Because
the Fremont are not easily categorized and do not readily fit into archaeological
classification schemes, they have been a source of confusion and debate
among archaeologists since they were first identified in the late 1920s.
The differences between the many small bands of the Great Basin and
those of the northern Colorado Plateau areas of the Intermountain West
were often quite great. As a result, archaeologists have had a difficult
time defining just who these people were and how they were related to
each other. There are actually few artifact similarities among these
groups. While the similarities include such things as a particular way
of making baskets, a unique moccasin style, clay figurines, and gray
pottery, the problem of categorizing Fremont groups is compounded by
a number of factors. The figurines are quite rare, for example, and
the baskets and moccasins are perishable materials which do not survive
in most archaeological sites. There is, in fact, only one single non-perishable
trait which ties these people together--a thin-walled gray pottery whose
many variations have been found as far west as Ely and Elko, Nevada,
in the central Great Basin, as far north as Pocatello, Idaho, on the
Snake River Plain, as far east as Grand Junction, Colorado, at the foot
of the western Rocky Mountains, and as far south as Moab and St. George,
Utah, along the Colorado and Virgin rivers, respectively.
