A Synthesis of Archaeological Studies on the Utah Test and Training Range

Description

This volume provides a glimpse into the landscapes and the people of northwestern Utah, an area known as the Utah Testing and Training Range (UTTR), which is administered by Hill Air Force Base (AFB). The journey begins more than 500 million years ago, when the earliest life-forms-small, crablike creatures known as trilobites-swam in the warm, shallow seas that covered the region. The record of fossils is followed until about 10,000 years ago, when human beings made their initial entry into the region. The drama is heightened as these bold new inhabitants-who lived by hunting and gathering wild foods-battled for survival and attempted to tame the unforgiving landscape they shared with massive bison, camels, horses, and mammoths. The many adjustments humans made to the challenging and changing landscape of the region are described: the extinction of the great mammals just mentioned, the disappearance of the huge rain-fed lakes in the region, the increasing desert like conditions, movements of other peoples into the region, the adoption of com and other crops and a more settled way of life, and, finally, the Native Americans’ first encounters with European explorers and settlers. After this last event, changes become even more rapid, as wagon trails give way to railroads and then highways, as miners and speculators tapped into the natural resources of the region, and a country at war selected the region as a locality in which to train soldiers and test and store weapons.