WYOMING — Last month, the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO) published what it’s calling a “significant” new historic context, titled “Paleoindian Heartland: An Archaeological Synthesis of Wyoming’s First Peoples.”

According to the SHPO press release, “Paleoindian Heartland” offers a comprehensive overview of Wyoming’s archaeology during the Paleoindian period, spanning from approximately 8,000 to 13,000 years ago in the High Plains. The publication chronicles the development of Paleoindian archaeology in Wyoming from the late 19th century to the present, detailing important sites and illuminating the ancient past.

Dr. Brigid Grund, who is a University of Wyoming PhD graduate and archaeologist with the National Park Service’s Intermountain Archaeology Program, is the author of the book. While she does work in a number of states from Texas to Montana, Grund tells Buckrail that she fell in love with the Wyoming landscape and archaeology, which provides essential resources for the Paleoindian period.

George Frison (left) and Bruce Bradley (right) excavating mammoth bones at the Colby mammoth kill in the Bighorn Basin, where four Clovis points were recovered. Photo: George C. Frison // Courtesy of SHPO

According to Grund, the Paleoindian period is the first archaeological time period in North America where there is “solid” scientific evidence of human occupation. Grund notes that a major hypothesis for North American human occupation is that people came from Asian across the Bering land bridge and down between the ice sheets through Canada and into the Wyoming heartland.

“Wyoming is a really central location for understanding this period in North America,” Grund says. “It’s important for us to understand how the world became what it is today. It plays into how we decide we want to shape our future.”

Grund tells Buckrail that understanding the past and the deep history of Native American presence helps highlight the importance of acknowledging Tribes going forward. Learning lessons about how humans previously behaved and the outcomes of those behaviors is also something Grund says is helpful to deciding what behaviors to model going forward.

Physical copies of this resource are being distributed to federal agencies around the state, state agencies, the Wyoming State Library, the University of Wyoming Library and other official locations. The publication is also free for download here. According to the SHPO, physical copies are in limited supply and will be provided to cultural resource managers before being available to the general public.

River Stingray is a news reporter with a passion for wildlife, history and local lenses. She holds a Master's degree in environmental archaeology from the University of Cambridge and is also a published poet, dog mom and outdoor enthusiast.