Speaker: Maria Nieves Zedeño, The University of Arizona
A major goal of The University of Arizona’s multiyear and multidisciplinary Early Blackfoot Origins Program has been the unveiling, through systematic analysis of Blackfoot oral traditions, of paleoenvironmental clues that can account for the early peopling of the northern Rocky Mountain Front and adjacent prairies. Combined with the results of a recent DNA study that indicates the Blackfoot genetic lineage might date to Late Pleistocene glacial times, this presentation focuses on evidence of early Blackfoot landscape knowledge at the time of deglaciation. It demonstrates that oral traditions can complement and augment the fragmentary record of the peopling of this region.