It was the staggering amount of footwear in the caves that captured the attention of archaeologists, past and present.
With soles made from a single piece of bison leather, lined with fur, and sewn together at the heel, the moccasins are made in a style typical of the Canadian Subarctic, Ives said, a fashion his team describes as being “decidedly out of place in the eastern Great Basin.”
These moccasins and other cues have led some experts to theorize that the caves’ inhabitants were part of a great migration from the far north, a wave of people who moved into the Great Basin in the 12th and 13th centuries, and eventually gave rise to cultures that include the Apache and the Navajo.
