Ivy Creek White Ware Project (ICWWPRJCT)
Ivy Creek Black-on-white is a Fremont (a prehistoric agricultural culture) pottery type named after Ivy Creek in south-central Utah. This recognizable pottery type is most commonly recovered in the Ivy Creek area but is present in sites from Utah Lake in the north and in the Parowan Valley in the south. This distribution suggests that the type was manufactured somewhere along Ivy Creek and exchanged widely. In the year 2002 we initiated a research project dedicated to determination of the paste variability (the combination of temper and clay) in Ivy Creek White Ware sherds and indentification of resource locations exhibiting matching temper and clay types. The goal of our research is to identify the specific geographic locales where Fremont potters lived and exploited their ceramic resource base for the production of this distintive pottery.
Due to the lack of supporting funding, we have only one completed one field season of research and were able to develop only a minimal familiarity with the cultural landscape and its ceramic resources. Analysis of a small number of sherds from one site just north of Ivy Creek revealed that crushed basalt (available in the form of cobbles washed down from volcanic highlands to the west) was used as temper. Unlike our experience with the red ware ceramics manufactured in the Blanding, Utah area, the sherds revealed a number of different clays were being used, indicating multiple production locales, possibly stretching up and down Ivy Creek. Interestingly, none of the clay sources sampled in the area where the majority of sites with this pottery type are located match the clay types documented in the analysis. It is obvious that substantial additional fieldwork will be required in order to pinpoint the various locations where Fremont potters were making this pottery.
The identification of specific geographic locales where Ivy Creek White Ware was manufactured is the first (and necessary) step to accomplish the primary goal of our research, which is the investigation of exchange and interaction that we believe served to support and integrate widely dispersed Fremont farming populations. Knowing exactly where any piece of pottery was made is necessary for reconstruction of the structure of exchange, which requires knowledge of how much pottery was moved how far (different exchange systems have different fall-off patterns). If our fieldwork is sucessful, we will have developed an unambiguous indicator of exchange relationships among the Fremont.
To view the fieldwork report of the Ivy Creek White Ware Project click on Fieldwork Reports in the left hand pane.