The Fremont Culture: Its Derivation and Ultimate Fate

Aikens (1966) has proposed that Fremont-Promontory culture originated on the Northwestern Plains and representsan Athabascan migration into the Utah area at circa A. D. 500, their descendents, he suggests, were later forced back onto the Plains by the 12th century expansion of Shoshoneans from the Great Basin. He also proposes that FremontPromontory culture was ancestral to Dismal River culture. In this paper an alternative hypothesis is proposed, i.e., that Fremont and then Promontory cultures were sequential developments from an indigenous Utaztecan or proto-Utaztecan base and that there is no direct cultural relationship between theUtah cultures and the Dismal River aspect.