Fencing is perishable: reply to “Don’t fence them in”

We thank Linea Sundstrom for allowing us to clarify our article on perishable items from the Northwestern Plains and review a wealth of additional literature bearing on the subject. Our reply focuses on three issues raised by the comments: (1) the geographic space considered by our article; (2) the cultural space and modern political boundaries addressed by the article; (3) the temporal and cultural affinities of Last Canyon sandal. Sundstrom asserts that our article is “predicated on fuzzy geographic and temporal boundaries,” noting that Wyoming is not the High Plains, Wyoming and Montana are not the Northwestern Plains, and Ludlow Cave is not in either Montana or Wyoming. We actually never mention Ludlow Cave in the article, and we do not say it is in Montana or Wyoming. In one sentence we refer to Wyoming and Montana localities with perishable artifacts and in the citations to document this statement we include Sundstrom’s (1996) article on Ludlow Cave. We can see how the sentence can be construed to imply that Ludlow Cave is in Montana or Wyoming. However, Ludlow Cave is only 35 km east of the Montana border, an area commonly considered the Northwestern Plains (Wedel 1961). Why Sundstrom mentions that Wyoming is not the High Plains, is a puzzle to us. There is not one mention of High Plains in our article. The only mention of High Plains is in titles of several references; this critique appears plains anthropologist, Vol. 67 No. 262, May 2022, 197–203