Wolf Village is a Fremont farming village located at the southern end of Utah Valley where Brigham Young University has conducted six field schools there and recovered 135 awl and awl fragments. The Wolf Village awls, like the awls from many Fremont sites, represent a large range of morphological variability. Because of the ubiquity and diversity of Fremont bone awls, many different approaches have been taken to organize and understand them; focusing more on morphological characteristics than interpretation. In order to better understand the life use of bone awls, experiments were conducted to replicate the manufacture and use of these tools and to create a comparative collection for diagnostic characteristics. Based on the results of analysis and comparison, the craftspeople at Wolf Village used a variety of methods to make tools for use in basket-making, leatherwork, and other activities.

Farming played a role in the subsistence base for the Fremont culture, but there is no consensus as to how significant that role was. Maize is consistently found in Fremont sites, but evidence of wild plant use is also abundant. The use of both domesticates and foraged plants by the Fremont, combined with the diversity of the landscape and sites that were inhabited by the Fremont, contributes to the diversity of theories on Fremont subsistence. This thesis examines evidence for plant usage at Wolf Village, a Fremont site in Utah Valley. Wolf Village is ideally situated for a Fremont farming village. Maize, beans, and wild plant remains were all recovered in the excavation process. In order to better understand the basis of Fremont subsistence there, further research is needed, however, into the economic importance of both the domesticates and the foraged plants, how the foraged foods may have contributed to the subsistence base, and whether the foraged plants were complimentary to a farming lifestyle. The information on plant use at Wolf Village should contribute to a better understanding of Fremont subsistence.

This analysis of faunal bones from Wolf Village focuses on large game and its utility, as evidenced by what is known as the modified general utility index (MGUI). The MGUI proposes that bones at sites reflect transportation and butchering choices made by hunters at kill-butchering sites. According to the assumptions associated with the MGUI, hunters should select animal portions with high food value. The MGUI has been used in Fremont archaeology to provide a rough measure of site function. The expectation is that faunal bones would accompany the prized cuts of large game meat at habitation sites – and the animal parts with little food value would remain at kill-butchering sites because they are not worth the cost to carry them to the village. My analysis of large game animal bones found in excavations at Wolf Village counter these expectations. Fremont hunters at Wolf Village were returning to the site with low-caloric portions of large game, at least part of the time. Results from strontium isotope analysis suggest that many of the large game individuals hunted by the Fremont were not local to the immediate area. This suggests that hunters saw utility in low-caloric elements not related only to food value. Some low-caloric skeletal elements were used by the Fremont to construct bone tools and other objects, and as possible symbolic objects used in abandonment rituals. The results of this research suggests that the MGUI is not appropriate for measuring the utility of animal portions to the Fremont. Only when considering the social and non-caloric economic reasons for transporting low caloric elements, can archaeologists discover the true utility of large game animal parts to Fremont hunters.

Archaeobotanical evidences for the presence of wild plants at Fremont archaeological sites are numerous. However, little can be positively argued for why those plants are present, if they were used by site inhabitants, and how they were used. Additionally, there are likely several wild plants that were used but that do not appear in the archaeobotanical record as pollen or macrobotanicals, the two most commonly identified plant remains. I argue that it is possible to provide better interpretations for how and why the Fremont used plants by researching how their historic counterparts, the Goshute, Shoshone, Ute, and Southern Paiute, used the same plants that are identified at prehistoric sites. I further argue that a phytolith typology for Fremont archaeology can provide more insight into prehistoric plant use. I demonstrate its utility through a phytolith analysis of ground stone tools from Wolf Village, a Fremont site in Utah County.