American bison kill site use and abandonment amid drought and cultural shifts in late Holocene Montana

Understanding how ecological and social constraints interacted to shape bison hunting systems during the late Holocene reveals the dynamic ways bison hunting strategies adapted to changing conditions. At the Bergstrom site in central Montana, bison were hunted intermittently for roughly seven centuries before archaeologically visible use ceased near 1100 cal yr BP. To explain why hunting stopped despite continued regional bison presence, we integrate archaeological excavation, radiocarbon chrono