Their south-facing orientation and proximity to the lake were not accidents of where people happened to wander.

They were features that made the caves attractive as habitation sites, and the repeated use of the caves across many generations documented in the sediment record reflects the integration of these specific locations into the community’s understanding of their territory.

The people who left the coprolites at Paisley were, in the deepest sense, at home.

Not in the romantic sense of a paradise without challenges, but in the functional sense of people who knew their environment, who had the knowledge and technology to exploit it effectively, and who moved through it with the confidence that comes from generations of accumulated experience.

That confidence, and the knowledge it reflected, is part of what the Paisley evidence documents.