History of Fremont Indians in Utah

Second, between about 2,000 to 1,500 years ago, many of the objects associated with the use of domesticates, such as pottery and large basin-shaped grinding implements, were added to the people's tools. It is noteworthy that Fremont pottery first occurs as early as 1,500 years ago in several caves and rock shelters associated with mobile hunting and gathering groups and is not found in what we think of as settled villages until several hundred years later. The production and use of these tools, in addition to the growing of corn, beans, and squash, appears to have spread to other hunting and gathering groups to the north as well as to both the east and west of the central Wasatch Plateau region. By about 1,300 years ago, sites with corn and pottery are also found in the Uinta Basin and around the Great Salt Lake; and within several hundred years after that, corn and/or pottery are present throughout the Fremont region.

Third, between about 1,750 and 1,250 years ago, architecture at some (but far from all) open sites changed from small, thin-walled habitation structures and subterranean storage pits to larger semi-subterranean timber and mud houses and above-ground mud- or rock-walled granaries. The presence of such substantial buildings suggests that, at some sites at least, some people were becoming more fully sedentary and were relying more on farming than on the collecting of wild foods.