The plant communities were shifting.

The rivers and lakes and wetlands of the post-glacial landscape were creating new ecological opportunities and new challenges.

The Anzick site is a rock shelter — a natural overhang of rock that provided protection from the elements and a definite enough structure to serve as a meaningful location for burial.

Rock shelters are common burial and habitation sites across human prehistory globally, for the simple reason that they offer protection without requiring construction.

The Anzick shelter was one specific place in a landscape that the people of the child’s community moved through, probably seasonally, following the resources that the landscape offered.