The Merrell Locality (24be1659) & Centennial Valley, Southwest Montana

In 1983, at the initiative of Thomas A. Foor (Department of Anthropology, University of Montana), an opportunity was presented to Davis to continue and intensify archaeological and paleontological investigations of the Merrell Locality and site (24BE1659), in cooperation with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). This site is located in southwestern Montana along one of the potential avenues/routes that could have been followed by early Native Americans making their way south of the Cordilleran ice sheets from northern entry points into North America or vice versa, heading northward. The Merrell Locality is situated along the northwest edge of Lima Reservoir in the Northern Rocky Mountain region of the Intermountain West. Previous fieldwork directed by Foor under a cooperative agreement with the BLM had established and radiocarbon dated the presence of a late Ice-Age fauna exposed in weathering geological context at Merrell.