It's a bountiful place to live. Marshes, creeks, rivers and springs punctuate the long, fertile eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake. This section of the Salt Lake Valley has provided human communities with a broad selection of edibles since just after the last Ice Age.
Paleo-lndians - the earliest residents - found it so accommodating they didn't roam far from home to collect roots, berries and cattails; or to fish, or hunt geese and rabbits. They may have begun the long tradition of sedentary hunter-gatherers living alongside the Great Salt Lake.Even as the climate of the Salt Lake area became hotter and drier over the past 16,000 years, its many water sources continued to anchor human communities. Later inhabitants captured and roasted swarms of grasshoppers and crickets. They ground the crisp bugs into meal and mixed it with berries as a sort of fruitcake.
Over the years, archaeologists discovered these and other fascinating details of prehistoric life near the Great Salt Lake. They would like to know more. Trouble is, today's Salt Lake residents prefer to live and work in many of the same locations as those prehistoric natives. So most evidence of ancient Great Salt Lake cultures lies under modern-day gathering places like the ZCMI Center, Nordstroms and 1-15.
A class of 10 archaeology students led by Duncan Metcalfe, curator of the Utah Museum of Natural History, has turned its attention to surveying and excavating nearby Antelope Island. Here they may find undisturbed sites from the same prehistoric cultures that once lived on both the island and the now-developed eastern shore of the Great Salt Lake.
Among the artifacts Metcalfe's group uncovered this summer are a 6,000-year-old spear point and a complete metate - a type of grain grinder made of stone - that also may be several thousand years old. Their dig is near a spring within sight of the island's Fielding Garr ranch house. Coincidentally, the ranch house is the oldest surviving Anglo dwelling on its original foundation in Utah.
Antelope Island park ranger Tim Smith is delighted with the archaeology work. "There's no way we could survey and excavate like Duncan's group is doing," he said. Little was known of the island's prehistory before Metcalfe's work began in 1994. The island was not surveyed for archaeological sites until 1980, when the State of Utah purchased it, he added.
Smith says state biologists are watching closely to see what animal bones the archaeologists uncover in prehistoric garbage pits. This will help identify native species, such as bighorn sheep and sharptailed grouse, that are candidates for reintroduction to the island.
Some experts believe that as lake shore Paleo-Indian populations increased and rainfall decreased, the Indians adapted by hunting upland animals, such as mountain sheep and grouse. They also may have pursued to extinction the mammoths, giant sloths and camels then living here.
The Paleo-lndian culture - scattered groups living in caves and wood and brush dwellings - was either absorbed or gradually displaced by Archaic people about 8,000 years ago. Archaic people chipped fine spear points and used the atlatl to chuck their spears with great velocity.
Archaic people, in turn, were displaced or absorbed by the Fremont during a long transition period beginning about 300 B.C. Evidence shows that the Salt Lake Fremont farmed corn, but most of their diet was from hunting and gathering in the plentiful marshes and creeks. The Fremont used sophisticated nets, harpoons and hooks for fishing. They made sturdy baskets of pliable bulrush wrapped around flexible rods of willow and fashioned sandals from the lower hind legs of mountain sheep and deer. They also traded with the southern Anasazi.
A wave of immigrants from southern California around 1100 A.D. marked the end of the Salt Lake Fremont era. Little evidence of warfare has been found, indicating that the Fremont may have moved elsewhere or were absorbed by these desert-adapted Shoshone and Ute nations.
Metcalfe's class has already found Fremont potsherd in its Antelope Island excavations. The class also found trade items - chips of non-native obsidian - prized by Stone-Age people because it can be knapped to an edge even more keen than flint. This winter, Metcalfe's class will analyze its finds. Each hour of field archaeology requires ten hours of laboratory analysis, he says.
Working together on the Antelope Island archaeology project are the Utah Museum of Natural History, the University of Utah, the State Division of Parks and Recreation, and the Division of State History.
Antelope Island's Fielding Garr Ranch is open to the public August 24-25. The annual Antelope Island bison roundup is scheduled for October 26-27. Call 773-2941 for more information.