Geoarchaeology In The Great Plains

Geoarchaeology is the application of geoscience to the study of archaeological deposits and the archaeological record. Employing techniques from pedology, geomorphology, sedimentology, geochronology, and stratigraphy, geoarchaeologists investigate and interpret sediments, soils and landforms at the focal points of archaeological research. Edited by Rolfe D. Mandel and with contributions by John Albanese, Joe Allen Artz, E. Arthur Bettis III, C. Reid Ferring, Vance T. Holliday, David W. May, and Mandel, this volume traces the history of all major projects, researchers, theoretical developments, and sites contributing to our geoarchaeological knowledge of North America's Great Plains. The book provides a historical overview and explores theoretical questions that confront geoarchaeologists working in the Great Plains, where North American geoarchaeology emerged as a discipline.

This synthesis of Great Plains archaeology brings together what is currently known about the inhabitants of the ancient Plains. The essays review the Paleo-Indian, Archaic, Woodland, and Plains Village peoples, providing information on technology, diet, settlement and adaptive patterns.

Stretching from Canada to Texas and the foothills of the Rockies to the Mississippi River, the North American Great Plains have a complex and ancient history. The region has been home to Native peoples for at least 16,000 years. This volume is a synthesis of what is known about the Great Plains from an archaeological perspective, but it also highlights Indigenous knowledge, viewpoints, and concerns for a more holistic understanding of both ancient and more recent pasts. Written for readers unfamiliar with archaeology in the region, the book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series emphasizes connections between past peoples and contemporary Indigenous nations, highlighting not only the history of the area but also new theoretical understandings that move beyond culture history. This overview illustrates the importance of the Plains in studies of exchange, migration, conflict, and sacred landscapes, as well as contact and colonialism in North America. In addition, the volume includes considerations of federal policies and legislation, as well as Indigenous social movements and protests over the last hundred years so that archaeologists can better situate Indigenous heritage, contemporary Indigenous concerns, and lasting legacies of colonialism today.

This book uses archaeology to tell 15,000 years of history of the indigenous people of the North American Great Plains.

The Great Plains has been central to academic and popular visions of Native American warfare, largely because the region’s well-documented violence was so central to the expansion of Euroamerican settlement. However, social violence has deep roots on the Plains beyond this post-Contact perception, and these roots have not been systematically examined through archaeology before. War was part, and perhaps an important part, of the process of ethnogenesis that helped to define tribal societies in the region, and it affected many other aspects of human lives there. In Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains, anthropologists who study sites across the Plains critically examine regional themes of warfare from pre-Contact and post-Contact periods and assess how war shaped human societies of the region. Contributors to this volume offer a bird’s-eye view of warfare on the Great Plains, consider artistic evidence of the role of war in the lives of indigenous hunter-gatherers on the Plains prior to and during the period of Euroamerican expansion, provide archaeological discussions of fortification design and its implications, and offer archaeological and other information on the larger implications of war in human history. Bringing together research from across the region, this volume provides unprecedented evidence of the effects of war on tribal societies. Archaeological Perspectives on Warfare on the Great Plains is a valuable primer for regional warfare studies and the archaeology of the Great Plains as a whole. Contributors: Peter Bleed, Richard R. Drass, David H. Dye, John Greer, Mavis Greer, Eric Hollinger, Ashley Kendell, James D. Keyser, Albert M. LeBeau III, Mark D. Mitchell, Stephen M. Perkins, Bryon Schroeder, Douglas Scott, Linea Sundstrom, Susan C. Vehik

The Southern High Plains of northwestern Texas and eastern New Mexico are rich in Paleoindian archaeological sites, including such well-known ones as Clovis, Lubbock Lake, Plainview, and Midland. These sites have been extensively researched over decades, not only by archaeologists but also by geoscientists, whose studies of soils and stratigraphy have yielded important information about cultural chronology and paleoenvironments across the region. In this book, Vance T. Holliday synthesizes the data from these earlier studies with his own recent research to offer the most current and comprehensive overview of the geoarchaeology of the Southern High Plains during the earliest human occupation. He delves into twenty sites in depth, integrating new and old data on site geomorphology, stratigraphy, soils, geochronology, and paleoenvironments. He also compares the Southern High Plains sites with other sites across the Great Plains, for a broader chronological and paleoenvironmental perspective. With over ninety photographs, maps, cross sections, diagrams, and artifact drawings, this book will be essential reading for geoarchaeologists, archaeologists, and Quaternary geoscientists, as well as avocational archaeologists who take part in Paleoindian site study throughout the American West.