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\"This edited volume, which emerged from a symposium organized at the 2014 SAA meeting in Austin, Texas, covers recent Paleoamerican research and site excavations from Patagonia to Canada. Contributors discuss the peopling of the Americas, early American assemblages, lifeways, and regional differences. Many scholars present current data previously unavailable in English. Chapters are organized south to north in an attempt to shake the usual north-centric focus of Pleistocene - Early Holocene archaeological studies and to bring to the forefront the many fascinating discoveries being made in southern latitudes. The diversity of approaches over a large geographic expanse generates discussion that prompts a re-evaluation of predominant paradigms about how the expansion of Homo sapiens in the Western Hemisphere took place. Those who work in Paleoamerican studies will embrace this book for its new data and for its comparative look at the Americas.\"--Provided by publisher.

The settlement of South America marks one of the final steps in human expansion. This study examines the impact of climate change on this process, focusing on two millennial-scale climatic phases—the Antarctic Cold Reversal and Younger Dryas. Using Bayesian chronological modelling, a cultural timeline was constructed from approximately 150 archaeological sites and 1700 dates, and compared against paleoclimatic records. Findings suggested that human activity likely began in regions most affected by the Antarctic Cold Reversal, specifically in southernmost and high-altitude areas. Together with estimates indicating that the onset of megafaunal exploitation and bifacial point technology occurred before or during the Antarctic Cold Reversal, results suggested that cold conditions did not likely hinder human settlement. Key factors likely included accumulated cultural adaptation and relatively milder climatic changes in the Southern Hemisphere. More widespread occupation likely occurred during or, more likely, after the Younger Dryas as conditions stabilised. Results highlighted the western Andes as a crucial dispersal route and questioned the role of humans and climatic shifts on megafaunal extinctions. An analysis of the compiled archaeo-chronometric dataset revealed significant underrepresentation and reporting gaps, highlighting the need for expanded research and rigorous documentation to improve the reliability of the cultural timeline. Here, the author presents a Bayesian chronological model based in 1700 radiocarbon dates that traces human occupation South America in the late Pleistocene and describes the potential impact of climate changes on occupation patterns.

During the Last Glacial Maximum, continental ice sheets isolated Beringia (northeast Siberia and northwest North America) from unglaciated North America. By around 15 to 14 thousand calibrated radiocarbon years before present (cal. kyr bp ), glacial retreat opened an approximately 1,500-km-long corridor between the ice sheets. It remains unclear when plants and animals colonized this corridor and it became biologically viable for human migration. We obtained radiocarbon dates, pollen, macrofossils and metagenomic DNA from lake sediment cores in a bottleneck portion of the corridor. We find evidence of steppe vegetation, bison and mammoth by approximately 12.6 cal. kyr bp , followed by open forest, with evidence of moose and elk at about 11.5 cal. kyr bp , and boreal forest approximately 10 cal. kyr bp . Our findings reveal that the first Americans, whether Clovis or earlier groups in unglaciated North America before 12.6 cal. kyr bp , are unlikely to have travelled by this route into the Americas. However, later groups may have used this north–south passageway. During much of the last ice age, continental ice sheets prevented humans from migrating into North America from Siberia; an environmental reconstruction of the corridor that opened up between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets reveals that it would have been inhospitable to the initial colonizing humans, who therefore probably entered North America by a different route. A coastal migration route to the Americas During much of the last ice age, continental ice sheets prevented humans from migrating into North America from Beringia, the area between Siberia and what is now the Bering Strait. At some point, a route opened up between the Cordilleran and Laurentide ice sheets, but it is thought that this 1,500-kilometre-long ice-free corridor may have been too cold to act as a human migration route. Eske Willerslev and colleagues present a series of environmental reconstructions based on coring of lake sediments in what was once the ice-free corridor. Their data indicate that the corridor would have still been inhospitable even after humans are known to have arrived in the Americas south of the ice. This implies that humans migrated by a coastal route, now submerged by the risen sea.

