Iowa has more than eighteen thousand archaeological sites, and research in the past few decades has transformed our knowledge of the state's human past. Drawing on the discoveries of many avocational and professional scientists, Lynn Alex describes Iowa's unique archaeological record as well as the challenges faced by today's researchers, armed with innovative techniques for the discovery and recovery of archaeological remains and increasingly refined frameworks for interpretation. The core of this book--which includes many historic photographs and maps as well as numerous new maps and drawings and a generous selection of color photos--explores in detail what archaeologists have learned from studying the state's material remains and their contexts. Examining the projectile points, potsherds, and patterns that make up the archaeological record, Alex describes the nature of the earliest settlements in Iowa, the development of farming cultures, the role of the environment and environmental change, geomorphology and the burial of sites, interaction among native societies, tribal affiliation of early historic groups, and the arrival and impact of Euro-Americans. In a final chapter, she examines the question of stewardship and the protection of Iowa's many archaeological resources.

Whether profiling the chief of the last hunter-gatherers on the river, an early settler witnessing her first prairie fire and a modern wildlife biologist using fire to manage prairies, the manager of the Granger Farmer’s Co-op Creamery, or a landowner whose bottomlands are continually eaten away by floods, Faldet steadily develops the central idea that people are walking tributaries of the river basin in which they make their homes. Faldet moves through the history of life along the now-polluted Upper Iowa, always focusing on the ways people depend on the river, the environment, and the resources of the region. He blends contemporary conversations, readings from the historical record, environmental research, and personal experience to show us that the health of the river is best guaranteed by maintaining the biological communities that nurture it. In return, taking care of the Upper Iowa is the best way to take care of our future.

This account is the first extensive ethnohistory of the Ioway Indians, whose influence - out of all proportion to their numbers - stemmed partly from the strategic location of their homeland between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Beginning with archaeological sites in northeast Iowa, Martha Royce Blaine traces Ioway history from ancient to modern times. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, French, Spanish, and English traders vied for the tribe's favor and for permission to cross their lands. The Ioways fought in the French and Indian War in New York, the War of 1812, and the Civil War, but ultimately their influence waned as they slowly lost control of their sovereignty and territory. By the end of the nineteenth century, the Ioways were separated in reservations in Nebraska, Kansas, and Indian Territory. A new preface by the author carries the story to modern times and discusses the present status of and issues concerning the Oklahoma and the Kansas and Nebraska Ioways.

The Encyclopedia of Prehistory represents temporal dimension. Major traditions are an attempt to provide basic information also defined by a somewhat different set of on all archaeologically known cultures, sociocultural characteristics than are eth covering the entire globe and the entire nological cultures. Major traditions are prehistory of humankind. It is designed as defined based on common subsistence a tool to assist in doing comparative practices, sociopolitical organization, and research on the peoples of the past. Most material industries, but language, ideology, of the entries are written by the world's and kinship ties play little or no part in foremost experts on the particular areas their definition because they are virtually and time periods. unrecoverable from archaeological con The Encyclopedia is organized accord texts. In contrast, language, ideology, and ing to major traditions. A major tradition kinship ties are central to defining ethno is defined as a group of populations sharing logical cultures.

The tallgrass prairie of the early 1800s, a beautiful and seemingly endless landscape of wildflowers and grasses, is now a tiny remnant of its former expanse. As a literary landscape, with much of the American environmental imagination focused on a mainstream notion of more spectacular examples of wild beauty, tallgrass is even more neglected. Prairie author and advocate John T. Price wondered what it would take to restore tallgrass prairie to its rightful place at the center of our collective identity. The answer to that question is his Tallgrass Prairie Reader, a first-of-its-kind collection of literature from and about the tallgrass bioregion. Focusing on autobiographical nonfiction in a wide variety of forms, voices, and approaches—including adventure narrative, spiritual reflection, childhood memoir, Native American perspectives, literary natural history, humor, travel writing and reportage—he honors the ecological diversity of tallgrass itself and provides a range of models for nature writers and students. The chronological arrangement allows readers to experience tallgrass through the eyes and imaginations of forty-two authors from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries. Writings by very early explorers are followed by works of nineteenth-century authors that reflect the fear, awe, reverence, and thrill of adventure rampant at the time. After 1900, following the destruction of the majority of tallgrass, much of the writing became nostalgic, elegiac, and mythic. A new environmental consciousness asserted itself midcentury, as personal responses to tallgrass were increasingly influenced by larger ecological perspectives. Preservation and restoration—informed by hard science—emerged as major themes. Early twenty-first-century writings demonstrate an awareness of tallgrass environmental history and the need for citizens, including writers, to remember and to help save our once magnificent prairies.