Time, Context, and Marginal Archaeology: Methods for High-Elevation Transdisciplinary Research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Early Human Dynamics in Arid and Mountain Environments of the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Since 2002, the Greybull River Sustainable Landscape Ecology (GRSLE) project has conducted annual archaeological field research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (Shoshone National Forest, NW Wyoming, USA), focusing on elevations above 2500 m. By employing an artifact-based rather than a site-based approach, this primarily non-collection surface inventory, which implements in-field coding, has amassed a cumulative dataset of over a quarter million pre-contact artifacts. Interpreting these archaeological distributions requires examining long-term evidence of occupational dynamics and intensity across multiple time periods, thus avoiding the tautological trap of using the same data to both generate and test models. This necessitates a transdisciplinary approach that integrates data from various geomorphological and biological studies. Analyzing high-elevation archaeological data from the Late Pleistocene to the present within their ecological contexts provides a framework for advancing mountain archaeology and better understanding landscape-scale formation processes.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Early Human Dynamics in Arid and Mountain Environments of the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52226