups must then have prescribed ideals of what is appropriate in interactions with other groups and these internal prescriptions must safeguard the group from alteration (Barth 1998:16). This view of ethnic groups shifted focus from the analysis of ethnicity as bounded entities and is widely cited as the first attempt at defining ethnicity in living groups (Lucy 2005).

Subsequent definitions of ethnic groups can be placed into one of two discrete categories: emic or etic forms of analysis (S. Jones 1997). The etic construct, described as an objectivist’s construct, views ethnic groups as being only a unit of analysis created by the analyst (S. Jones 1997:56–57). Objectivists see ethnicity as social and cultural entities with distinct boundaries characterized by relative isolation and lack of interaction (S. Jones 1997:57). It can be argued that Barth worked from a middle-of-the-road objectivist approach, compared to most archaeologists who work with an extremely objectivist approach. In contrast, subjectivist studies stress the emic perspective, defining ethnic groups in terms of internal subjective self-categorizations (S. Jones 1997:57). Several approaches are outlined within the subjectivist approach. The first is what S. Jones (1997:65) and Lucy (2005) identify as the primordial imperative approach.

The Primordial Approach

The primordial approach looks at the inherent quality of ethnicity (Lucy 2005). This view takes ethnicity as a birthright. Jenkins states (2004:65) that ethnicity... is an important part of self-identification. Individuals often learn frameworks for classifying themselves and others by ethnicity... during childhood. The ideologies of collective descent... frequently underpin ethnicity. The failing of this approach is that it offers a regimented view of ethnicity. It is something you either have or do not, and this seems to confuse ethnicity with race = language = culture, an idea that most researchers are uncomfortable with. This approach further suggests that ethnicity is involuntary and rooted in atavistic views of identity, which does not pay attention to the historical context of the development or application of ethnic identity (S. Jones 1997). When objectivist practitioners themselves are examined, they are more commonly seen as being a product of nations that view ethnicity as natural and miss the complexities of their national heritage (S. Jones 1997). The classic example is America’s invention of a common heritage when in fact it is the culmination of polythetic entities occupying the same space (see discussion of Connor 1978 in S. Jones 1997:71).

The Instrumental Approach

In contrast to the primordial approach, the instrumental approach emphasizes ethnicity as a relationship embedded in economic or social situations. As S. Jones (1997:72) states, this approach is characterized by a concern with the role of ethnicity in the mediation of social relations and the negotiation of access to resources primarily economic and political. Individual, not group, agency is seen as the primary means by which ethnicity is constructed. Individuals can (in some cases) move freely across ethnic lines yet ethnic identity is retained. Barth (1998:23) illustrates a reciprocal relationship in Sudan between herdsmen, the Baggara, and agriculturalists, the Fur, who both occupy the same economic niche and provide resources to one another. However, while some Fur individuals move across ethnic lines and adopt the identity of the Baggara pastoralists, Baggara do not become Fur. Presumably this is due to limited investments in the Fur economy (S. Jones 1997:73). The point to stress here is that every Fur does not, at once, drop agriculture and immediately become Baggara. Individuals choose to adopt or retain their specific ethnicities. In this context, it appears ethnic identity can be a situational construct that is individually rather than externally defined (Lucy 2005:95).

What Is Ethnicity?

What we have seen in anthropology is an evolution that stresses first the etic view and then progressively moves towards an emic view of ethnicity. The objectivist view appears to no longer be en vogue in cultural studies. In the subjectivist camp, most studies centered on ethnicity seem to work to bridge the primordial and instrumental approaches. The best characterization of the primordial approach in recent ethnic studies is the work of Richard Jenkins, who states that

Our culture—language, non-verbals, dress, food, the structure of space, etc.—we encounter it and live it during socialization and subsequently, is for us simply something that is. When identity is problematized during interaction across the boundary, we need to make explicit—to ourselves as much as to others—that which we have hitherto known without knowing about... the embodied and unreflexive everyday practical mastery of culture: unsystematic. The empire of habit, neither conscious nor unconscious. Nothing could be more basic and nothing more inextricable implicated in ethnicity. (Jenkins 2008:79; italics in the original text)

This characterization of the primordial bond, or an allegiance to an ethnic identity, is probably not an inappropriate way to approach ethnicity in some situations. However, this clearly limits the complexity of the ethnic identity. Jenkins (2008:49) himself illustrates this point, saying, ethnicity, or at least an awareness of it, is likely to figure in different ways, with different social costs and benefits (consequences) attached, in each place and at each time. Denmark in 2007 is not the same as growing up in Denmark in 1944. In this example, ethnicity is ascribed at birth, however, time and different social/economic opportunities surely influence the primordial bond. Therefore, it becomes difficult to separate the primordial from the instrumental, and even more difficult to define what ethnicity is.

