Wyoming State Parks and Cultural Resources

The Wyoming Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources will use the funds to improve preservation of and expand access to the collections associated with the Vore Buffalo Jump archaeological site, used by Northwestern Plains tribes as a bison trap from about 1550 CE to the late 1700s. The collections from this site comprise some 23,000 faunal remains and lithic artifacts, which have been core to cross-disciplinary studies of this hunting technique in archaeology, geology, and biology. The project will address issues of collections management, care, preservation, and access by cleaning, cataloging, assessing conditions of, creating proper storage mounts for, and rehousing artifacts; creating 2D and 3D high-resolution images of significant and diagnostic materials; reorganizing and digitizing archival records; linking records to artifacts and specimens; and making images and information available electronically through a tiered access system, reflecting tribal and stakeholder consultation. The project will be matched with $158,403 in non-federal share.