On a weekdaY afternoon, a busload of school kids tramples into the Utah State University Eastern Prehistoric Museum in Price. On their field trip, they pass a towering mammoth skeleton with a small Paleoindian figure in pursuit. They pause at a glass display featuring a parching basket, digging stick and rabbit snare – until a child snickers.

What’s that gross-looking thing with all the other old stuff? He nudges a friend and reads the label: “Coprolite, Polar Mesa Cave, dried feces.” The boy asks the teacher, who asks the docent, who confirms: Yes, it is what you think it is. 

Coprolites are prehistoric human poop – and as the label adds, they offer “a window into diet and cuisine.” 

Dr. Tim Riley, director and curator of archaeology at the museum, welcomes giggles. He sees coprolites not just as curiosities, but as keys to understanding ancient Utahns – particularly the Fremont Culture, active in the region from roughly A.D. 400 to 1300.

“People see sandals made out of yucca and think, ‘These people must have had a life that was nasty, brutish and short,’ ” Riley said, referencing philosopher Thomas Hobbes. “But they laughed like us, cried like us, got jealous like us – and ate well like us.”

To uncover what the Fremont ate, Riley studies coprolites. These desiccated remains contain traces of food, preparation methods and even cooking styles. His goal? To humanize the Fremont for museum guests – and to answer a deeper academic question: how reliant were they on farming, and to what extent did they still hunt and forage?

Research from places like Range Creek and Nine Mile Canyon shows the Fremont cultivated maize (corn), beans and squash but also consumed more wild foods than their Puebloan neighbors to the south.

“Can we, by looking at their poop, understand how maize-reliant these different populations were?” Riley asked. Because maize was a domesticated crop that required hands-on farming, high quantities in the diet would suggest a more agrarian lifestyle. 

Coprolites could help answer that – but they’re rare and studying them means destroying them. 

“Even though there’s way more human poop across North America than projectile points, most of it is gone,” Riley said. Latrines turned to compost over time. But in the arid Southwest, some coprolites survived. 

They aren’t petrified or fossilized – just extremely dried out. To study them, archaeologists rehydrate the material. The first to do so was Canadian scientist Eric O. Callen in the 1960s, who soaked samples in trisodium phosphate to preserve fragile fungal evidence – and the smell.

That smell still lingers in labs today. Riley recalled a colleague being thoroughly grossed out by the stench of his research: a sieve, a slurry and a pitcher of rehydrated remains. That colleague now works with coprolites himself. 

Riley’s early analysis using cluster statistics revealed a surprising result: the Fremont were both farmers and foragers. 

“We’re seeing wild foods and domesticated foods mixed into meals,” he said. “That made me wonder – what dishes do these poops represent?”

Traces of cooking techniques are preserved too – from fine-ground corn to bits of roasted vegetable skins and cobs. These clues inspired Riley to recreate dishes based on archaeological evidence. He now prepares a multi-course Fremont-inspired meal for museum visitors during presentations titled “Fremont Paleocuisine: Reconstructing Recipes from Rectal Remnants”.

With dry humor and deep knowledge, Riley guides guests through his discoveries – then invites them to taste his findings. The menu is surprisingly familiar:

  • Cattail and spring onion salad
  • Braised elk or bison with roasted wild fruit
  • Corn grits with juniper berries, pine nuts and sage
  • Roasted winter squash
  • Tepary beans with pozole and onions
  • Dessert: a popped quinoa ball sweetened with honey

While no one knows the exact meals Fremont families enjoyed, Riley bases his dishes on ingredients and tools available at the time. His goal is connection – helping guests see themselves in the past.

“I want to show that they lived full, human lives,” he said. “They’re not ‘cave people’ – even if they sometimes used rock shelters. One of the best ways to show that is through food.” 

To be clear, Riley’s meals contain no coprolite material – just inspiration. And no salt is added either. 

While there’s evidence that the Puebloans mined salt in places like Redmond, Riley believes the Fremont had limited access. So he seasons his dishes with four-wing saltbush, a mildly salty native plant.

If you find your way to Riley’s tasting table, bring your curiosity – and maybe a saltshaker – and enjoy.