Table of Contents
Preface 7
Chronological Table 10
Part I Foundations
1 The Earliest Americans 13
Chronological table 12
Ultimate origins: genetics, teeth, and languages 14
The pre-Clovis question 18
Beringia and a tale of microblades 21
Moving south 26
The world of Clovis 26
Mass extinctions 30
2 After Clovis 33
Hell Gap 33
Bison hunting on the Plains 35
The western interior 37
The Eastern Woodlands 43
Restricted mobility 47
The issue of sedentism 48
Burials and the lands of the ancestors 52
3 The Far North: West to East 55
Chronological table 54
The Paleoarctic tradition 55
Coastal adaptations: Ocean Bay and Kachemak 57
The Aleutian tradition 59
The Arctic Small Tool tradition 62
First settlement of the eastern Arctic 64
4 Foraging the West Coast 71
Chronological table 70
A diverse coastal world 71
Early settlement of the Northwest Coast 73
The Northwest: salmon, food surpluses, and exchange 74
South of the Klamath River 78
5 Before the Pueblos 93
Archaic societies 93
Maize comes to the Southwest 95
The beginnings of village life 102
Fremont farmers in the Great Basin 107
6 People of the Plains 111
Chronological table 110
The Plains Archaic 113
Bison jumps 114
Protohistoric times 117
Village farmers on the Plains 119
7 The Eastern Woodlands: Nuts, Native Plants, and Earthworks 127
A container revolution 127
Cultivating native plants 128
Late Archaic societies 130
Exchange and interaction 134
Cemeteries and burial mounds 137
Poverty Point 138
Part II Apogee
8 The Far North: Norton, Dorset, and Thule 142
The Norton tradition 142
The Thule tradition in the west 143
The Dorset tradition of the eastern Arctic 147
Thule expansion in the eastern Arctic 152
Classic Thule 155
Post-Classic Thule 157
9 The West Coast: Not a Garden of Eden 158
The Late Period Northwest Coast 158
Links to historic peoples 159
The interior plateau 162
The California coast 165
The Medieval Warm Period 166
Northern and central California 167
Southern California coast 169
10 The Southwest: Villages and Pueblos 175
Chaco Canyon 176
Hohokam: the desert irrigators 181
Mesa Verde 193
Katcinas and warriors 198
Paquime (Casas Grandes) 200
11 The Eastern Woodlands: Moundbuilders 203
Chronological table 202
Burial mounds and the Adena complex 203
Hopewell 208
Earthworks and cosmos 212
The Hopewell decline and effigy mounds 218
12 The Mississippian: Eastern Woodlands Climax 220
A triad of cults 221
Subsistence and exchange 223
Cahokia: a great chiefdom 225
Moundville 228
What were these complex chiefdoms? 231
Fertility and duality 231
European contact 233
13 The Northeast: Algonquians and Iroquoians 234
Algonquian and Iroquoian 234
Terminal Archaic 235
Woodland societies 236
Northern Iroquoian origins: Early Iroquoian 237
Middle Iroquoian 240
To European contact and beyond 245
14 Epilogue 250
The holocaust of disease 250
Furs and wampum 251
The Spanish borderlands 253
Further Reading 258
Sources of Illustrations 263
Index 265
