A partnership between the U.S. Bureau of Land Management and the University of Colorado at Boulder initiated in August 2005 to inventory a rich archaeological region in southeastern Utah will continue this summer.
Known as the Comb Ridge Heritage Initiative, the project was designed to allow researchers to study a 48,000-acre region in the Four Corners area containing archaeological sites dating back 13,000 years, said CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Catherine Cameron. The $275,000 award to CU-Boulder from the BLM runs through 2008, said Cameron, who is heading up the project with consulting Utah archaeologist Winston Hurst of Blanding.
Although a CU-Boulder student field school under the direction of Cameron worked at Comb Ridge from 2002 to 2004, this season's fieldwork will consist of archaeological mapping and testing by Hurst, several consulting archaeologists and several CU-Boulder volunteer students, Cameron said. Hurst and his colleagues have inventoried more than 2,500 acres to date at Comb Ridge, resulting in the documentation of more than 260 ancient sites.
Cameron said there are ongoing discussions with the BLM regarding the return of a CU-Boulder field school to Comb Ridge in 2008.
Comb Ridge consists of a 30-mile-long sandstone formation and its adjacent drainages, including Comb Wash and Butler Wash. Other collaborators on the Comb Ridge Heritage Initiative include Abajo Archaeology, a private Utah firm, and the College of Eastern Utah in Blanding.
"Comb Wash and Butler Wash contain a remarkable record of America's past," said Cameron. "The partnership between the BLM and CU-Boulder will help to identify, protect and manage these invaluable treasures."
Ruins under investigation at Comb Ridge include ancient camps, food gathering and processing stations, storage facilities, settlements, shrines, ancient Puebloan roads, Navajo hogans and historic ranching and mining sites. Archaeological field data is being supplemented by historic and ethnographic research, including interviews with Native Americans and others in the region, said Cameron.
Archaeological remains at Comb Ridge have been impacted by human activities in the past century, including mineral exploration, road development, grazing, off-road vehicles, artifact looting and hiking. "In order for land managers to protect this area, it's essential to inventory it so we know what is there," Cameron said.
In 2002 Cameron and a group of about 20 students began a mapping and excavation project in Comb Wash in anticipation of a campground development project. In 2003 and 2004 the team excavated portions of a "great house," a structure once several stories high and containing scores of rooms similar to other Pueblo great houses in the Southwest thought to be influenced by the Chaco culture centered in Chaco Canyon, N.M., roughly 1,000 years ago.