George Carr Frison (November 11, 1924 – September 6, 2020) was an American archaeologist. He received the Society for American Archaeology's Lifetime Achievement Award, the Paleoarchaeologist of the Century Award, and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He was Wyoming’s first State Archaeologist, and was a founder of the University of Wyoming Anthropology Department. He died in September 2020 at the age of 95.
Early life
Frison’s grandparents, Jake and Margaret Frison, homesteaded to Leadville, Colorado in 1890 with the dream of starting a cattle ranch. Unsatisfied by the limitations of their ranch property, they decided to try their ranching luck in the town of Ten Sleep in Northern Wyoming in 1901. By the 1920s, the ranch was a viable cattle operation with the three sons of Jake and Margaret obtaining their own homesteads of each.
George Frison was born in Worland, Wyoming on November 11, 1924 (Thomson Gale 2007). Frison’s father was killed in an accident in 1924 before George Frison was born. Frison’s mother left when George was three, and his paternal grandparents in Wyoming raised him. Frison took to ranching as a young man and helped his grandparents run the family ranch.
Frison was intrigued by fossil dinosaur and mammoth bones he found as a youngster in Wyoming, along with a variety of archaeological features such as chipped and ground stone tools, rock shelters, rock art, and scaffold burials (Vittitow 2006). Many researchers, such as geologist Harold Cook, paleontologist Glenn Jepsen, and anthropologist Waldo Wedel were investigating the areas near the Frison ranch for various research projects. Frison was intrigued by Paleontologist Barnum Brown, of the American Museum of Natural History, who excavated dinosaur beds close to the Frison ranch in 1934. Frison brought several cigar boxes of fossils to him to identify. Barnum was the researcher who identified the bison bones at the Folsom site in New Mexico, so he discussed the Folsom complex with a young George Frison, who had never heard of Folsom before. These experiences were helping to shape Frison’s interest in and knowledge of both fossils and ancient American cultures (Vittitow 2006).
George Frison was an accomplished hunter and learned about hunting and animal behavior from his grandfather. Through experience and family ethics, Frison as a hunter was able to adopt a philosophy of conservation that worked for both the hunter and the hunted, and the common environment that both had to live in. Frison later believed that his philosophy must also have been the philosophy of early hunters.
When he was 11 years old he had his first, and most unforgettable, incident with a bison bull in a state park near Thermopolis, about from his home ranch, when ten loose bison wandered from the park, and Frison was able to secure permission to assist local cowhands to escort the bison back to the park. A young bison bull that created too much confusion among the other bison was left behind. Frison found the bison bull grazing a few days later and decided to outrun the bull on horseback. After both Frison and the bison cleared two fences, the bull stopped at the third fence, turned 180 degrees and decided to charge. Frison soon learned how an awkward and docile bison could soon be a danger, as both Frison and his horse toppled to the ground when the bull passed between the horse’s legs. However, all three managed to sustain no injury (Frison 2004).
After graduation from high school in 1942, Frison enrolled in the University of Wyoming. His education was cut short when World War II began and he decided to enlist in the United States Navy. He served in the amphibious forces of the South Pacific during World War II, and received an honorable discharge in 1946 to return to Ten Sleep to work on the family ranch. He felt with the thought that the ranch “was the only place on earth…I really wanted to get back to it and it needed somebody to really do some work on the place and hold it together. At that point, I didn’t have any great desire to go back to school (Vittitow 2006).” At this time he also began work as a hunting guide, and married June Granville (Vittitow 2006).
Frison joined the Wyoming Archaeological Society and spent over 20 years working as an avocational archaeologist. In 1952 George discovered a hidden cave full of atlatl and dart fragments, which were used by ancient American hunters as spear throwers, and took them to local archaeologist Dr. William Mulloy. George learned how to make the darts and atlatls himself and later, in 1965, described and published work on the cave now known as Springer Creek.