James Aton delivers book lecture in Springdale
By Joyce Hamilton
SUU professor James M. Aton will present a literary lecture on his newest book, “Crimson Cowboys: The Remarkable Odyssey of the 1931 Claflin-Emerson Expedition,” April 5 at 7 p.m. at the Canyon Community Center in Springdale.
In 1931, a group from Harvard University’s Peabody Museum accomplished something that had never been attempted in the history of American archaeology: a six-week, 400-mile horseback survey of Fremont prehistoric sites through some of the west’s most rugged terrain. The expedition was successful, but a report on the findings was never completed. What should have been one of the great archaeological stories in American history was relegated to boxes and files in the basement of the Peabody Museum at Harvard.
Now, based on over a thousand pages of documents (field journals, correspondence, and receipts) and over 400 photographs, this book recounts the remarkable day-to-day adventures of this crew of one professor, five students, and three Utah guides who braved heat, fatigue, and the dangerous canyon wilderness to reveal vestiges of the Fremont culture in the Tavaputs Plateau and Uinta Basin areas. To better tell this story, Aton and Jerry D. Spangler undertook extensive fieldwork to confirm the sites. Their recent photographs and those of the original expedition are shared on these pages. This engaging narrative situates the 1931 survey and its discoveries within the history of American archaeology.
Aton has been an English professor at SUU since 1980. He was a Visiting Fulbright Scholar of American Studies in Indonesia and the People’s Republic of China in 1989–90 and 1997–98, respectively. He authored seven books on the artists, explorers, and rivers of the Colorado Plateau. His latest book won the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize for best book on anthropology.
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