Through lively prose and abundant photographs, this book treats us to a nostalgic journey with the 1931 Claflin-Emerson Expedition to explore the archaeology of Utah. Successful New England businessmen William Claflin and Raymond Emerson had been in the field in the Southwest with A. V. Kidder and Earl Morris in the mid-1920s, and at Kidder's urging, they funded exploration of the unknown Utah frontier north of the Colorado River. Beginning in 1928, in what is now Capitol Reef National Park, the expedition is best remembered through the work of Noel Morss and his definitive monograph, The Ancient Culture of the Fremont River (1931, and republished in 2009 by the University of Utah Press), which chronicles surveys and excavations conducted in 1928 and 1929.

But The Crimson Cowboys, named for the school colors of Harvard University, focuses on 1931, the last year of the expedition. Because no report of the findings was ever made, and because the only records of it are kept in the archives of Harvard's Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, the major activities of the expedition were eventually largely forgotten. Thanks to the efforts of Jerry Spangler and James Aton, this lost expedition is given new life. The seven-week expedition covered some 400 miles, and it ventured into the incredibly remote and rugged Tavaputs Plateau, which harbors Nine Mile Canyon and Range Creek Canyon, eventually reaching Jones Hole in extreme northeastern Utah. It was, perhaps, the last great horseback expedition in the old tradition of historic exploration in the Southwest.

The Crimson Cowboys outlines new research and makes an important contribution to the history of American archaeology. The authors have taken a deep dive into the archives at the Peabody Museum—not only the expedition journals but much of the correspondence, more than 400 photographs, and even receipts to reconstruct the expedition. They conducted more than a dozen interviews with descendants of local residents encountered by the expedition and others knowledgeable about it. Along with dozens of volunteers, the authors took to the field to relocate sites and to retrace the route of the expedition. Spangler and Aton have produced a fine piece of research.

The narrative begins with the founding of the project, and American social class and privilege are apparent in the interesting biographies of the major players. The expedition produced some well-known archaeologists, including its leader, Donald Scott, who was director of the Peabody Museum from 1932 until 1948; the legendary Southwestern archaeologist, J. O. Brew; and the younger A. V. “Alfie” Kidder II, who would later make his name in Peruvian archaeology. These were the days of collecting objects to place on display in museum exhibitions and to build museum collections. Indeed, expedition patron William Claflin had a personal artifact collection of over 34,000 objects, some of which he probably collected at cliff dwellings in Arizona, and others of which may have included arrowheads he collected as a child growing up in Georgia. Looting of sites and preservation are themes that run through the volume. Most of the sites visited by the 1931 expedition had already been looted. The exception is Range Creek Canyon, where rancher Waldo Wilcox refrained from collecting and forbade his family to do so. But that attitude was rare in the early 1900s, and it still is in the early 2000s.

Subsequent chapters are organized by place, and they move from canyon to canyon, culminating in extreme northeastern Utah in a last-ditch effort to recover museum-quality artifacts. Excavation at what was likely Deluge Shelter, located less than a mile from the Utah-Colorado border, only scratched the surface, missing the deep deposits excavated in 1966 that revealed 6 m of stratified deposits spanning Paleoindian to historic times and showing relationships between cultural manifestations in Utah and the Great Plains. The Crimson Cowboys is rich with the irony of archaeological exploration. Only two of the explorers could go to Deluge Shelter because there was a lack of fresh horses, yet “the entire human prehistory of the region sits there, like a layer cake awaiting the knife of scientists . . . if (they) had the time to dig deep enough . . . it was the unspoiled rock shelter they had sought to no avail for the past six weeks” (p. 209).

This is a book about archaeology, but readers should not expect to find a synthesis of prehistory in the region. The narrative does describe some of the archaeological sites encountered by the expedition, including rock art, residential sites, storage sites, and rock shelters. But the bulk of the story and some of the best tales within it are focused on the ranchers, guides, farmers, and general characters the expedition hired or encountered. The book includes important and interesting insights into the history of settlement and ranching in rural Utah, and this too is well done.

The authors frequently point out how much the expedition missed, yet some sites were so apparent that their omission from the journals and the frequent photography must have been conscious decisions. Comments on the incongruous reporting are part of an earnest attempt to convey just how difficult this trip was, and how rugged and inaccessible the country was. Most of it still is.

A few summative “postscripts” are appended to chapters, and reference is made to the large number of recorded sites, but the volume does not synthesize what we know about the Tavaputs. More of a missed opportunity than a fault, the text and references do not fully include the archaeological work done by Brigham Young University over the years in the Tavaputs region—albeit work that is spotty and largely descriptive. Nor is the reader directed toward syntheses of Fremont archaeology and the ancient lives it represents, an effort that would guide readers toward what archaeology finds out, rather than just what it finds.

Nevertheless, The Crimson Cowboys is an outstanding work that is well deserving of the Don D. and Catherine S. Fowler Prize, awarded to the authors in 2018, and it is an interesting and compelling contribution to scholarship on the history of archaeology and museum expeditions in the United States.