A consensus that most reach is that ethnicity is not an isomorphic relationship between race and language, or language and culture, or any other combination of the anthropological analytical trilogy one can comprise. As stated by so many, it is a process of ascription, both internally and externally (Barth 1998; Jenkins 2008; S. Jones 1997; Lucy 2005). However, the thought of ascription in debates centered on ethnicity is also seen as troubling because it runs the risk of reifying the ethnic group (Lucy 2005:95). Ethnicity is currently seen as being an aspect of a relationship embedded within an ongoing historical processes (Lucy 2005:95). A clear portrayal of this is by Lucy (2005: 97), who states that

Ethnic groups do not, then, constitute a natural order. They are more an idea, dependent on constant reiteration through both everyday actions and discursive practice, rather than a solid thing. They are dependent on social relationships that need to be continually recreated and constantly redefining group boundaries. People can leave ethnic groups and join others, and they can hold a range of different ethnic, local or other communal identities without the idea of the ethnic group being challenged, if enough people believe in it.

In cultural studies, ethnicity is found to be a complex construct that is fluid, constantly redefined by individuals, and often situational. So how has archaeology used something as fluid and perhaps superficial as ethnicity?

Ethnicity in Archaeology

When viewing ethnicity in the archaeological record it must be assumed that ethnicity will not always be visible. Furthermore, we need to assume, as Lucy (2005:109) warns, that ethnicity may not have been as relevant to people in the past as it seems to be in the present, and that any patterning... we do discern may be due to other types of communal identities, such as familial lineages or territorial groups other than to anything we, from our modern perspective, might recognize as ethnically based. So then, how have archaeologists approached ethnicity in the archeological record?

Ethnicity in archaeology has largely been explored under the objectivist’s approach defined above (Jenkins 2008; S. Jones 1997). Because this approach projects categorization it is easy to see why it has been favored in archaeological analysis. Largely pinned to the cultural-history epistemology, it takes a normative approach to culture and stresses similarity in material culture as a representation of once-living cultural groups (Larson and Kornfeld 1994). My earlier example of Bordes’s Mousterian cultures is a clear example of ethnic construction following an extreme objectivist approach. Binford’s (1973) critique rested on the internal cultural use of material objects and it is fair to say that his critiques were early examples of the subjectivist view in archaeology.

Binford himself expressed a growing concern with the stagnant nature of archaeology as a descriptive discipline and led a call to transform it into an interpretive and ultimately scientific discipline. This call pushed the subjectivist approach into archaeology. A clear example is the ethnoarchaeology work of Ian Hodder who, in 1977, headed to Africa to explore several questions, including, When do ethnic units identify themselves in material culture? and What happens at material culture boundaries? (Hodder 1982:1). Regarding the first question, Hodder found that certain items of material culture did indicate specific ethnic boundaries in three groups occupying Lake Baringo in Kenya. Interestingly, marriage between some groups does not erode this expression because marriage into one group means near complete adoption of that group’s material culture usually across all aspects of life (Hodder 1982:18–21). However, these individuals freely move across territorial boundaries simply by changing back and forth between appropriate clothing and ear decorations. This appears to be more common practice along the boundaries, where population is denser and economic pressure is greater. This picture is even more complex when generational differences are added, as different types of ear spools are preferred by younger rather than the older women. While these still do fall along ethnic lines, it indicates that material culture can, and should be, conservatively applied to ethnic groups, even from an emic prospective. In an ethnoarchaeology study of Kalahari San projectile points, Wiessner (1983:256) suggests that projectile points can be differentiated at the linguistic level but not at the individual or band level, possibly due to the importance of meat in the diet. However, unlike the Lake Baringo study, additional cultural materials were not included in the analysis. Still, other archaeologists have argued that by focusing on stylistic similarities in the production process of artifacts, (from raw materials chosen to finished product), ethnic identity can be elucidated.

Sackett (1990) developed a form of analysis dubbed isochrestic, where style is not simply synonymous with decoration. Style encompasses not only the outer appearance, or decoration (adjunctism), but also all the manufacture, materials, shape, and thickness that comprise the artifact. These variables are broadly diagnostic of specific ethnic groups. Sackett views functionality as being wed to stylistic variation, with both use and construction serving as ethnic indicators. The example he offers is that of