Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Multidecadal Climate Variability And The Florescence Of Fremont Societies In Eastern Utah, Judson Byrd Finley, Erick Robinson, R. Justin Derose, Elizabeth Hora

Sociology, Social Work and Anthropology Faculty Publications

Fremont societies of the Uinta Basin incorporated domesticates into a foraging lifeway over a 1,000-year period from AD 300 to 1300. Fremont research provides a unique opportunity to critically examine the social and ecological processes behind the adoption and abandonment of domesticates by hunter-gatherers. We develop and integrate a 2,115-year precipitation reconstruction with a Bayesian chronological model for the growth of Fremont societies in the Cub Creek reach of Dinosaur National Monument. Comparison of the archaeological chronology with the precipitation record suggests that the florescence of Fremont societies was an adaptation to multidecadal precipitation variability with an approximately 30-plus-year periodicity …