Click on site names on the map to learn about them or view an alphabetical list of site names or view a chronological list of sites from earliest to latest

Module Organization

Image of Archaeological Map

This interactive module is organized around journalism’s “Maxim of Five Ws and One H.” There is no right or wrong way to navigate through all the information so follow your interests and instincts. Begin by clicking on one of the sites on the map and see where it leads. You can always return to the map to look at other sites, and there are many navigation links that interconnect all the facts, interpretations and images.

So have fun learning about the archaeological sites that span the 14,000 year history of people who lived in Eastern Idaho!

Maxim of the Five Ws (and One H)

  • Who occupied the excavated archaeological sites?
  • What did ancient people do at those sites?
  • When did they occupy the sites?
  • Where are the sites located?
  • Why did they do what they did at those sites?
  • How did they survive at each site?

Why is this module organized around journalism’s “Maximum of the Five Ws and One H?”

During my career of excavating archaeological sites I have been visited in the field by hundreds of citizens of all ages and backgrounds – sometimes their visits were part of organized tours and other times they were strictly accidental encounters while they were out enjoying the wilderness. While peering into the excavations they begin asking questions. "Who were they?" is consistently one of the first asked followed by "What were they doing here?" then by "When were they here?" I soon realized the obvious – I was being asked to address journalism's Maxim of the Five Ws (& One H). Curious visitors sought factual answers to the questions of who, what, when, where, why and how. So these questions appear to be the public expectation of archaeologists and our work – thorough and objective reporting about people and events of long ago. Not surprisingly, answering these questions is also a goal of scientific archaeology, although we ask them in a different order and we tend to report our findings in such jargon-filled code-talk that the answers often remain inaccessible to the general public.