The Settlement of the American Continents: A Multidisciplinary Approach to Human BiogeographyC. Michael Barton When many scholars are asked about early human settlement in the Americas, they might point to a handful of archaeological sites as evidence. Yet the process was not a simple one, and today there is no consistent argument favoring a particular scenario for the peopling of the New World. This book approaches the human settlement of the Americas from a biogeographical perspective in order to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of this unique event. It considers many of the questions that continue to surround the peopling of the Western Hemisphere, focusing not on sites, dates, and artifacts but rather on theories and models that attempt to explain how the colonization occurred. Unlike other studies, this book draws on a wide range of disciplinesÑarchaeology, human genetics and osteology, linguistics, ethnology, and ecologyÑto present the big picture of this migration. Its wide-ranging content considers who the Pleistocene settlers were and where they came from, their likely routes of migration, and the ecological role of these pioneers and the consequences of colonization. Comprehensive in both geographic and topical coverage, the contributions include an explanation of how the first inhabitants could have spread across North America within several centuries, the most comprehensive review of new mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome data relating to the colonization, and a critique of recent linguistic theories. Although the authors lean toward a conservative rather than an extreme chronology, this volume goes beyond the simplistic emphasis on dating that has dominated the debate so far to a concern with late Pleistocene forager adaptations and how foragers may have coped with a wide range of environmental and ecological factors. It offers researchers in this exciting field the most complete summary of current knowledge and provides non-specialists and general readers with new answers to the questions surrounding the origins of the first Americans. |
Contents
The First American Settlers | 9 |
A Comparative Craniofacial View | 28 |
Evaluating Historical Linguistic Evidence for Ancient Human Communities in the Americas | 39 |
The Concept of Clovis and the Peopling of North America | 49 |
A Review of Bioarchaeological Thought on the Peopling of the New World | 64 |
The Trail to the Americas | 77 |
PanAmerican Paleoindian Dispersals and the Origins of Fishtail Projectile Points as Seen | 85 |
Deconstructing the North Atlantic Connection | 103 |
The Land and People Transformed | 121 |
The Ecology of Human Colonization in Pristine Landscapes | 138 |
Gender Age and Subsistence Diversity in Paleoindian Societies | 162 |
Archaeological Ethnographic and Evolutionary | 173 |
Megafauna Paleoindians Petroglyphs and Pictographs of the Colorado Plateau | 189 |
Notes | 215 |
About the Editors | 273 |
In the Beginning There | 113 |
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Common terms and phrases
Alaska Ameri Amerind ancestral animals Anthropology archaeological record areas artifacts Asia Asian assemblages Aurignacian Barton Beringia bifacial bison bone Bonnichsen Boyle carnivores Central Charcoal climate Clovis culture Clovis points coastal Colorado Plateau complex cultural Dillehay distribution diversity early Paleoindian ecology edited environment evidence expansion extinction fauna Fiedel flakes fluted points foragers Frison FTPPs genetic geographic Glacial Late Greenberg groups Gruhn Guardiría haplogroup haplotypes Haynes herbivores historical Holocene human hunter-gatherers hunting HVR1 sequences ice-free corridor initial colonization Karafet Kelly and Todd landscape languages Late Glacial late Pleistocene Lell lineage linguistic lithic Magdalenian Mammoth megafauna megapatch Meltzer migration mtDNA Na-Dene Native American Native American populations North America northern Paleo Paleoindian pattern pre-Clovis predation prehistoric projectile points radiocarbon dates rates region RFLP samples sapiens Schurr Siberia social Solutrean South suggests Tankersley Thule tion Torroni Upper Paleolithic variable volume World Yesner