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New Directions In The Search For The First Floridians
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Book Synopsis New Directions in the Search for the First Floridians by : David K. Thulman
Download or read book New Directions in the Search for the First Floridians written by David K. Thulman and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presenting the most current research and thinking on prehistoric archaeology in the Southeast, this volume reexamines some of Florida’s most important Paleoindian sites and discusses emerging technologies and methods that are necessary knowledge for archaeologists working in the region today. Using new analytical methods, contributors explore fresh perspectives on sites including Old Vero, Guest Mammoth, Page-Ladson, and Ray Hole Spring. They discuss the role of hydrology—rivers, springs, and coastal plain drainages—in the history of Florida’s earliest inhabitants. They address both the research challenges and the unique preservation capacity of the state’s many underwater sites, suggesting solutions for analyzing corroded lithic artifacts and submerged midden deposits. Looking towards future research, archaeologists discuss strategies for finding additional pre-Clovis and Clovis-era sites offshore on the southeastern continental shelf. The search is important, these essays show, because Florida’s prehistoric sites hold critical data for the debate over the nature and timing of the first human colonization of the Western Hemisphere.
Book Synopsis The Nine Lives of Florida's Famous Key Marco Cat by : Austin J. Bell
Download or read book The Nine Lives of Florida's Famous Key Marco Cat written by Austin J. Bell and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-09-21 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secrets of an iconic artifact Florida Book Awards, Bronze Medal for Florida Nonfiction Florida Trust for Historic Preservation Award for Meritorious Achievement in Preservation Communications Excavated from a waterlogged archaeological site on the shores of subtropical Florida by legendary anthropologist Frank Hamilton Cushing in 1896, the Key Marco Cat has become a modern icon of heritage, history, and local identity. This book takes readers into the deep past of the artifact and the Native American society in which it was created. Austin Bell explores nine periods in the life of the six-inch-high wooden carving, beginning with how it was sculpted with shell and shark-tooth tools and what it may have represented to the ancient Calusa—perhaps a human-panther god. Preserved in the muck for centuries on Marco Island and discovered in pristine condition due to its oxygen-free environment, the Cat has since traveled more than 12,000 miles and has been viewed by millions of people. It is one of the Smithsonian Institution’s most irreplaceable items. In this fascinating account, Bell traces the clues to the Cat’s mysterious origins that have emerged in its later lives. Captivating readers with the miracle and beauty of this rare example of pre-Columbian art, Bell marvels at how an object originally understood to hold cosmological power has indeed transformed the people and places around it. The Nine Lives of Florida’s Famous Key Marco Cat is the story of a timeless masterpiece of staggering simplicity that has prevailed over impossibly long odds.
Book Synopsis Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean by : James A. Delle
Download or read book Archaeology of Domestic Landscapes of the Enslaved in the Caribbean written by James A. Delle and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-08-02 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While previous research on household archaeology in the colonial Caribbean has drawn heavily on artifact analysis, this volume provides the first in-depth examination of the architecture of slave housing during this period. It examines the considerations that went into constructing and inhabiting living spaces for the enslaved and reveals the diversity of people and practices in these settings. Contributors present case studies using written descriptions, period illustrations, and standing architecture, in addition to archaeological evidence to illustrate the wide variety of built environments for enslaved populations in places including Jamaica, the Bahamas, and the islands of the Lesser Antilles. They investigate how the enslaved defined their social positions and identities through house, yard, and garden space; they explore what daily life was like for slaves on military compounds; they compare the spatial arrangements of slave villages on plantations based on type of labor; and they show how the style of traditional laborer houses became a form of vernacular architecture still in use today. This volume expands our understanding of the wide range of enslaved experiences across British, French, Dutch, and Danish colonies. Contributors: Elizabeth C. Clay | James A. Delle | Todd M. Ahlman | Marco Meniketti | Kenneth Kelly | Hayden Bassett | James A. Delle | Kristen R. Fellows | Allan D. Meyers | Elizabeth C. Clay | Alicia Odewale | Meredith D. Hardy | Zachary J. M. Beier | Mark W. Hauser A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Book Synopsis A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism by : Megan C. Kassabaum
