Maize farmers must be fairly stationary as they raise and harvest their crop

In the case of the Great Salt Wetlands bones, scientists were surprised by what they found out when they utilized all these tools. Cat scans and engineering analysis of leg and arm bones showed that these Fremont men were traveling long distances through rough, mountainous terrain, while the women's bones did not display signs of that kind of activity. The isotope chemistry revealed that maize was an integral part of the diet of these people, meaning that their culture relied on some farming. One of the mysteries of the Fremont people is whether there were two discrete types of living situations — groups who were predominantly foragers and those who were predominantly farmers. "We have the first evidence that these aren't two distinct groups," says Steven Simms. "In our sample we've got fulltime farmers — people eating 70-80% of their calories as corn — and we've got people who ate almost no corn, and a whole lot in between. But genetically it looks like one population, and in terms of activity patterns it looks like one population. That was a major twist." The scientists believed they were looking at the bones of people who may have changed their individual ways of life several times over the course of a lifetime. "We learned things that we would not have been able to extract from the material record alone," says Joan Brenner Coltrain. The discoveries were powerful enough to change the story that scientists tell about Fremont culture.

More bones were excavated from the Great Salt Wetlands in 2001. But by that time, leadership in the Northwest Band had changed, the political climate had shifted, and the Shoshoni declined to allow scientific testing of the new batch of remains.

Where Do the Bones Belong?

Representatives from the state of Utah and the Northwest Band of the Shoshoni agreed to place the wetlands remains in a vault. The idea was that this would be a respectful final resting place for the bones that the tribe could control but that wouldn't preclude future study down the road. As science advances, new techniques may be able to extract even more information about ancient lives from these bones. If the remains were reburied, they would be lost to future scientists. If they went to a museum or university, the Native Americans would be back to square one on this issue. The repository was designed as a kind of compromise. It can't be accessed without approval of both the state and the tribe. These kinds of vaults are starting to be utilized around the world.

Fremont remains were eroding out of the ground at Range Creek before scientists stabilized the burials.

The bones discovered at Range Creek are likely to stay where they are, in the ground. The Bureau of Land Management is the federal land-managing agency for the site and so is charged by NAGPRA to make sure the human remains are properly treated. All the burials are stabilized and in out of the way areas, says Blaine Miller of the BLM. "Most of them take a great effort to get to—like a 12-to-14-hour round trip hike—so we don't think many people are going to be stumbling onto them by accident." But even the decision to let ancient bones remain where they are can be surrounded by controversy. Many Native Americans around Utah and from other tribes that claim to be descended from the Fremont didn't hear about the burials at Range Creek until they saw it on the news, though the BLM asserts that it had notified the proper contact people within the tribes. For now, no decision has to be made under NAGPRA about which tribe is most closely affiliated to the Range Creek remains since everyone agrees they should not be disturbed. But that could change in the future if the burials become damaged or scientists approach with a request to conduct a study of the bones.

	Archaeologists excavating with the greatest of care Fremont remains from the 10th and 11th century. Credit: Steven Simms, Utah State University

The idea of scientific analysis doesn't sit well with people like Patty Madsen Timbimboo, a member of the Northwest Band of the Shoshoni Nation. "The destruction of bone is not what I'd like to see done to any of my relatives," she says. "If you knew how they lived long ago, how does it affect my life? To dig somebody up and start sawing on them because you want to know something about them? That's difficult." Some Native Americans feel that through their oral histories and traditions they already know all they need to about the lives of earlier indigenous people. The idea that science is more substantive than what their religion and culture teach them about the past can be offensive. By no means is the struggle over how best to treat ancient remains one between "Indians" and "scientists" — there aren't two monolithic opinions that these groups embody. "I see it as related to the national struggle we have in America with religious fundamentalism and science," says Steve Simms. "We can choose if we want to take an empirical investigation of affairs, or do we want to decide through testimony and belief what is true." Others warn that turning away from scientific information about the past puts us at risk of historical revisionism in the hands of politicians who can construct a past to fit their own agendas.

NAGPRA and the state laws it inspired try to remedy past injustices and set up a framework in which people can work together. The problem is that there's no easy compromise between the positions held by those on the extremes of the issue of scientific testing.

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