The Fremont Frontier: Southwestern Cousins or Great Basin Copycats by archaeologist Katie K Richards

For decades, archaeologists have debated how best to interpret the Fremont region that is located along the far northern extreme of the North American Southwest. Peoples living there demonstrated both a distinct connection to and isolation from their Puebloan neighbors. Around 1000 CE many southwestern traits – aggregated villages, painted pottery, and surface architecture – appeared suddenly in the Fremont region, accompanied by an influx in population. Fremont material culture has clear parallels to the early Pueblo II period in the Four Corners region. However, despite significant changes in the northern Southwest’s pottery styles during the PII and PIII periods, Fremont potters continued using the same “Pueblo II-esque” designs for roughly 300 years. Because of the Fremont’s unique position, its material remains often have presented as an intriguing and confusing syncretic blend of “southwestern” and “other.” This has led many Fremont archaeologists to downplay similarities between the two regions, choosing instead to focus on Fremont as a local development with occasional southwestern innovations diffusing north. Dr. Katie Richards argues, instead, that Fremont is best understood when resituated as the northern periphery of the Southwest. Examining Fremont within the context of the social changes that occurred during the Pueblo II and III periods presents an engaging history of identity creation and maintenance not evident otherwise.