Valley settings typically provide water, shelter from wind, and access to multiple habitat types within a short distance — a traveler in a valley can access the valley floor’s riparian resources, the adjacent slopes’ different plant and animal communities, and the uplands’ open terrain, all within a day’s travel.

The sandstone outcrops in the area — including the one that contained the burial — would have provided both natural shelter and good vantage points for observing the landscape.

The specific geological setting of the Anzick burial — within a sandstone matrix — is relevant to understanding the burial’s preservation.

The sandstone provided a matrix that, when the excavation was made in it, could support an opening large enough to contain the burial assemblage, and that over time consolidated around the contents, protecting them from some of the disturbance that less coherent sediments might have allowed.

The red ochre that saturated the burial helped to preserve the bone by reducing the pH of the immediate burial environment and inhibiting some of the chemical processes that degrade bone.