A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe to the English colonists at Jamestown.

This innovative and important volume presents the archaeological and anthropological foundations of the landscape learning process. Contributions apply the related fields of ethnography, cognitive psychology, and historical archaeology to the issues of individual exploration, development of trail systems, folk knowledge, social identity, and the role of the frontier in the growth of the modern world. A series of case studies examines the archaeological evidence for and interpretations of landscape learning from the movement of the first pre-modern humans into Europe, peoplings of the Old and New World at the end of the Ice Age, and colonization of the Pacific, to the English colonists at Jamestown. The final chapters summarize the implications of the landscape learning idea for our understanding of human history and set out a framework for future research.

The Mountaineer Site presents over a decade’s worth of archaeological research conducted at Mountaineer, a Paleoindian campsite in Colorado’s Upper Gunnison Basin. Mountaineer is one of the very few extensively excavated, long-term Folsom occupations with evidence of built structures. The site provides a rich record of stone tool manufacture and use, as well as architectural features, and offers insight into Folsom period adaptive strategies from a time when the region was still in the grip of a waning Ice Age. Contributors examine data concerning the structures, the duration and repetition of occupations, and the nature of the site’s artifact assemblages to offer a valuable new perspective on human activity in the Rocky Mountains in the Late Pleistocene. Chapters survey the history of fieldwork at the site and compare and explain the various excavation procedures used; discuss the geology, taphonomic history, and geochronology of the site; analyze artifacts and other recovered materials; examine architectural elements; and compare the present and past environments of the Upper Gunnison Basin to gain insight into the setting in which Folsom groups were operating and the resources that were available to them. The Folsom archaeological record indicates far greater variability in adaptive behavior than previously recognized in traditional models. The Mountaineer Site shows how accounting for reduced mobility, more generalized subsistence patterns, and variability in tool manufacture and use allows for a richer and more accurate understanding of Folsom lifeways. It will be of great interest to graduate students and archaeologists focusing on Paleoindian archaeology, hunter-gatherer mobility, lithic technological organization, and prehistoric households, as well as prehistorians, anthropologists, and social scientists. Contributors: Richard J. Anderson, Andrew R. Boehm, Christy E. Briles, Katherine A. Cross, Steven D. Emslie, Metin I. Eren, Richard Gunst, Kalanka Jayalath, Brooke M. Morgan, Cathy Whitlock

This volume examines human sexuality as an intrinsic element in the interpretation of complex colonial societies. While archaeological studies of the historic past have explored the dynamics of European colonialism, such work has largely ignored broader issues of sexuality, embodiment, commemoration, reproduction and sensuality. Recently, however, scholars have begun to recognize these issues as essential components of colonization and imperialism. This book explores a variety of case studies, revealing the multifaceted intersections of colonialism and sexuality. Incorporating work that ranges from Phoenician diasporic communities of the eighth century to Britain's nineteenth-century Australian penal colonies to the contemporary Maroon community of Brazil, this volume changes the way we understand the relationship between sexuality and colonial history.

Global warming interacts in multiple ways with ecological and social systems in Northern America. While the US and Canada belong to the world’s largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases, the Arctic north of the continent as well as the Deep South are already affected by a changing climate. In Cultural Dynamics of Climate Change and the Environment in Northern America academics from various fields such as anthropology, art history, educational studies, cultural studies, environmental science, history, political science, and sociology explore society–nature interactions in – culturally as well as ecologically – one of the most diverse regions of the world. Contributors include: Omer Aijazi, Roland Benedikter, Maxwell T. Boykoff, Eugene Cordero, Martin David, Demetrius Eudell, Michael K. Goodman, Frederic Hanusch, Naotaka Hayashi, Jürgen Heinrichs, Grit Martinez, Antonia Mehnert, Angela G. Mertig, Michael J. Paolisso, Eleonora Rohland, Karin Schürmann, Bernd Sommer, Kenneth M. Sylvester, Anne Marie Todd, Richard Tucker, and Sam White.

In studying the past, archaeologists have focused on the material remains of our ancestors. Prehistorians generally have only artifacts to study and rely on the diverse material record for their understanding of past societies and their behavior. Those involved in studying historically documented cultures not only have extensive material remains but also contemporary texts, images, and a range of investigative technologies to enable them to build a broader and more reflexive picture of how past societies, communities, and individuals operated and behaved. Increasingly, historical archaeology refers not to a particular period, place, or a method, but rather an approach that interrogates the tensions between artifacts and texts irrespective of context. In short, historical archaeology provides direct evidence for how humans have shaped the world we live in today. Historical archaeology is a branch of global archaeology that has grown in the last 40 years from its North American base into an increasingly global community of archaeologists each studying their area of the world in a historical context. Where historical archaeology started as part of the study of the post-Columbian societies of the United States and Canada, it has now expanded to interface with the post-medieval archaeologies of Europe and the diverse post-imperial experiences of Africa, Latin America, and Australasia. The 36 essays in the International Handbook of Historical Archaeology have been specially commissioned from the leading researchers in their fields, creating a wide-ranging digest of the increasingly global field of historical archaeology. The volume is divided into two sections, the first reviewing the key themes, issues, and approaches of historical archaeology today, and the second containing a series of case studies charting the development and current state of historical archaeological practice around the world. This key reference work captures the energy and diversity of this global discipline today.

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 disciplines—archaeology, human genetics and osteology, linguistics, ethnology, and ecology—to 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.

Knowledge in Motion brings together archaeologists, historians, and cultural anthropologists to examine communities from around the globe as they engage in a range of practices constituting situated learned and knowledge transmission. The contributors lay the groundwork to forge productive theories and methodologies for exploring situated learning and its broad-ranging outcomes.

Cultural evolution, much like general evolution, works from the assumption that cultures are descendent from much earlier ancestors. Human culture manifests itself in forms ranging from the small bands of hunters, through intermediate scale complex hunter-gatherers and farmers, to the high density urban settlements and complex polities that characterize much of today’s world. The chapters in the volume examine the dynamic interaction between the micro- and macro-scales of cultural evolution, developing a theoretical approach to the archaeological record that has been termed evolutionary processual archaeology. The contributions in this volume integrate positive elements of both evolutionary and processualist schools of thought. The approach, as explicated by the contributors in this work, offers novel insights into topics that include the emergence, stasis, collapse and extinction of cultural patterns, and development of social inequalities. Consequently, these contributions form a stepping off point for a significant new range of cultural evolutionary studies.

A unique, interdisciplinary and up-to-date treatment exploring human migration and its role in creating novel ecosystems over the long term.