Talk: Records of Bison in Northwest WY

Join us for our December Lunchtime Expedition, presented by Dr. Lawrence Todd, with assistance from Draper Natural History Museum Curatorial Assistant Amy Phillips. Todd shares on-going research into human predation and use of bison at the Horner Site near Cody in a talk titled "Kills, Camps, and Mountain Landscapes: Records of the last 11,000 years of bison in northwestern Wyoming."

If you prefer to join us online, you may register in advance via Zoom webinar: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN__ikBujSVSa-cC3PrVU_lBw

Records of human predation and use of bison in the Big Horn Basin and Absaroka Mountains begins with the spectacular evidence provided by the Horner Site near Cody, which provides clues to hunting and processing of large numbers of animals nearly 11,000 years ago. Work at this site that began in the late 1940s and early fifties by Princeton University and the Smithsonian and later by the University of Wyoming (1977–1978) revealed both kill/processing and camp areas where hundreds of bison were processed.

 

Recently, a series of new analytical methods to better understand the Horner site bison have started to be integrated with studies of other localities in the basin and nearby mountains. This presentation provides a quick overview of work at Horner and other key sites/localities and focuses on how today’s research questions are linked to a growing body of information and a range of methods to help provide better understandings of the area’s past.