Obsidian is volcanic glass, formed in specific geological events at specific locations.

It can be traced — through a technique called X-ray fluorescence analysis, which matches the chemical composition of an artifact to known obsidian sources — back to the specific volcanic eruption that produced it.

The obsidian from which the Buhl point was made has been linked to sources in the Pacific Northwest region, suggesting that either the woman or the people who made her tools had connections to a broader geographic area than just the immediate Snake River Plain.

This is consistent with what archaeologists know about Paleoindian mobility.