Far Western Basketmaker Beginnings is a remarkable book. Ostensibly, it is an excavation report and synthesis of the CRM investigations of 10 sites associated with the construction of the Jackson Flat Reservoir south of Kanab, Utah. But this is far more than a typical contract report. First, it is a beautifully published book illustrated with 106 figures—many of them high-quality color images of architecture, features, maps, and artifacts—complemented by detailed black-and-white site maps, graphs, and 45 data tables. Second, it challenges us to rethink our conception of the Pueblo world. We need to expand our conception of the northern Southwest beyond Mesa Verde, Chaco, and Kayenta if we are to truly understand the beginnings of agriculture and social complexity. Perhaps most importantly, this book reminds us of the importance of well-conceived CRM archaeological research done by firms and agencies willing to go the extra mile to reveal something totally new.
Some of the more striking findings include evidence that maize-growing migrants from the south settled this region between 1310 and 1120 BC and established an Early Agricultural period settlement reminiscent of San Pedro habitations in southern Arizona. Although this farming and foraging group must have been small, the ubiquity of maize in six macrobotanical samples, the expansion of an original small pithouse to one that was almost 5 × 4 m in area, and large and deep bell-shaped storage pits and other features on the site testify to the success of this agricultural outpost for at least several years, and maybe for several generations. There are only a handful of potentially contemporary Early Agricultural period sites this far north, and they are clustered around the Four Corners almost 200 miles to the east.
This occupation alone is noteworthy, but what makes the Jackson Flats research remarkable is that this same site was reoccupied in the Basketmaker II and III periods and in Pueblo I with multiple pithouses and storage features. These later occupations are intermittent; however, the fact that this area and some sites persist as magnets for agricultural communities from the second century BC to as late as the ninth century AD challenges our preconceptions of this far western area in southwestern Utah as being peripheral. Instead, the authors propose that the region previously known as the Virgin River Anasazi should be considered the Far Western Pueblo.
The book offers a background and context for the project, detailed summaries of the excavated sites grouped by period from the Archaic (5000–1300 BC) to the Post-Puebloan (AD 1300–1776) period, summaries of the analytical results of categories of recovered material culture, and finally seven chapters that place the project research results into a larger context. If we combine the research presented in Far Western Basketmaker Beginnings with Phil Geib's Foragers and Farmers of the Northern Kayenta Region: Excavations along the Navajo Mountain Road (University of Utah Press, 2011), we can see that the transition to agriculture is both sudden and gradual, depending on where and when we look for early agricultural communities.
As with any edited work that brings together chapters by more than a dozen authors and summarizes the research of three archaeological firms, there is an unevenness in the quality of some of the chapters and the reporting. In addition, I would wish for a few additional architectural maps to complement some of the first-rate color photos. Nonetheless, this report is remarkable and surpasses those contract reports I am most proud of coauthoring. It offers a fundamental revision to what we know about an area that has been on the periphery of our maps of the US Southwest for far too long.
