Utah's Archaeological Past and the "Utah Cultural Stewardship Program" (Season 2, Ep. 12)

**Brad Westwood** (0:10)
Welcome to the podcast Speak Your Piece. This is a podcast about Utah's history produced by the Utah Department of Heritage and Arts.
I'm Brad Westwood, Senior Public Historian. My job is to make the very best, the most interesting, the most accurate history, and pre-history of Utah accessible to the widest audience. If there's one place, one podcast to get your Utah history fix, this is the place. My guests today are Elizabeth Hora and Ian Wright, from the Utah Division of State History.
Hello, Ian. Hello, Elizabeth. Thanks so much for being here on Speak Your Piece.

**Elizabeth Hora** (0:48)
Thank you so much for having us.

**Ian Wright** (0:50)
Thank you, Brad. Good to see you.

**Brad Westwood** (0:51)
Good to see you both. Elizabeth Hora is the Utah Public Archaeologist. Elizabeth works for the Utah Division of State History and is part of the Utah SHPO Office. Now, SHPO is an acronym. It stands for State Historic Preservation Office. Elizabeth leads the Utah Public Archaeology Network, which has a mission to bring together the people and organizations across Utah to work together on projects and programs which protect and preserve Utah's archaeological resources. We're going to be speaking about this network and some of the things that are going on in state history. We're going to learn a whole lot today about archaeology and how we preserve wonderful archaeological sites. Now, Elizabeth has a master's degree in archaeology and cultural resource management from Utah State University in Logan. Some of Elizabeth's personal research involves using tree rings and radiocarbon dating to investigate behavioral patterns of historic Fremont or ancestral Pueblo people who lived in Utah's Uinta Basin. Elizabeth lives in Eber Valley.
As a public archaeologist, Elizabeth has sought out innovative ways to engage the public in archaeological research, preservation, and public awareness. One of the wonderful historical and prehistoric facts about Utah is that we have archaeological sites and resources just about everywhere in Utah, in all of Utah's 29 counties. I have invited Elizabeth and Ian to speak on Speak Your Piece so that we can learn, get involved, and appreciate and protect Utah's amazing archaeological resources and sites. Our second guest is Ian Wright, who is Utah's new Cultural Sites Stewardship Coordinator.
Today we're going to learn just what a Cultural Sites Stewardship Coordinator does. Ian also works for the Utah Division of State History, and he's also on Utah's SHPO team. Ian attended Snow College in Ephraim, and then Southern Utah University in Cedar City, where he completed his undergraduate degree in history. Ian earned a Masters in Arts and Community Leadership from Westminster College here in Salt Lake City. Ian's professional work has been in the world of archaeology, participating in various fieldwork projects, and two in the field of historic preservation. One investigating Utah's ancient past, and one preserving Utah's built and architectural environment. Previously, Ian chaired the Murray City History Advisory Board. Now he now lives in Mill Creek in Salt Lake Valley. Now this history advisory board assists in guiding history related projects across that city in Murray. The board oversees local history registry, the city museum and its collections, and the development and preservation of historical resources. Ian also works or had worked in the past for a national wide community education program related to energy education.
Today's Speak Your Piece program will be about Utah's amazing archaeological resources, the physical evidence, the material culture, the cultural heritage of human life. Now that extends in Utah for over 12,000 years.
And this is an amazing and often misunderstood aspect of life in Utah. It's just how long human life has existed and we have evidence here in Utah. What we'll be talking about today is a very human experience, these lives that existed before us, this living, this working, this cooperating, creating and dying, all the experience very much like our own.
So before we begin to talk about preservation and the networks that we will be visiting about, Elizabeth, start us out, tell us the basics. First, what is archaeology? And will you paint a picture for our listeners regarding the breadth and depth of Utah's archaeological past?

**Elizabeth Hora** (4:54)
Yeah, thank you so much, Brad. And we'll try to keep this under an hour, the idea of what is archaeology and what is Utah's past.
Like you said, we have over 100,000 known archaeological sites here in the state of Utah. And like you said, we have archaeology in every single one of Utah's 29 counties.
There's a lot of human stories there.
And what's really fantastic about archaeology is that you can do more than just read it in a book. You can walk out and you can see those sites. You can experience them for yourself.