The Prehistory of Texas

Front Cover
Timothy K. Perttula
Texas A&M University Press, 2004 - History - 471 pages
Paleoindians first arrived in Texas more than eleven thousand years ago, although relatively few sites of such early peoples have been discovered. Texas has a substantial post-Paleoindian record, however, and there are more than fifty thousand prehistoric archaeological sites identified across the state. This comprehensive volume explores in detail the varied experience of native peoples who lived on this land in prehistoric times. Chapters on each of the regions offer cutting-edge research, the culmination of years of work by dozens of the most knowledgeable experts.

Based on the archaeological record, the discussion of the earliest inhabitants includes a reclassification of all known Paleoindian projectile point types and establishes a chronology for the various occupations. The archaeological data from across the state of Texas also allow authors to trace technological changes over time, the development of intensive fishing and shellfish collecting, funerary customs and the belief systems they represented, long-term changes in settlement mobility and character, landscape use, and the eventual development of agricultural societies. The studies bring the prehistory of Texas Indians all the way up through the Late Prehistoric period (ca. a.d. 700–1600).

The extensively illustrated chapters are broadly cultural-historical in nature but stay strongly focused on important current research problems. Taken together, they present careful and exhaustive considerations of the full archaeological (and paleoenvironmental) record of Texas.

 

Selected pages

Contents

An Introduction to Texas Prehistoric Archeology
5
Paleoindian Archeology in Texas
15
The HunterGatherers of the Central and Southern Texas Prairies and Plains
99
Archeology in Central Texas
101
The Prehistory of South Texas
127
Coastal Groups
153
Prehistoric Occupation of the Central and Lower Texas Coast A Regional Overview
155
The Archeology of the Native American Occupation of Southeast Texas
181
The Hunters and Farmers of the High Plains and Canyonlands
281
Archeology and Late Quaternary Environments of the Southern High Plains
283
The Palo Duro Complex Redefining the Early Ceramic Period in the Caprock Canyonlands
296
From Stone Slab Architecture to Abandonment A Revisionist View of the Antelope Creek Phase
331
HunterGatherer and Farming Groups in the Post Oak Savanna Tallgrass Prairies and Pineywoods of Eastern and Northern Texas
345
The Archeology of the Post Oak Savanna of EastCentral Texas
347
The Prehistoric and Caddoan Archeology of the Northeastern Texas Pineywoods
370
References Cited
409

The Desert Archeology of Western Texas
203
Prehistory of the Jornada Mogollon and Eastern TransPecos Regions of West Texas
205
The Lower Pecos River Region of Texas and Northern Mexico
266
Contributors
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Page 409 - In Early man in America from a circumPacific perspective, edited by AL Bryan.

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About the author (2004)

TIMOTHY K. PERTTULA, a Fellow of the Texas Archaeological Society, is an archaeologist with Archaeological & Environmental Consultants, LLC, and lives in Austin, Texas.