With National Science Foundation support Dr. Mary Lou Larson and her collaborators will combine field and laboratory research to develop an archaeological data base for a large multi-county region within Southwest Wyoming. In the course of many cultural resource management projects as well as through basic archaeological research, data has been recorded for nearly 25,000 prehistoric sites in southwestern Wyoming. These include potentially valuable information on individual types of artifacts as well as larger features such as structures. These data are curated in the Wyoming Cultural Records Office and available for potential research. However because of the method of storage - in paper form in multiple filing cabinets - they are extremely difficult to use. Collation of data on one specific distribution of one specific artifact type for example can involve hundreds of hours culling through individual site reports. An added difficulty rests in the fact that these materials, collected over a period of decades by multiple individuals, may be of variable quality. In preliminary work, Dr. Larson has organized this material and incorporated it in standardized form into a Geographic Information System thus making it readily available for analysis. In her NSF research, she and her team will continue this process. In order to assess the accuracy of these data she will conduct limited field research to compare actual and recorded spatial coordinates. Because one basic use of the data is to examine distributions of features and artifact types over space, and because observed distributions can be significantly affected by geomorphological processes such as differential erosion and deposition, the team will also examine the degree of distortion such factors induce. The GIS system will allow incorporation of landform, vegetation and hydrological data from other sources and thus permit researchers to examine cultural patterns within an environmental context.

Dr. Larson notes that the Wyoming surface material provides an extensive record for Archaic period hunters and gathers and that sites from multiple periods allow one to trace changing land use and subsistence patterns over time. Wyoming is unusual in the widespread presence of underground pit dwellings - a type of house which most often is associated with more settled agricultural peoples. The Wyoming record reveals that during the early Archaic period a complementary, non-overlapping relationship is evident between pit dwellings and stone lined storage pits. She believes this results from seasonal movement across the landscape with different activities occurring in spatially segregated areas at varying times of the year. She plans to use these features as a test case, both to answer a significant anthropological question as well as to test the utility of the Wyoming records and her GIS database as a research tool.

This work is important for several reasons. It will result in a data base of potentially great utility. It will also provide a test case to evaluate the research potential of state archaeological records and their incorporation into a GIS system. The work will also shed new light into early American subsistence adaptations.

Agency
National Science Foundation (NSF)
Institute
Division of Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS)
Type
Standard Grant (Standard)
Application #
0111057
Program Officer
John E. Yellen
Project Start
Project End
Budget Start
2001-08-01
Budget End
2004-10-31
Support Year
Fiscal Year
2001
Total Cost
$74,564
Indirect Cost
Name
University of Wyoming
Department
Type
DUNS #
City
Laramie
State
WY
Country
United States
Zip Code
82071