A Week at the Dig

Well, another week down and not a lot has happened.  I take that back.  A lot has happened but we haven’t really found anything of significance.  We are just finding a lot of fire-cracked rock associated with the numerous stains in the trenches.  One of the leaders of the dig, a guy from BYU named Rich Talbot, often says, “The absence of artifacts tells you as much as the presence of artifacts.”  I don’t know if I buy that, but if he’s correct, then we are being told a ton.

Here’s what I think is happening out there at Sand Hollow.  Most everything we have found so far dates to the Archaic era in the Southwest (in our case it falls about 3000 BC).  During that period of time, the inhabitants of the area were thought to be hunter/gatherers that would travel seasonally in a round.  In the summer months they would be in the cool mountainous areas hunting big game and in the winter they would escape the cold by traveling down to the lower reaches of the Colorado River drainage (in our case, the Virgin River Valley) to collect seeds and possibly fish.  During the fall and spring, their rounds would pass through areas where they could collect essential nuts (like pinenuts) or other staples.  It is my thought that they used the Sand Hollow area as a springtime location to process and eat agave cactus.  They would often cook it in prepared pits and then eject the rock from the pit to collect the cooked agave and then grind it into a paste for cakes. 

We have the grinding stones, we have the tossed rock, and we have relatively little in terms of lithic debitage meaning women were doing most of the processing.  Add to this the fact that the basin contains agave and you might just have an argument that I’m right.

We shall see.