The Buhl Woman’s nitrogen values pointed clearly toward substantial fish consumption, consistent with the access to anadromous salmon runs that the Snake River system would have provided.

This was not a person eating a plant-dominated diet with occasional meat.

This was someone for whom animal protein — particularly aquatic protein — was a dietary staple.

The isotopic evidence for fish consumption has two implications.

The first is what it tells us about subsistence strategies in the terminal Pleistocene/early Holocene Snake River Plain: people were using the river as a food resource, were fishing or otherwise harvesting aquatic species, and had a diet more varied than the traditional “big game hunter” model of Paleoindian subsistence would suggest.

This is consistent with the broader shift in understanding of early American diets that has emerged from research at sites across western North America.