January 2021

The Kootenai people of southern Canada historically traversed the Rocky Mountains, often several times annually, to hunt bison on the eastern front ranges. Some routes across this complex landscape were more energetically efficient than others, producing a tendency for archaeological and historical sites to be located along least-cost paths as strongly predicted by this project’s geographical computer models. Bison wallows also occurred across low travel cost areas from the eastern front well into the Rocky Mountain interior.

'Blue Rings' are an anatomical anomaly found in conifers characterized by incomplete cell wall lignification, visible in safranin-Astrablue stained anatomical thin sections (Piermattei et al. 2015). This talk will guide you through a journey from the accidental discovery of 'Blue Rings', to the most recent application of their detection and enumeration in dendrochronology, forest ecology, and palaeoclimatology. The significance of the first millennium-long 'Blue Ring' chronology in detecting post-cooling volcanic eruptions will be discussed.