The Great Basin archaeological record from this period includes a range of evidence — stone tools, fire-cracked rock, plant processing debris, and occasional faunal remains — that collectively suggests human occupation of the region extends well back into the late Pleistocene.

But establishing the specific age and cultural affiliation of this evidence, in a region where the sediment record can be complex and where many of the most diagnostic artifact types are similar across long time periods, has always been challenging.

The caves received additional archaeological attention in the years and decades following Cressman’s work.

Dennis Jenkins of the University of Oregon Museum of Natural and Cultural History led the excavations that produced the coprolite evidence reported in 2008, building on the site’s earlier archaeological history and applying the more sophisticated dating and analytical methods that had become available by the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Jenkins and his team excavated with careful attention to stratigraphic context — the vertical sequence of sediment layers that records the accumulation of material over time.