1959 Excavations, Glen Canyon Area

During 1959, the University of Utah conducted two excavation programs in the Glen Canyon area: 1) at the Coombs site, at Boulder, Utah (Lister, 1959, 1960). and 2) at a number of sites in the Glen Canyon reservoir area proper. This report presents the results of the latter program.

The work was part of the Upper Colorado River Basin Archeological Salvage Project, sponsored by the National Park Service. The history of this project has been summarized in another paper in this series (Jennings 1959) . Adams (1960) has exhaustively summarized the history of Glen Canyon archeology. Other documents that report results of survey and excavation in the Glen Canyon area include those of Steward (1941), Rinaldo (1935), Foster (1952, 1954), Breternitz (1957), Miller and Breternitz (1958a and b), Fowler et al. (1959), Gunnerson (1959), Adams and Adams (1959), Adams (1959), Fowler (1959b), Lister(1959b, 1960), Lipe (1960), and a report "Survey and Excavations in Lower Glen Canyon 1952-1958" by William Y. Adams, Alexander J. Lindsay, Jr., and Christy G. Turner, II of the Museum of Northern Arizona. In addition, numerous historical sites have been documented by Crampton (1959, 1960).

All the sites reported here lie in the Upper Glen Canyon region, roughly between Hite, Utah, and the confluence of the San Juan and Colorado Rivers. All are in or adjacent to the area flooded by the formation of Lake Powell behind the Glen Canyon Dam at Page, Arizona. The ecological, climatic, and physiographic backgrounds of Glen Canyon sites have already been treated briefly in the report of 1958 excavations (Lipe, 1960). Specialized papers on these topics include those of Woodbury et al. (1958, 1959 a and b), Gregory (1938), Gregory and Moore (1931), Hunt (1953), and Cooley (1958 a and b, 1959 a and b). In this report there are, additionally, brief sections outlining the principal physical features of each of the four sub-areas where the sites occurred. Each site report includes a short description of the immediate environment.

A total of 22 sites was tested or excavated during the season. One, the Loper Ruin, has been reported with the 1958 excavations (Lipe, 1960). Another, 42Sa387, was tested for a possible buried habitation level, with negative results. More extensive tests on this site may be undertaken in the future, but the site has not been reported here. The remaining 20 sites, plus one site known only from surface collections, 42Sa588, are reported in this paper. Most of those are described in individual site sections; however, several groupings of small, closely associated sites also have been made. The survey site, 42Sa588, is discussed only in the introduction to the Moqui Canyon excavation. Standard excavation techniques were used. Natural divisions of the sites, both vertical and horizontal, were followed whenever possible. If natural units were not distinguishable, arbitrary divisions were imposed. All material was labeled at the site by unit of provenience, but exact location was recorded for only a few outstanding specimens. All the sites were mapped by plane table, tape and peepsight alidade or, most frequently, with telescopic alidade. In addition, measured sketch maps were made of a few sites.

Originally the information in this record was migrated into tDAR from the National Archaeological Database Reports Module (NADB-R) and updated. In 2014, as part of its effort to improve tDAR content, the Center for Digital Antiquity uploaded a copy of the document and further improved the record metadata.