The few human skeletal remains that have been found from the earliest periods of American settlement — including the Upward Sun River infant from about 11,500 years ago in Alaska — are remarkable precisely because they are so rare.

Each one is a gift of specific taphonomic circumstances that preserved evidence that usually does not survive.

The Global Context: Other Late Pleistocene Cave Sites

Bluefish Caves is not unique as a cave site that preserves evidence of Late Pleistocene human activity.

Around the world, limestone caves and rock shelters have provided some of the most important windows into the lives of people during the last Ice Age, precisely because the alkaline chemistry of limestone is favorable for the preservation of bone and because caves and shelters provide relatively stable depositional environments compared to open-air sites.

The painted caves of Europe — Chauvet in France, Altamira in Spain, Lascaux in France — are the most famous examples of Late Pleistocene cave sites, but they represent primarily the artistic and symbolic dimension of Ice Age human life rather than the subsistence and economic dimensions.