The primary process of sediment accumulation at the Paisley Caves was aeolian — wind-driven deposition of fine-grained sediment (loess and sand) from the surrounding Great Basin floor.

Wind is a persistent force in the Great Basin, and the south-facing cave openings at Paisley would have intercepted sediment carried by northerly and westerly winds across the basin.

This wind-driven sediment accumulated gradually in the caves over thousands of years, burying each layer of occupation material under successive additions of fine-grained mineral sediment.

The gradual nature of this accumulation is important for understanding why the Paisley stratigraphy is interpretable at all.

If the caves had been filled by rapid catastrophic events — large floods, mass-wasting events — the resulting deposits might have mixed materials from different time periods in ways that would be impossible to disentangle.