An Update on Interdisciplinary Ice Patch Research in the Greater Yellowstone Region, USA

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Ice patch research in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) is increasingly interdisciplinary. Efforts to obtain paleoclimatic proxies obtained from ice patches and peri-ice patch environments are being coupled with archaeoecological observations to posit linkages between climate and the activities of Indigenous populations during the Holocene. For example, several projects have focused on obtaining ice cores from ice patches in areas where organic artifacts were exposed by melting ice. This paper highlights much of the ongoing work, but it is far from exhaustive. Projects have been employing ground-penetrating radar (GPR) to measure the depth of seasonal snow on top of ice patches, as well as to observe bottom profiles and internal structure that may eventually be correlated with direct observations made via ice cores. Others have been analyzing macrobotanical remains that coalesced on ancient melt horizons and still others have been studying associated pollen records. As of 2024, there are many collaborators participating in this research, including Indigenous community members Shane Doyle, D. Lynette St. Clair, Aaron Brien, and others.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• SAA 2025: Individual Abstracts

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 54087