Most early sites are known primarily from stone tools — durable objects that survive the thousands of years that separate us from the earliest Americans, but that provide limited information about the people who made and used them.

Sites that preserve organic material — bone, charcoal, plant material — allow for radiocarbon dating and dietary analysis that stone tools alone cannot provide.

Sites that preserve human skeletal remains are rarer still, and sites that preserve human skeletal remains in burial context, with clear documentation of the spatial and stratigraphic relationships that define the burial, are genuinely exceptional.

Upward Sun River was exceptional in all of these respects.

The site preserved animal bones in good enough condition for dietary analysis.