The karst topography of Prince of Wales Island is not simply the geological setting for a single archaeological discovery.

It is an archaeological resource of considerable significance across the broader region, and understanding it contextualizes the On Your Knees Cave discovery within a larger story of early human occupation of the archipelago.

Karst caves provide preservation conditions for organic material that are genuinely exceptional compared to most other archaeological contexts in the humid, temperate rainforest environment of southeastern Alaska.

In an open-air forest site, bone typically does not survive for more than a few centuries before the acidic forest soils and the biological activity of the forest ecosystem — fungi, bacteria, invertebrates — reduce it to nothing.