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Traversing the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains: A Least Cost Path Analysis

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Abstract

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 so that archaeological and historical sites accumulated along least cost paths (LCP) as predicted by spatial analysis. We produced 12 least-cost path models traversing the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains (SCRM) using varying degrees of landscape cost, ranked them for stability, and combined them into a final composite model. We expanded this composite LCP model into 3- and 5-km buffers within which we compared counts of historical and archaeological sites (total n = 5,651 points) to counts of equivalent quantities of randomly distributed points. High densities of land use indicators tend to follow paths across the SCRM predicted by the LCP model, creating persistent patterns of travel and land use. The results of this analysis indicate that human movements across the SCRM have been strongly influenced by the avoidance of high travel cost topography over multiple centuries. More broadly, our findings suggest that humans tend to optimize their patterns of spatial movement for energetic efficiency, consistent with predictions of behavioral evolution.

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Data Availability

The archaeological data that support the findings of this study are available from the ministry of Alberta Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women, but restrictions apply to the availability of these data, which were used under license for the current study, and so are not publicly available. Data are however available from the authors upon reasonable request and with permission of Alberta Culture, Multiculturalism and Status of Women. The cost analysis data that support the findings of this study will be available in the Arctic Data repository, https://arcticdata.io, while elevation model data are available at the ASTER repository, https://doi.org/10.5067/ASTER/ASTGTM.003. The historical data that support the findings of this study are available in the Lens of Time Northwest repository, https://lensoftimenorthwest.com.

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Funding

This research was supported in part by US National Science Foundation RAPID-1724770, and by Graduate Research funding to EJT from the School of Natural Resources, University of Arizona.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. US Forest Service, 790 E. Beckwith Ave, Missoula, MT, 59801, USA

    Erana J. Taylor

  2. University of Arizona, ENR2 N224, 1064 E. Lowell St., Tucson, AZ, 85721, USA

    Donald A. Falk

  3. University of Arizona, Bryant Bannister Tree-Ring Building, 1215 E. Lowell Street, Tucson, AZ, 85719, USA

    Ronald H. Towner

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  1. Erana J. Taylor
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Correspondence to Erana J. Taylor.

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Taylor, E.J., Falk, D.A. & Towner, R.H. Traversing the Southern Canadian Rocky Mountains: A Least Cost Path Analysis. Hum Ecol 51, 119–135 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10745-022-00386-6

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