Given the paraglacial impacts affecting the ice-free corridor, it has made a great deal of sense to focus upon extracting toolstone, morphological and distributional information from the Western Canadian Fluted Point Database in contemplating the earliest Indigenous settlement of Canada east of the Pacific Coast. Even though Tse’K'wa (Charlie Lake Cave) remains the only site at which a Corridor fluted point has been dated (to a Younger Dryas time frame), fluting and basal thinning strategies are readily recognizable, reflecting a comparatively narrow range of time (~13,000 to 12,000 years ago). Stemmed points involve a more generalized hafting strategy, spanning a decidedly greater time range (>13,000-~ 9,000 years ago for the Western Stemmed Point tradition).  One corollary of the recognition that stemmed points occupy time ranges from pre-Clovis through to the later early pre-contact period would be that early bearers of stemmed point traditions had similar opportunities to enter southern portions of a Corridor already being inhabited 13,500 years ago, as at Wally’s Beach. It is prudent therefore to consider the variability in stemmed points from the Corridor, and to assess them against northern (Sluiceway, Mesa and Dry Creek Component 2 materials) and southern comparators (Parman, Haskett, and Cougar Mountain).

Sometime between 850 and 1000 B.P., a group of Plains bison hunters occupied the landscape around Matzhiwin Creek and its confluence with the Red Deer river, northwest of Duchess, Alberta. Here, on the homeland of Treaty 7 peoples, the hunters took advantage of the natural topography and drove a number of bison into a trap, dispatching them and processing them for their meat and hides. Excavations conducted by the Institute of Prairie Archaeology of the University of Alberta during the 2019 field school revealed an extensive Late Precontact bonebed (EfOx-70) and processing area (EfOx-71). Radiocarbon dates and projectile point forms place the sites within the Avonlea-Old Women’s transitional period. With the excavation of multiple faunal remains, stone tools, pottery and features, the site represents an interesting addition to communal bison hunting research during this time period. Initial analysis of both sites suggests that one or more prime-dominated herds were trapped and dispatched with arrows made of Knife River Flint, Swan River chert, Montana cherts, and a variety of local, thermally altered materials.

The Pan-Dene Comparative Lexicon (panDCL), currently nearing final stages of preparation, is an on-line, searchable database compiled primarily from published or open-access lexical resources for the majority of Dene languages and many dialects thereof. Lexicographic documentation of Dene languages has been considerable. However, much of the collected information takes the form of field notes or manuscripts with very limited information or general availability. Researchers both in and outside of the academy have struggled to gain access to such an aggregate array of data. In compiling the comparative database with a view to making it publicly accessible, this project aims for open and replicable scientific research on Dene languages for the people who speak or want to study them. At present, there are over 25,000 entries and this greater availability of digital data is crucial at a time when new computational approaches to language and dialect classification are emerging. These methods coupled with better data allow for fresh perspectives on historical linguistic relationships and new opportunities for collaboration between Dene communities, archaeologists, and linguists.

The Promontory Caves of Utah contain exceptionally well-preserved cultural materials left behind by a human group in transition between a Subarctic/Northern Plains and Southwestern/Southern Plains way of life – possibly Apachean ancestors. In this presentation I describe a unique combination of archaeological, isotopic, genetic, and ecological evidence which suggests that the AD 13^th century occupants of the Promontory Caves had travelled to (or had contact with other groups who had travelled to) areas hundreds of kilometres to the south or east: most likely northern Arizona or central Colorado. Arriving at either of these locations would have placed the travellers in closer proximity to Johnson Canyon (near Mesa Verde), where a Promontory-style moccasin was recently recognized. It is thus possible that as early as the late AD 13^th century, Promontory people had ventured into the heart of Dinétah. Regardless of their identity, Promontory Cave inhabitants had expansive landscape knowledge that would have allowed them to make well-informed decisions about directions and routes of movement for territorial shifts in response to rapidly changing environmental and social conditions during the late 13^th century.