The research objectives that guided the excavation of the Shoup Rockshelters was Dr. Swanson’s long term interest of comparing the historic ethnographic description of the regional Northern Shoshone, the tukudeka or Sheepeater Shoshone, with the archaeological record. He concludes from excavations here and in the Birch Creek Valley that the lifeway known for the Sheepeater continued unbroken and with little modification deep into the past. We do not know if the people who periodically camped at the shelters spoke and ancestral Shoshone language or some other Native American language but the means by which they adapted to the Salmon River environments is the same as the Sheepeater Shoshone.
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