The Cedar Mesa Perishables Project was established in 2011 to document the nearly 5,000 prehistoric textiles, baskets, wooden implements, hides, and feather artifacts excavated from alcoves in southeastern Utah during the 1890s. The artifacts range in age from 700 to 2100 years old. Many are still in excellent condition.
During the 1890s, amateur archaeologist Richard Wetherill and his peers excavated roughly 5,000 cultural items associated with the Basketmaker (200 BC-700 AD) and Ancestral Pueblo (700-1300 AD) archaeological cultures. These items were taken from dry caves in the Bears Ears National Monument and Glen Canyon National Recreation Area regions. About 4,000 of these items were perishables, including textiles, baskets, wooden implements, and hide and feather artifacts.
These cultural items are now housed in six museums across the country, and for nearly a century, were overlooked, undocumented, and disconnected from the landscape and cultures from which they were taken. All of this began to change with the establishment of the Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project, followed by the Cedar Mesa Perishables Project.
The Cedar Mesa Perishables Project Research Team
- Erin Gearty, archaeologist and textiles specialist
- Laurie Webster, project director & perishables specialist
- Louie Garcia, Tiwa/Piro Pueblo weaver & cultural specialist
- Chris Lewis, Zuni fiber artist
- Mary Weahkee, Santa Clara Pueblo/Comanche archaeologist and perishables specialist
- Chuck LaRue, wildlife biologist
Between 2011 and 2020, our team traveled to six museums for weeks at time to describe and photograph these collections.
Now that our artifact documentation is complete, we are processing our data and developing ways to share our results. We are currently working with tDAR (The Digital Archaeological Record at Arizona State University) and various funding agencies to create a searchable on-line digital archive to share our images and information with archaeologists, Native communities, and the general public. The goal is to reunite these dispersed museum collections into a single virtual dataset.
Support Our Work
Tax-deductible contributions may be made through our fiscal sponsor, Bears Ears Partnership (formerly the Friends of Cedar Mesa). When donating, please include "Cedar Mesa Perishables Project" in the memo.
Using $22,000 in private donations raised through this website, we recently completed a project to radiocarbon date 100 perishable cultural items from the Bears Ears region. A big thank you to our supporters for making this possible. We continue to raise funds for grants, analyses, and publications.