Download or read book A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism written by Megan C. Kassabaum and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-05-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a temporally and geographically broad yet detailed history of an important form of Native American architecture, the platform mound. While the variation in these earthen monuments across the eastern United States has sparked much debate among archaeologists, this landmark study reveals unexpected continuities in moundbuilding over many thousands of years. In A History of Platform Mound Ceremonialism, Megan Kassabaum synthesizes an exceptionally wide dataset of 149 platform mound sites from the earliest iterations of the structure 7,500 years ago to its latest manifestations. Kassabaum discusses Archaic period sites from Florida and the Lower Mississippi Valley, as well as Woodland period sites across the Midwest and Southeast, to revisit traditional perspectives on later, more well-known Mississippian-era mounds. Kassabaum’s chronological approach corrects major flaws in the ways these constructions have been interpreted in the past. This comprehensive history exposes nonlinear shifts in mound function, use, and meaning across space and time and suggests a dynamic view of the vitality and creativity of their builders. Ending with a discussion of Native American beliefs about and uses of earthen mounds today, Kassabaum reminds us that this history will continue to be written for many generations to come. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida by : Tanya M. Peres
Download or read book Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida written by Tanya M. Peres and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-11-23 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents new data and interpretations from research at Florida’s Spanish missions, outposts established in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to strengthen the colonizing empire and convert Indigenous groups to Christianity. In these chapters, archaeologists, historians, and ethnomusicologists draw on the past thirty years of work at sites from St. Augustine to the panhandle. Contributors explore the lived experiences of the Indigenous people, Franciscan friars, and Spanish laypeople who lived in La Florida’s mission communities. In the process, they address missionization, ethnogenesis, settlement, foodways, conflict, and warfare. One study reconstructs the sonic history of Mission San Luis with soundscape compositions. The volume also sheds light on the destruction of the Apalachee-Spanish missions by the English. The recent investigations highlighted here significantly change earlier understandings by emphasizing the kind and degree of social, economic, and ideological relationships that existed between Apalachee and Timucuan communities and the Spanish. Unearthing the Missions of Spanish Florida updates and rewrites the history of the Spanish mission effort in the region. Contributors: Rachel M. Bani | Mark J Sciuhetti Jr | Rochelle A. Marrinan | Nicholas Yarbrough | Jerald T. Milanich | Jerry W Lee | Rebecca Douberly-Gorman | Alissa Slade Lotane | John E. Worth | Jonathan Sheppard | Laura Zabanal | Keith Ashley | Tanya M. Peres | Sarah Eyerly A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Download or read book En Bas Saline written by Kathleen Deagan and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2023-05-09 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Life in an Indigenous town during an understudied era of Haitian history This book details the Indigenous Taíno occupation at En Bas Saline in Hispaniola between AD 1250 and 1520, showing how the community coped with the dramatic changes imposed by Spanish contact. En Bas Saline is the largest late precontact Taíno town recorded in what is now Haiti; the only one that has been extensively excavated and analyzed; and one of few with archaeologically documented occupation both before and after the arrival of Columbus in 1492. It is thought to be the site of La Navidad, Columbus’s first settlement, where the cacique Guacanagarí offered refuge and shelter after the sinking of the Santa María. Kathleen Deagan provides an intrasite and spatial analysis of En Bas Saline by focusing on households, foodways, ceramics, and crafts and offers insights into social organization and chiefly power in this political center through domestic and ornamental material culture. Postcontact changes are seen in patterns of gendered behavior, as well as in the power base of the caciques, challenging the traditional assumption that Taíno society was devastatingly disrupted almost immediately after contact. En Bas Saline is the only archaeological account of the consequences of contact from the perspective of the Taíno peoples’ lived experience. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis An Archaeology and History of a Caribbean Sugar Plantation on Antigua by : Georgia L. Fox
Download or read book An Archaeology and History of a Caribbean Sugar Plantation on Antigua written by Georgia L. Fox and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-02-17 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume uses archaeological and documentary evidence to reconstruct daily life at Betty’s Hope plantation on the island of Antigua, one of the largest sugar plantations in the Caribbean. It demonstrates the rich information that the multidisciplinary approach of contemporary historical archaeology can offer when assessing the long-term impacts of sugarcane agriculture on the region and its people. Drawing on ten years of research at the 300-year-old site, the researchers uncover the plantation’s inner workings and its connections to broader historical developments in the Atlantic World. Excavations at the Great House reveal similarities to other British colonial sites, and historical records reveal the owners’ involvement in the Atlantic slave trade and in the trade of rum and other commodities. Artifacts uncovered from the slave quarters—ceramic tokens, repurposed bottle glass, and hundreds of Afro-Antiguan pottery sherds—speak to the agency of enslaved peoples in the face of harsh living conditions. Contributors also use ethnographic field data collected from interviews with contemporary farmers, as well as soil analysis to demonstrate how three centuries of sugarcane monocropping created a complicated legacy of soil depletion. Today tourism has long surpassed sugar as Antigua’s primary economic driver. Looking at visitor exhibits and new technologies for exploring and interpreting the site, the volume discusses best practices in cultural heritage management at Betty’s Hope and other locations that are home to contested historical narratives of a colonial past. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Falls of the Ohio River by : David Pollack
