Cowboys and Cave Dwellers: Basketmaker Archaeology in Utah's Grand Gulch

by Ray A. Williamson and Fred M. Blackburn

Book Overview

The tortuous canyon country of southeastern Utah conceals thousands of archaeological sites, ancient homes of the ancestors of today's Southwest Indian peoples. Late in the 19th century, adventurous cowboy-archaeologists made the first forays into the canyons in search of the material remains of these prehistoric cultures, called basketmaker. Rancher Richard Wetherill and numerous other adventurers, scholars, preachers, and businessmen mounted expeditions...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0933452489
• ISBN13: 9780933452480
• Release Date: April 1997
• Publisher: School of American Research Press
• Length: 188 Pages
• Weight: 2.20 lbs.
• Dimensions: 75.0" x 50.0"

Customer Reviews

Great read

This is a great read for anyone familiar with the the Four Corners area and its history. Well written, interesting insight into the Cowboys who explored the ancient ruins in Utah's Grand Gulch area.

Cowboys and Cave Dwellers

A superb book. Very informative, well written, and filled with great photos. I recommend this book, for what that's worth.

A great book

Grand Gulch country is some of the best in the Southwest. A unique canyon that winds its way down to the San Juan river it also boasts an amazing array of cave sites of ancient Native American dwellings. Some are larger than others, containing houses and artifacts. Many have been harmed by exposure to people. Nevertheless because many are far up into the cliffs they have been well preserved. This book tells the tale of a numerb of items taken from the caves that then became useless to archeology because people did not know from whence they came. THe story examines the history of the attempt to reconnect them to their origins and thus help archeology understand the history of the American SOuthwest. It is both the history of early American archeology and this unique canyon and its off-shoots. A wonderful book. Seth J. Frantzman

Vindication for Wetherills

I appreciated this book, not just for the fantastic illustrations and stories, but for improving the reputation of the Wetherills, long considered no-good cowboy pot hunters. A great companion to this books is In Search of the Old Ones by David Roberts, in which Fred Blackburn features largely as a revolutionary who shapes Roberts' thinking about the mess each generation of southwestern archeologists passes on to the next.

Detective story on finding "lost" archaeological collection

Undoubtedly the popular book of the year in Southwest archaeology, "Cowboys and Cave Dwellers" tells how a group of talented and dedicated "amateurs" found the missing links between nearly forgotten collections of artifacts stored in museum basements and their original sites in Utah's spectacular Grand Gulch. In the process they unearthed valuable information about the people called Basketmakers, the first farmers of the Colorado Plateau. The first explorers and untrained archaeologists who dug sites in Grand Gulch removed thousands of artifacts, often taking little care to record their locations. By carefully matching old photographs, diaries, newspaper articles and the signatures those adventurers carved on the canyon walls, the authors of this book, the members of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Research Project, were able to locate many of the caves and cliff dwelling where the treasures were originally found. They solved one of the most puzzling mysteries of Southeastern Utah archaeology: the location of long lost Cave 7, where Mesa Verde discoverer Richard Whetherill dug up dozens of skeletons that seemed to show evidence of a massacre. A good story with extensive historial and archaeological background and beautifully illustrated, this book is essential for anyone interested in Southwest archaeology. A good companion piece is William Ferguson's "The Anasazi of Mesa Verde and the Four Corners Region," which gives a broader view of the entire Mesa Verde-San Juan region.