Press Release
Our March meeting will be Thursday, March 21 at 7 p.m. in the Don Burge room at the Prehistoric Museum, 155 East Main Street in Price. Our speaker this month is David Yoder and he will give a talk on the Pilling Figurines (which are on display at the Prehistoric Museum, Price, Utah) and analysis of other figurines found in Utah.
David Yoder is an archaeologist who focuses on the prehistory of the Great Basin and Colorado Plateau of North America. His primary areas of research include Fremont societies, the Paleoarchaic to Early Archaic Transition, archaeometry, and cultural resource management (CRM). For the last decade he has taught at state universities (currently at Weber State) and has held archaeology positions in government and the private sector.
David will talk about the Native Americans living in the Utah area 1000 years ago and made fascinating miniature clay figurines which archaeologists have described as one of the defining traits of the Fremont culture. Surprisingly though, many questions about the figurines’ meaning, characteristics, distribution, and chronology have remained unanswered. In this presentation he will discuss the results of an analysis of over 800 figurines, highlighting how their study helps us learn more about the prehistoric people who made them.