Paleoecology and Diet at Clydes Cavern

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Abstract
Dietary and paleoecological data from the Clydes Cavern site has provided information concerning man's adaptations in a desert environment. Moreover, this information reveals certain of the processes involved in the Archaic-Fremont transition in Utah, especially as this transition relates to the utilization of wild grass seeds and the introduction and development of maize horticulture. Although horticulture and wild plant collecting were practiced during the Archaic inhabitation of the site, the coprolite sequence and the alluvial chronology suggest that a greater dependence upon these subsystems developed in a Fremont context, possibly in association with a period of improving alluvial conditions. During the Fremont occupation, the site seems to have functioned as a farming and collecting station within a larger system of regional adaptation.