Mobility in the Big Horns: GIS Analysis of Upper and Lower Canyon Creek and the Implications for Prehistoric Movement

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Least cost pathway research focuses on creating a baseline model of human movement constructed on defined variables. The stark landscape of the Bighorn mountains, from a Plains or Basin perspective, can be incredibly steep and difficult to navigate, without high cost or risk. The study uses GIS to identify least cost pathways as possible routes of migration through Upper and Lower Canyon Creek, between plains and alpine ecological zones on the western flank of the Bighorn mountains in Wyoming. This research is conducted using an archaeological landscape consisting of over 100 previously identified sites ranging from Paleoindian to Protohistoric temporal periods, across 80,000 acres, and tests the least cost pathway and the veracity of this analysis to model human movement. The assessment of how prehistoric peoples exploited and settled the landscape was aided by using a comprehensive analysis of site assemblages, site locations, and GIS models.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 25718