Understanding Paisley Caves fully requires understanding its place in this broader landscape of habitation, which remains only partially understood.

The Macrobotanical Evidence and What People Were Eating

The plant remains identified within the Paisley coprolites provide direct evidence of what the cave’s human occupants were eating — evidence that is not mediated by the preservation biases that affect botanical remains in open-air contexts, because the coprolites preserved plant materials that would have decayed rapidly if deposited in the sediment alone.

The specific plant taxa identifiable from coprolite contents reflect the flora of the late Pleistocene Great Basin — a flora that included many of the same genera as the modern Great Basin, but with different proportional representations of species reflecting the cooler, somewhat wetter conditions of the late Pleistocene.