Utah Cultural Resource Series 32 Excavations at the Road Kill Site (42KA4859): An Early Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan Farmstead in Eastern Grand Staircase

This report describes excavations at the Road Kill site, a Virgin Branch Ancestral Puebloan farmstead on the Grand Staircase considered typical of the “Early Puebloan Period” circa AD 700-1050, which spanned the local Late Basket Maker III, Pueblo I, and Early Pueblo II periods. As one of several partially excavated sites investigated by the BLM’s cultural resource management program, we consider Road Kill as a case study illustrating the complex relationship between site structure, settlement, andsubsistence. Central to our understanding of these relationships is the observation that virtually all excavated farmsteads on the Grand Staircase have yielded evidence that they were intermittently occupied over various lengths of time.
 

We conclude that a practice of shifting cultivation accounts well for a proposed model of “sequential settlement” in multiple settings and often on previously occupied sites, and that the occupants relied heavily on domesticated crops while allowing for local foraging opportunities that supplemented their diet.
 

Many researchers have assumed that the dividing line between the Virgin and Kayenta cultural areas was Kanab Creek. Demonstrated here is that the Grand Staircase, and perhaps the St. George Basin populations, were participants in a common “Virgin” tradition during the Early Puebloan Period. Awareness of this “traditional” Virgin behavior during the Early Puebloan Period provides context for addressing material culture changes that occurred during the succeeding Late Pueblo II-Pueblo III Period.