If people had moved through or lived in Beringia during the late Pleistocene, the caves and rock shelters of the Seward Peninsula were logical places to look for evidence of that presence.

Trail Creek Cave 2 was one of the sites investigated.

The excavation proceeded by stratigraphic methods — digging through the accumulated sediment of the cave floor layer by layer, recording the position and context of everything found, and collecting materials for analysis.

This was standard archaeological practice for the period, though the specific techniques and recording standards available in 1949 were considerably less refined than what is available today.

What the excavation produced was a range of archaeological and paleontological material.