Download or read book Falls of the Ohio River written by David Pollack and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2021-05-11 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Falls of the Ohio River presents current archaeological research on an important landscape feature: a series of low, cascading rapids along the Ohio River on the border of Kentucky and Indiana. Using the perspective of historical ecology and synthesizing data from recent excavations, contributors to this volume demonstrate how humans and the environment mutually affected each other in the area for the past 12,000 years. These essays show how the Falls region was an attractive place to live due to its diverse ecological zones and its abundance of high-quality chert. In chronological studies ranging from the Early Archaic to the Late Mississippian periods, contributors portray the rapids as at times a boundary between Native American groups living upstream and downstream and at other times a hub where cultures converged and blended into a distinct local identity. The essays analyze and track changes in stone tool styles, mortuary traditions, settlement patterns, plant consumption, and ceramic production. Together, the chapters in this volume illustrate that the Falls of the Ohio was a focal point on the human landscape throughout the Holocene era. Providing a foundation for future work in this location, they show how the region’s geography and ecology shaped the ways humans organized themselves within it and how in turn these groups impacted the area through their changing social, economic, and political circumstances. Contributors: Anne Tobbe Bader | Rick Burdin | Justin N. Carlson | Richard W. Jefferies | Michael French | Robert G. McCullough | Greg J. Maggard | Stephen T. Mocas | Cheryl Ann Munson | David Pollack | Jack Rossen | Christopher W Schmidt| Claiborne Daniel | Duane B. Simpson | C. Russell, Stafford | Gary E. Stinchcomb | Jocelyn C. Turner A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis The Making of Mississippian Tradition by : Christina M. Friberg
Download or read book The Making of Mississippian Tradition written by Christina M. Friberg and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Christina Friberg investigates the influence of Cahokia, the largest city of North America’s Mississippian culture between AD 1050 and 1350, on smaller communities throughout the midcontinent. Using evidence from recent excavations at the Audrey-North site in the Lower Illinois River Valley, Friberg examines the cultural give-and-take Audrey inhabitants experienced between new Cahokian customs and old Woodland ways of life. Comparing the architecture, pottery, and lithics uncovered here with data from thirty-five other sites across five different regions, Friberg reveals how the social, economic, and political influence of Cahokia shaped the ways Audrey inhabitants negotiated identities and made new traditions. Friberg’s broad interregional analysis also provides evidence that these diverse groups of people were engaged in a network of interaction and exchange outside Cahokia’s control. The Making of Mississippian Tradition offers a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of cultural exchange in precolonial settlements, and its detailed reconstruction of Audrey society offers a new, more nuanced interpretation of how and why Mississippian lifeways developed. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida by : John E. Worth
Download or read book The Timucuan Chiefdoms of Spanish Florida written by John E. Worth and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-11-10 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This first volume of John Worth’s substantial two-volume work studies the assimilation and eventual destruction of the indigenous Timucuan societies of interior Spanish Florida near St. Augustine, shedding new light on the nature and function of La Florida’s entire mission system. Beginning in this volume with analysis of the late prehistoric chiefdoms, Worth traces the effects of European exploration and colonization in the late 1500s and describes the expansion of the mission frontier before 1630. As a framework for understanding the Timucuan rebellion of 1654 and its pacification, he explores the internal political and economic structure of the colonial system. In volume 2, he shows that after the geographic and political restructuring of the Timucua mission province, the interior of Florida became a populated chain of way-stations along the royal road between St. Augustine and the Apalachee province. Finally, he describes rampant demographic collapse in the missions, followed by English-sponsored raids, setting a stage for their final years in Florida during the mid-1700s. The culmination of nearly a decade of original research, these books incorporate many previously unknown or little-used Spanish documentary sources. As an analysis of both the Timucuan chiefdoms and their integration into the colonial system, they offer important discussion of the colonial experience for indigenous groups across the nation and the rest of the Americas. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Cahokia in Context by : Charles H. McNutt