\"A richly researched account of the clever, industrious and deeply practical men who followed in the footsteps, often literally, of Columbus, Cortés, Pizarro, Núñez de Balboa and others.\"— Wall Street Journal The untold story of the engineering behind the empire, showing how imperial Spain built upon existing infrastructure and hierarchies of the Inca, Aztec, and more, to further its growth. Sixteenth-century Spain was small, poor, disunited, and sparsely populated. Yet the Spaniards and their allies built the largest empire the world had ever seen. How did they achieve this? Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo argue that Spain's engineers were critical to this venture. The Spanish invested in infrastructure to the advantage of local power brokers, enhancing the abilities of incumbent elites to grow wealthy on trade, and widening the arc of Spanish influence. Bringing to life stories of engineers, prospectors, soldiers, and priests, the authors paint a vivid portrait of Spanish America in the age of conquest. This is a dazzling new history of the Spanish Empire, and a new understanding of empire itself, as a venture marked as much by collaboration as oppression.

No detailed description available for \"Empire in Retreat\".

Organized by the theme of place and place-making in the Southwest, Contemporary Archaeologies of the Southwest emphasizes the method and theory for the study of radical changes in religion, settlement patterns, and material culture associated with population migration, colonialism, and climate change during the last 1,000 years. Chapters address place-making in Chaco Canyon, recent trends in landscape archaeology, the formation of identities, landscape boundaries, and the movement associated with these aspects of place-making. They address how interaction of peoples with objects brings landscapes to life. Representing a diverse cross section of Southwestern archaeologists, the authors of this volume push the boundaries of archaeological method and theory, building a strong foundation for future Southwest studies. This book will be of interest to professional and academic archaeologists, as well as students working in the American Southwest.

Several different cultures — Iroquois, Coosa, Anasazi, Hohokam, San Agustín, Wankarani, Formative Gulf Coast Mexico, and Formative, Classic, Colonial, and contemporary Maya — are analyzed through the lens of household archaeology in concrete, data-driven case studies. \"This excellent book should be heavily used by anyone with an interest in household archaeology.\" —North American Archaeologist \"There are a number of excellent studies that scholars interested in household archaeology will find highly useful.\" —Journal of Anthropological Research \"This collection underscores the importance of household archaeology to the study of social dynamics.\" —Choice \"This volume is an impressive one. . . . In an era in which household archaeology has become essential to archaeological praxis, this volume is indeed essential reading.\" —Cambridge Archaeological Journal

He also underscores the tragic history of the indigenous peoples of these regions and shoes how they came to lose \"possession\" of their land to newly formed governments made up of Europeans with European interests at heart. Weaver shows that the enormous efforts involved in defining and registering large numbers of newly carved-out parcels of property for reallocation during the Great Land Rush were instrumental in the emergence of much stronger concepts of property rights and argues that this period was marked by a complete disregard for previous notions of restraint on dreams of unlimited material possibility. Today, while the traditional forms of colonization that marked the Great Land Rush are no longer practiced by the European powers and their progeny in the new world, the legacy of this period can be seen in the western powers' insatiable thirst for economic growth, including newer forms of economic colonization of underdeveloped countries, and a continuing evolution of the concepts of property rights, including the development and increasing growth in importance of intellectual property rights.

Previous research indicates that the Ñanchoc Valley in northern Peru was an important locus of early and middle Holocene human settlement, and that between 9200 and 5500 ¹⁴C yr B.P. the valley inhabitants adopted major crop plants such as squash (Cucurbita moschata), peanuts (Arachis sp.), and cotton (Gossypium barbadense). We report here an examination of starch grains preserved in the calculus of human teeth from these sites that provides direct evidence for the early consumption of cultivated squash and peanuts along with two other major food plants not previously detected. Starch from the seeds of Phaseolus and Inga feuillei, the flesh of Cucurbita moschata fruits, and the nuts of Arachis was routinely present on numerous teeth that date to between 8210 and 6970 ¹⁴C yr B.P. Early plant diets appear to have been diverse and stable through time and were rich in cultivated foods typical of later Andean agriculture. Our data provide early archaeological evidence for Phaseolus beans and I. feuillei, an important tree crop, and indicate that effective food production systems that contributed significant dietary inputs were present in the Ñanchoc region by 8000 ¹⁴C yr B.P. Starch grain studies of dental remains document plants and edible parts of them not normally preserved in archaeological records and can assume primary roles as direct indicators of ancient human diets and agriculture.