Lunchtime Expedition: From Ice to Origin
December 4 @ 12:00 pm - 1:30 pm MST
Thursday, December 4
12 Noon | Coe Auditorium
Free to the public
From Ice to Origin: Children’s Bows in the Alpine
High in the Absaroka Mountains, where ancient ice still clings to the high country, two small wooden bows emerged from the melt. Separated by centuries and unusually small in size, these bows immediately raised questions for archaeologists. Were they hunting tools? Practice weapons? Toys? Or evidence of children moving through these rugged alpine landscapes long ago?
From Ice to Origin: Children’s Bows in the Alpine takes you inside the investigation. Assistant Curator Amy Phillips unpacks the 2015 GRSLE discovery and shows how archaeologists interpret artifacts to understand real lives from the past. Through wood identification, site context, and cutting-edge isotope analysis, she reveals what these bows can tell us about mobility, land use, childhood, and human relationships with the alpine world.
About the Speaker
Amy Phillips is the Assistant Curator at the Draper Natural History Museum at the Buffalo Bill Center of the West in Cody, Wyoming. She studies past human-environment interactions through archaeology and stable isotope analysis, using ancient materials to answer modern conservation questions. Her graduate work traced the origins of the very bows featured in this presentation.
At the Draper, she also investigates plant and insect ecology, phenology shifts, and changes in pollinator communities over time. Her interdisciplinary research supports exhibits, public programs, and a deeper understanding of how cultural heritage and environmental stewardship are intertwined.