Year of Award

2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

Master of Arts (MA)

Degree Name

Anthropology (Cultural Heritage Option)

Department or School/College

Anthropology

Committee Chair

Doulgas MacDonald

Commitee Members

Anna Marie Prentiss, Kyle Bocinsky, Gregory Campbell

Keywords

Yellowstone archaeology, southwest Yellowstone, Bechler River, diet breadth, subsistence, camas

Subject Categories

Archaeological Anthropology

Abstract

In the summer of 2025, archaeologists from the University of Montana conducted a pedestrian survey through the southwest corner of Yellowstone National Park to take inventory of cultural resources. Over nearly 50 miles of trail survey, the team identified and recorded 17 new archaeological sites, mostly consisting of sparse lithic scatters on the surface. The findings indicate recurrent use of the Bechler area since the Paleoindian period. This thesis aims to provide a comprehensive and detailed report on those findings, followed by an interpretation of the data through the lens of optimal foraging theory and diet breadth modeling. The first three chapters introduce the project area, its ecology and geology, as well as relevant previous archaeological investigations. Chapter four contains the site report with all the survey’s findings, lithic analysis, and XRF sourcing results. The fifth chapter reviews optimal foraging theory and different models, then, using those concepts, a diet breadth model is constructed for the project area. The model estimates optimal use of resource packages through different seasonal conditions and separates targets based on gender. The model’s results suggest that the most productive season for both genders is summer, yet the breadth of the diets differ significantly because the female diet is predicted to focus largely on the abundant camas while the male diet targets are more scattered and rare. The conditions in which cambium and camas would be included are especially of interest because of their abundance and nutritional value. Cambium was also the only resource which was confirmed to be targeted through archaeological evidence, yet the model does not support it as being used in the optimal diet. Formal testing of the model is also unlikely due to poor preservation of organic material in acidic soils. The underlying principles of marginal value theorem are then employed in a very basic manner to understand which resources would require the most time spent within patch. The results are then used to frame the findings of the 2025 survey in chapter six.

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© Copyright 2026 William Brent Powell