Research Projects

Virgin Anasazi Prehistory Project

PI: Paul Buck

Project Period: 1996 - Present

Funded by: U.S. Department of the interior, National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management

Right: Excavation of the Watchman campground site (42Ws126) in Zion National Park

Keywords: Virgin Anasazi, archaeology, adaptive diversity

Project Description

This project represents a long term investigation of Virgin Anasazi adaptive diversity in lowland and upland Colorado Plateau settings began in 1995. Since then a number of sites in southwestern Utah and northwestern Arizona have been tested or excavated.

• 1995 Hurricane Ridge site (Hurricane, UT)
• 1996 Whitehouse Ruins (St. George, UT)
• 1999 Parunuweap Canyon (Archaeology and geomorphology, Zion National Park)
• 2000 Watchman Campground site (Zion National Park, UT)
• 2001 Uinkaret Pueblo testing, (Mt. Trumbull, Grand Canyon-Parashant NM, Arizona)

These investigations were designed to understand Virgin Anasazi settlement and subsistence in, particularly the effects of local environmental change and technological change on adaptation. Current research efforts focus on the archaeological record of the Mt. Trumbull area, on the newly created Grand canyon-Parashant national Monument in northwestern Arizona.

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