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Protecting the Past

Interview with Sarah George Executive Director, the Utah Museum of Natural History

Ken Verdoia: How would you best describe the role of the Utah Museum of Natural History in Range Creek?

Sarah George: Well, a museum’s role is research and education, and our education program’s run from graduate training  all the way to public programming and so, what a museum does best is interprets the research that it does for the public.  It’s a really important link in the public understanding of science and so in the case of Range Creek the research that our curators are doing jointly with the Department of Anthropology our public programming staff and our education staff then have the opportunity to develop exhibitions, to develop perhaps a field trip program, to connect the public to Range Creek, but at the same time with a great deal of respect for its fragility. 

Ken Verdoia: You, also in a very real sense, become the keeper of the history of Range Creek don’t you?  Literally taking custody of the riches that may come from the land there.

Sarah George: Well, the museum also serves as a steward.  This museum is the state museum, so we hold the state’s collections, and we’re also a federal repository.  So, we have a partnership with the Bureau of Land Management and with the state agencies and the state archaeologist to hold any objects that are removed from their sites.  Right now we’re doing survey work and we’re not removing very much.  There may be a variety of reasons why we would take things out because they’re close to public access and we need to protect them for example.  We’re not doing any excavation yet, but if that time comes or when that time comes then those objects will be held here.  Then they are accessible to other researchers and again public programs.  We hold these collections in trust for centuries.   We’re constantly getting requests to get access to collections using new techniques.  For example, this morning we just approved a request to date some objects that were collected almost 100 years ago west of Great Salt Lake.  We have them here.  We know how to take care of them and we’ll hold them in permanent trust.  We anticipate doing that with Range Creek with whatever objects come out of Range Creek. 

We also use those objects in education as I said.  For example, we have four small exhibits that have a few objects from Range Creek that are in four communities.  Here in this museum in Salt Lake, we have a small exhibition in Price at the Prehistoric Museum in Castledale, at the Museum of the San Rafael and in Green River at the Powell River History Museum.  So again it’s a partnership, it’s a way to interpret what is so marvelous about the science in Range Creek for the general public.

Ken Verdoia: It seems to us that archaeology 100 years ago was a very different environment than the archaeologist’s experiences at the turn of the 21st century. So to the role of the museum seems to be much more complicated and complex.  Could you compare the periods--look back 100 years in time…back then it was this, now this is what we do?

Sarah George: Well, 100 years ago, science, whether it’s archaeology or biology or geology, the natural world was unexplored and we were going out and just collecting what we could.  We didn’t have the technology to analyze context like we do today.  So we were just trying to survey the natural world.  Today, when we do field science, we don’t just collect the big flashy objects.  We take the sand that these are in and pollen samples and we look at the substrate around the objects if it’s a biological specimen or a fossil.  I mean we’re looking at a much bigger picture and a lot of the collections of the museum are not the beautiful pots, but they’re little bags of fiber and substrate.  That’s the way science is too.  We are really looking at context and trying to understand not just the object itself, but the people who produce the object in archeology, the habitat that they lived in, the context of their lives.  Museums have evolved just like the process of science has evolved.  We hold just an incredibly broad variety of materials related to whatever the science is.

Ken Verdoia: Is there also there is a greater sensitivity to all cultures that may have an interest in the site now that perhaps did not exist 100 years ago?

Sarah George: Yes.  I’m going to follow up in two directions.  One is particularly in archaeology, we don’t necessarily excavate everything that we find, because we know that the science will continue to evolve and there will be technologies that we have no idea about that our going to come up in the future that would give us even more information about the sites and so we’re going to be very selective about what objects we do bring back from the field right now and give the archeologists of one or two centuries from now an opportunity to look at Range Creek.  Another thing about Range Creek is because it is so untouched, we really can test some scientific hypotheses in ways that you can’t with sites that have been gone through in the past that don’t have this incredible database, so the ability to really examine some burning questions in archeology are better in Range Creek than almost anywhere else because it has been so untouched. 

Now the other question related to conversations that the museum has an Indian advisory committee.  We work with the state and with tribes in consultation on anything we do that is related to prehistoric peoples in Utah and in partnership with the state agencies, the Division of Wildlife Services and the BLM, we have opened conversations with tribes about the disposition of the sites in Range Creek.  And this is an ongoing conversation that will happen for a long time.

Ken Verdoia: People lived there a thousand years ago, people died there a thousand years ago.  What’s the procedure when your scientists encounter the remains?

Sarah George: Well, if human remains are encountered there’s a very proscribed process that we go through.  Really it’s not the museum so much as it’s the land manager, the agency that manages the land, and we assist them however it’s appropriate.  But that consultation is really with the land manager and they are undergoing that for Range Creek.

Ken Verdoia: 100 years ago when the first archaeologists went through that region, it was not unusual for them to scoop up a femur, to break off a human skull and put it in the collection sack and send it back east.  I understand that will not be the process this time.

Sarah George:  No, that will not be the process.  We’re leaving what few human remains we have identified alone and again the land managers are the entities that are working with the tribes that have expressed an interest in being consulted on Range Creek.

