The specific location of the Anzick burial — in the northern Rocky Mountain region of Montana, in what is now the Shields River Valley — is relevant to understanding the pattern of Clovis dispersal across the continent.

The northern Rockies are not typically the first landscape that comes to mind when thinking about Clovis.

The Great Plains and the Southwest tend to dominate the mental image of Clovis country, partly because the first recognized Clovis sites were in those regions and partly because the kill-site evidence for megafauna hunting is concentrated there.

But Clovis artifacts and Clovis-age material have been found across a much wider geographic range, and the Montana site reminds us that the Clovis expansion reached the mountainous regions of the northern continent.

The Rocky Mountain environment presents different challenges and opportunities than the open plains.