Download or read book Cahokia in Context written by Charles H. McNutt and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-12-16 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Impressive. Provides perspective on the interconnectedness of Cahokia with regional cultures, the evidence for (or against) this connection in specific areas, and the hows and whys of Cahokian influence on shaping regional cultures. There is no other comparable work.”—Lynne P. Sullivan, coeditor of Mississippian Mortuary Practices: Beyond Hierarchy and the Representationist Perspective “This volume synthesizes information regarding possible contacts—direct or indirect—with Cahokia and offers several hypotheses about how those contacts may have occurred and what evidence the archaeological record offers.”—Mary Vermilion, Saint Louis University At its height between AD 1050 and 1275, the city of Cahokia was the largest settlement of the Mississippian culture, acting as an important trade center and pilgrimage site. While the influence of Cahokian culture on the development of monumental architecture, maize-based subsistence practices, and economic complexity throughout North America is undisputed, new research in this volume reveals a landscape of influence of the regions that had and may not have had a relationship with Cahokia. Contributors find evidence for Cahokia’s hegemony—its social, cultural, ideological, and economic influence—in artifacts, burial practices, and religious iconography uncovered at far-flung sites across the Eastern Woodlands. Case studies include Kinkaid in the Ohio River Valley, Schild in the Illinois River Valley, Shiloh in Tennessee, and Aztalan in Wisconsin. These essays also show how, with Cahokia’s abandonment, the diaspora occurred via the Mississippi River and extended the culture’s impact southward. Cahokia in Context demonstrates that the city’s cultural developments during its heyday and the impact of its demise produced profound and lasting effects on many regional cultures. This close look at Cahokia’s influence offers new insights into the movement of people and ideas in prehistoric America, and it honors the final contributions of Charles McNutt, one of the most respected scholars in southeastern archaeology. Charles H. McNutt (1928‒2017) was professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Memphis and the editor of Prehistory of the Central Mississippi Valley. Ryan M. Parish is assistant professor of archaeology at the University of Memphis. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Archaeology in Dominica by : Mark W. Hauser
Download or read book Archaeology in Dominica written by Mark W. Hauser and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Archaeology in Dominica examines the everyday lives of enslaved and free workers at Morne Patate, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Caribbean plantation that produced sugar, coffee, and provisions. Focusing on household archaeology, this volume helps document the underrepresented history of slavery and colonialism on the edge of the British Empire. Contributors discuss how enslaved and free people were entangled in shifting economic and ecological systems during the plantation’s 200-year history, most notably the introduction of sugarcane as an export commodity. Analyzing historical records, the landscape geography of the plantation, and material remains from the residences of laborers, the authors synthesize extensive data from this site and compare it to that of other excavations across the Eastern Caribbean. Using historical archaeology to investigate the political ecology of Morne Patate opens up a deeper understanding of the environmental legacies of colonial empires, as well as the long-term impacts of plantation agriculture on the Caribbean region and its people. Contributors: Lynsey A. Bates | Lindsay Bloch | Elizabeth Bollwerk | Samantha Ellens | Jillian E. Galle | Khadene K. Harris | Mark W. Hauser | Lennox Honychurch | William F. Keegan | Tessa Murphy | Fraser D. Neiman | Sarah Oas | Diane Wallman A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis The Historical Turn in Southeastern Archaeology by : Robbie Ethridge
Download or read book The Historical Turn in Southeastern Archaeology written by Robbie Ethridge and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-11-03 with total page 259 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume uses case studies to capture the recent emphasis on history in archaeological reconstructions of America’s deep past. Previously, archaeologists studying “prehistoric” America focused on long-term evolutionary change, imagining ancient societies like living organisms slowly adapting to environmental challenges. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how today’s researchers are incorporating a new awareness that the precolonial era was also shaped by people responding to historical trends and forces. Essays in this volume delve into sites across what is now the United States Southeast—the St. Johns River Valley, the Gulf Coast, Greater Cahokia, Fort Ancient, the southern Appalachians, and the Savannah River Valley. Prominent scholars of the region highlight the complex interplay of events, human decision-making, movements, and structural elements that combined to shape native societies. The research in this volume represents a profound shift in thinking about precolonial and colonial history and begins to erase the false divide between ancient and contemporary America. Contributors: Susan M. Alt | Robin Beck | Eric E. Bowne | Robert A. Cook | Robbie Ethridge | Jon Bernard Marcoux | Timothy R. Pauketat | Thomas J. Pluckhahn | Asa R. Randall | Christopher B. Rodning | Kenneth E. Sassaman | Lynne P. Sullivan | Victor D. Thompson | Neill J. Wallis | John E. Worth A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community by : Erin S. Nelson
