They are moving bodies of ice — flowing down from their source areas at speeds that vary from a few meters per year in slow-moving glaciers to tens of meters per year in faster ones.

As they move, the material incorporated within them — rock, sediment, and anything else that has entered the ice — is carried with them, transported and deformed by the complex flow dynamics of the glacier.

This movement complicates the interpretation of any material found at a glacier’s edge, because an object emerging at the margin might have entered the ice anywhere within the glacier’s catchment area and might have traveled a significant distance from its entry point to where it emerges at the margin.

For Kwäday Dän Ts’ìnchi, the question of where exactly he died — whether at the point where he was found or somewhere else within the glacier’s catchment — is not definitively answerable from the evidence available.