Ken Verdoia: I have been covering issues related to western land for a whole bunch of years.  I don’t think I have ever found one section of land that had more interested parties with their hands as part of the process.  Does that make this a very delicate balancing?

Sarah George: Well I think, first of all, it speaks to how a wonderful place this is.  It’s just incredible.   It has this incredible series of archaeological sites.  It has wildlife values.  We haven’t even started to delve into the paleontology and the geology there, looked at other biological aspects.   I think that the interest of all these groups that have some connection to Range Creek, be they managers or research agencies, it’s a real opportunity for us to examine an area that has all these different aspects and come up with something that is very future looking.  It really is a marvelous opportunity and yes, it’s a delicate dance because we all have our mission and mandate, but we’re very respectful of that in each other and we’re listening to each other in trying to come up with what is best for Range Creek Canyon.

Ken Verdoia: By definition that would mean a “go slow” process that we don’t rush to any judgment.

Sarah George: Absolutely, the important key is listening.  We have to listen to each other and share information and that’s what we’re working very hard to do.

Ken Verdoia: The Utah Museum of Natural History and the University of Utah have been involved with some very high profile archaeological work in the past.  But sometimes those best known excavations have been driven by a sense of urgency.  A dam is being built and the landscape is being filled with water.  Get in there, you’ve got two years to get it done.  Compare that to Range Creek.  The sense of immediacy, urgency and the sense of what comes as a benefit of a long term management.

Sarah George: Right.  Well, the University, of course, holds a lot of collections from highway construction.  We hold the Flaming Gorge collection and a big portion of the Glen Canyon collection and in those cases there was a really limited time period.  We had to get in, get the materials and get out, and it didn’t give us the opportunity for the listening and the discussion and the planning.  With Range Creek, to our knowledge there’s no sort of external pressure for us.  We do have an opportunity to look at Range Creek in a very holistic fashion and again to come up with a plan to manage, to do the research for the canyon that I think could be ground breaking.  It really is an opportunity to look at it from every aspect.  The fact that it’s very hard to get to does give us a chance to talk and listen and to craft something that really works for all of the entities involved.   We are the representatives of the people and so we’re looking for the plan that works best for the people of Utah and of the U.S.

Ken Verdoia: One of the great anthropological questions in the American West is what the heck happened to the Freemont?  Does Range Creek afford us perhaps the best opportunity we’ve ever had scientifically to get close to answering that question?

Sarah George: My understanding is that the density of sites and the time periods that the sites represent really do give us an opportunity to test a lot of hypotheses that have been developed out of the questions that we’re asking.  How did the Freemont live?  Why did they leave?  Did they leave or did they sort of change their life ways?  Because Range Creek is so untouched and because it has such a variety of types of sites, it really does provide us with a place that we can test those big questions in archaeology. 

Ken Verdoia: What are your greatest hopes for Range Creek as you sit here and you indicate a long term process?  What are your greatest hopes for this site and the management of this site and what one might gain from this site?

Sarah George: I think my greatest hope and I would say the museum’s greatest hope is that whatever happens in Range Creek it’s with the long view.  It’s with insuring that we learn as much as possible from the archeological opportunity there, but thinking about what we might be able to learn in a 100 or 200 years.  I think it is looking at how we make the access to Range Creek and the interpretation, looking for ways for us to interpret what we’re learning in Range Creek, be it archeology or wildlife or whatever.  Giving people an understanding of how important it is and why it needs to be protected.  I really think that that’s a very important message that we need to get across.  It’s going to be a place that’s very difficult just open up, and we have to ask ourselves: should we open it up?  Again I think the really important role of the museum is to give the public an opportunity to look through a window at what is great about Range Creek.  In ways that may not mean direct access that raises other issues of long term impact on the site.

Ken Verdoia: It seems to me your greatest fears would be a short term, short-sited management that would deny those opportunities studying it in the long term.  Is that your greatest fear?

Sarah George: Oh, boy.  There are lots of concerns about Range Creek.  But I have to say that I really am convinced that the people who are involved in Range Creek really are looking to the long view.  All of us respect what is so special about Range Creek, across the disciplines; and I believe that all of us are thinking about this long view, not the short term.  My greatest fear is that, of course, some sort of interest might be thinking about the short term, but from what I can see, we all understand what is so amazing about Range Creek and really want to preserve that.

Ken Verdoia: Final question.  How do you respond when people ask, “Why should we be spending public money on this? Why are we worried about what happened a thousand years ago?  What difference does it make?”

Sarah George:  [Laughs]  Well, we live in the arid west.  We are so impacted by our climate, by water availability.  These people lived here a thousand years ago and they were impacted by climate and water also and I think we can learn so much from how they dealt with these climatic changes, that there are opportunities for us to apply those lessons today.  We have got to make thoughtful decisions about our future, and one of the best ways to get information in order to make those decisions is to look at our past.  And this is a really important time in our past.  We know that there were periods of dry and wet in the early part of the millennium and  we should be taking a look at that, because it’ll help us develop patterns or develop models that can help us pattern for the future.  It’s just a really key thing in archeology that we should be paying attention to.  And that’s why a public museum should be involved in Range Creek.