Download or read book Authority, Autonomy, and the Archaeology of a Mississippian Community written by Erin S. Nelson and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-11-01 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first detailed investigation of the important archaeological site of Parchman Place in the Yazoo Basin, a defining area for understanding the Mississippian culture that spanned much of what is now the United States Southeast and Midwest before the mid-sixteenth century. Refining the widely accepted theory that this society was strongly hierarchical, Erin Nelson provides data that suggest communities navigated tensions between authority and autonomy in their placemaking and in their daily lives. Drawing on archaeological evidence from foodways, monumental and domestic architecture, and the organization of communal space at the site, Nelson argues that Mississippian people negotiated contradictory ideas about what it meant to belong to a community. For example, although they clearly had powerful leaders, communities built mounds and other structures in ways that re-created their views of the cosmos, expressing values of wholeness and balance. Nelson’s findings shed light on the inner workings of Mississippian communities and other hierarchical societies of the period. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States by : Edmond A. Boudreaux III
Download or read book Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States written by Edmond A. Boudreaux III and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2020-02-25 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The years AD 1500–1700 were a time of dramatic change for the indigenous inhabitants of southeastern North America, yet Native histories during this era have been difficult to reconstruct due to a scarcity of written records before the eighteenth century. Using archaeology to enhance our knowledge of the period, Contact, Colonialism, and Native Communities in the Southeastern United States presents new research on the ways Native societies responded to early contact with Europeans. Featuring sites from Kentucky to Mississippi to Florida, these case studies investigate how indigenous groups were affected by the expeditions of explorers such as Hernando de Soto, Pánfilo de Narváez, and Juan Pardo. Contributors re-create the social geography of the Southeast during this time, trace the ways Native institutions changed as a result of colonial encounters, and emphasize the agency of indigenous populations in situations of contact. They demonstrate the importance of understanding the economic, political, and social variability that existed between Native and European groups. Bridging the gap between historical records and material artifacts, this volume answers many questions and opens up further avenues for exploring these transformative centuries, pushing the field of early contact studies in new theoretical and methodological directions. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
Book Synopsis Submerged Prehistory in the Americas by : John M. O’Shea
Download or read book Submerged Prehistory in the Americas written by John M. O’Shea and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-05-08 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents an overview of the exciting new developments in underwater research in North America, ranging from new approaches for discovering submerged sites to an assessment of how these findings challenge the understanding of the North American past. Archaeological sites preserved on the world’s continental shelves are relevant to a wide range of major research questions and their importance increases with the heightened awareness of climate change and rising modern sea levels. Once thought lost forever, these sites survive underwater, preserved from the ravages of modern farming and development. To investigate the submerged landscapes, archaeologists use many of the same technologies developed for discovery of shipwrecks but, couple them with anthropological and environmental models to identify and study the way of life of people residing in these ancient lands. In this book, leading figures associated with submerged site exploration share an emphasis on the conduct and results of underwater research. It will be a fascinating read for advanced students of Archaeology, History and Environmental Studies. This volume was originally published as a special issue of The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology.
Book Synopsis Paleoindian Societies of the Coastal Southeast by : James S. Dunbar
Download or read book Paleoindian Societies of the Coastal Southeast written by James S. Dunbar and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2019-10-01 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The late Pleistocene-early Holocene landscape hosted more species and greater numbers of them in the Southeast compared to any other region in North America at that time. Yet James Dunbar posits that a misguided reliance on using Old World origins to validate New World evidence has stalled research in this area. Rejecting the one-size-fits-all approach to Pleistocene archaeological sites, Dunbar analyzes five areas of contextual data—stratigraphy; chronology; paleoclimate; the combined consideration of habitat, resource availability, and subsistence; and artifacts and technology—to resolve unanswered questions surrounding the Paleoindian occupation of the Americas. Through his extensive research, Dunbar demonstrates a masterful understanding of the lifeways of the region’s people and the animals they hunted, showing that the geography and diversity of food sources was unique to that period. He suggests that the most important archaeological and paleontological resources in the Americas still remain undiscovered in Florida’s karst river basins. Building a case for the wealth of information yet to be unearthed, he provides a fresh perspective on the distant past and an original way of thinking about early life on the land mass we call Florida. A volume in the Florida Museum of Natural History: Ripley P. Bullen Series
