They’re called orphaned artifacts — remnants of ancient cultures that were carted away from original dwellings, caves and encampments in southeast Utah canyonlands to be sold, studied, displayed and eventually stored in museums as far away as New York City.

From now until September those items and their 1,000-year history will be closer to home, on loan to the Anasazi Heritage Center near Dolores, as part of a unique exhibit called "The Landscape Remembers."

Ever since 1890s expeditions in Grand Gulch, Utah, by such local legends as the Wetherill brothers uncovered the interesting lives of early Americans, those artifacts — ranging from the mundane utility pot to truly amazing basket artistry — have mostly sat in drawers, boxes and storage basements of natural-history museums in Salt Lake City, Chicago, Washington and elsewhere.

"The Landscape Remembers" is a rare opportunity to view the most well-preserved items excavated from the homes of the Ancestral Puebloans who thrived here a millennium ago.

Using research methods known as "reverse archaeology," the project successfully reconnecting long-lost pieces of history to the locations where they were discovered.

"The premise of our exhibit is reverse archaeology, or the attempt to reconnect historical records and photographs with sites and the collections removed from those archaeological sites," explained Michael Williams, Heritage Center cultural interpreter.

"The collections went out in a hurry in the 1890s and scattered to the four winds, becoming what we call orphaned artifacts, some of which are displayed here."

Unfortunately, many early explorers and archaeologists did not accurately record exactly where those artifacts were discovered over a century ago, leaving behind big mysteries for the next generation of explorers and fans of Southwest history to try and solve. Beginning in 1996, a team of intrepid volunteers, scientists, museum archivists and researchers did just that, embarking on a a five-year journey that revisited the famed Wetherill-Grand Gulch research project to look for missing clues.

Scrutinizing unlabeled photographs, diaries, and often-incomplete log books of the earliest expeditions, and then comparing them with expeditions’ inscriptions scratched into the walls at the sites themselves, they made many discoveries.

The group, led by Fred Blackburn of Cortez, first set out to document hundreds of signatures that remain on canyon walls and caves near or in the Anasazi ruins in Grand Gulch. That data was then matched up with historical records to fill in the gaps.

"We literally found old, unidentified photographs in one museum that matched artifacts and notes in another," Blackburn said in a news release, adding that the poor records of early digs were, in part, the fault of museums who mishandled, traded or lost them.

"Through the years, the Wetherill family has been the victim of some unfounded criticism, but once pieced back together, many of their notes and photographs stand the test of time," he said.

The exhibit is a smaller version of the original show that debuted at the Utah Museum of Natural History for the past two years.

The interpretive exhibit traces the history of the expeditions of the 1890s, with items on loan from the Chicago Field Museum, University of Utah Museum, Salt Lake City Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Peoples and Cultures in Provo, Utah, among others. Highlights of the show include an original 1893 letter by Wetherill to colleagues describing fantastic finds and burial sites.

"They are a different race from anything I have ever seen. . . (T)hey had feather cloth and baskets," writes Richard Wetherill in a letter dated Dec. 1893. He is describing to a friend a burial site containing 90 bodies discovered beneath a cave in Grand Gulch. The find proved that a succession of cultures had occupied the region.

Other items include finely-woven baskets dating from 1000 to 1200 A.D., various black-and-white photographs from early sites, and ancient examples of woven sandals, clothing, bags and tools.

"My favorite is a very well-preserved and rare tump line made of yucca and human hair," explained Williams. "It’s a strap that fits along the forehead and was used to carry loads. This one is a good example; you can even tell where it was worn from use."

Another is a stone ax that is still "hafted," or connected to its handle with yucca weaves. The 1893 Chicago World’s Fair is documented at the exhibit also. The fair featured a scale replica of the Battle Rock cliff in McElmo Canyon that tourists walked through to view the "Cliff Dwellers" collections garnered by early explorers.

Copies of historical records of early expeditions are bound in several notebooks and can be perused by visitors. The chronology of the expeditions in the 1890s gives the viewer good insight into early archaeological techniques and hardships.

"The Wetherill-Grand Gulch Project is a success story," said Heritage Center Director LouAnn Jacobson. "If we learn from the mistakes of the last hundred years, then maybe, a hundred years from now, the public won’t have to wonder what happened. They will be able to understand the ancient landscapes, regardless of modern impacts."