Foragers of the Terminal Pleistocene in North America

Renee B. Walker, Boyce N. Driskell

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2007
• Print ISBN: 9780803248021
• eBook ISBN: 9780803207646
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

These essays cast new light on Paleoindians, the first settlers of North America. Recent research strongly suggests that big-game hunting was but one of the subsistence strategies the first humans in the New World employed and that they also relied on foraging and fishing. Written in an accessible, engaging style, these essays examine how migratory waterfowl routes may represent one impetus for human migration into the Americas, analyze settlement and subsistence in the major regions of the United States, and reinvestigate mammoth and bison bone beds in the western Plains and the Rocky Mountains to illuminate the unique nature of Paleoindian hunting in that region. The first study of Paleoindian subsistence on a continental scale, this collection posits regional models of subsistence and mobility that take into account the constraints and opportunities for resource exploitation within each region: Research on the Gault site in Texas reveals new subsistence strategies there, while data from the Shawnee-Minisink site in Pennsylvania connects seed collecting with fishing in that region, and plant remains from Dust Cave in Alabama provide important information about subsistence. With research ranging from fauna and lithic data from Paleoindian campsites in Florida that illuminate subsistence technologies and late megamammals to an analysis of plant remains from the eastern United States that results in a revised scheme of environmental changes, this volume serves as an important sourcebook and guide to the latest research on the first humans in North America.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: New Developments in Paleoindian Subsistence Studies, Renee B. Walker and Boyce N. Driskell
• 1. Quacks in the Ice: Waterfowl, Paleoindians, and the Discovery of America, Stuart J. Fiedel
• 2. Faunal Extinction, Hunter-Gatherer Foraging Strategies, and Subsistence Diversity among Eastern Beringian Paleoindians, David R. Yesner
• 3. Are Paleoindians of the Great Plains and Rockies Subsistence Specialists? Marcel Kornfeld
• 4. Discerning Clovis Subsistence from Stone Artifacts and Site Distributions on the Southern Plains Periphery, Michael B. Collins
• 5. Late Paleoindian Subsistence Strategies in the Western Great Lakes Region: Evidence for Generalized Foraging from Northern Wisconsin, Steven R. Kuehn
• 6. Hunting in the Late Paleoindian Period: Faunal Remains from Dust Cave, Alabama, Renee B. Walker
• 7. Seed Collecting and Fishing at the Shawnee Minisink Paleoindian Site: Everyday Life in the Late Pleistocene, Richard J. Dent
• 8. Gathering in the Late Paleoindian Period: Archaeobotanical Remains from Dust Cave, Alabama, Kandace D. Hollenbach
• 9. Revising the Paleoindian Environmental Picture in Northeastern North America, Lucinda McWeeney
• 10. Early Floridians and Late Megamammals: Some Technological and Dietary Evidence from Four North Florida Paleoindian Sites, James S. Dunbar and Pamela K. Vojnovski
• 11. Ethnography, Analogy, and the Reconstruction of Paleoindian Lifeways, Asa R. Randall and Kandace D. Hollenbach
• 12. Making Sense of Paleoindian Subsistence Strategies, Boyce N. Driskell and Renee B. Walker
• Bibliography
• Index