Skeletal material from the relevant period, in this part of North America, is extraordinarily rare.

The Great Basin environment, while preserving some categories of organic material very well, is not consistently favorable for bone preservation.

The Paisley caves did not produce a human skeleton from 14,000 years ago.

What they produced was something far more humble but, in the specific questions it could address, surprisingly informative.

Long Before the DNA Laboratory

The history of archaeological attention to the Paisley Caves stretches back well before the era of ancient DNA analysis.

Luther Cressman, the prominent Oregon archaeologist often described as the father of Oregon archaeology, conducted excavations at Paisley Caves beginning in the 1930s.