"In 1996, the University of Alabama Press published a prodigious benchmark volume, The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast, edited by David G. Anderson and Kenneth E. Sassaman. It was the first to provide a state-by-state record of the Paleolithic and early Archaic eras (to approximately 8,000 years ago) in this region as well as models to interpret data excavated from those eras. It summarized what was known of the peoples who lived in the Southeast when ice sheets covered the northern part of the continent and mammals such as elephants, saber-toothed tigers, and ground sloths roamed the landscape. In the United States, the Southeast has some of most robust data on these eras. The American Southeast at the End of the Ice Age is the updated, definitive synthesis of current archaeological research gleaned from an array of experts in the region. The volume is organized in three parts: state records, the regional perspective, and perspective and future directions. State-by-state chapter overviews of the eras are followed by chapters with regional coverage on lithics (point types), submerged archaeology, gatherers, megafauna, chipped-stone technology, and spatial demography. Chapters on ethical concerns regarding the use of data from avocational collections, insight from outside the Southeast, and considerations for future research round out the volume. The contributors address five questions: When did people first arrive? How did they get there? Who were they? How did they adapt to local resources and environmental change? Then what?"--

The rich human history of South Carolina from its earliest days to the present Adam King's Archaeology in South Carolina contains an overview of the fascinating archaeological research currently ongoing in the Palmetto state featuring essays by twenty scholars studying South Carolina's past through archaeological research. The scholarly contributions are enhanced by more than one hundred black and white and thirty-eight color images of some of the most important and interesting sites and artifacts found in the state. South Carolina has an extraordinarily rich history encompassing the first human habitation of North America to the lives of people at the dawn of the modern era. King begins the anthology with the basic hows and whys of archeology and introduces readers to the current issues influencing the field of research. The contributors are all recognized experts from universities, state agencies, and private consulting firms, reflecting the diversity of people and institutions that engage in archaeology. The volume begins with investigations of some of the earliest Paleo-Indian and Native American cultures that thrived in South Carolina, including work at the Topper Site along the Savannah River. Other essays explore the creation of early communities at the Stallings Island site, the emergence of large and complex Native American polities before the coming of Europeans,the impact of the coming of European settlers on Native American groups along the Savannah River, and the archaeology of the Yamassee, apeople whose history is tightly bound to the emerging European society. The focus then shifts to Euro-Americans with an examination of a long-term project seeking to understand George Galphin's trading post established on the Savannah River in the eighteenth century. A discussion of Middleburg Plantation, one of the oldest plantation houses in the South Carolina lowcountry, is followed by a fascinating glimpse into how the city of Charleston and the lives of its inhabitants changed during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Essays on underwater archaeological research cover several Civil War-era vessels located in Winyah Bay near Georgetown and Station Creek near Beaufort, as well as one of the most famous Civil War naval vessels—the H.L. Hunley. The volume concludes with the recollections of a life spent in the field by South Carolina's preeminent historical archaeologist Stanley South, now retired from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the University of South Carolina.

Bringing together major archaeological research projects from Virginia to Alabama, this volume explores the rich prehistory of the Southeastern Coastal Plain. Contributors consider how the region’s warm weather, abundant water, and geography have long been optimal for the habitation of people beginning 50,000 years ago. They highlight demographic changes and cultural connections across this wide span of time and space. New data are provided here for many sites, including evidence for human settlement before the Clovis period at the famous Topper site in South Carolina. Contributors track the progression of sea level rise that gradually submerged shorelines and landscapes, and they discuss the possibility of a comet collision that triggered the Younger Dryas cold reversion and contributed to the extinction of Pleistocene megafauna like mastodons and mammoths. Essays also examine the various stone materials used by prehistoric foragers, the location of chert quarries, and the details stone tools reveal about social interaction and mobility. This volume synthesizes more than fifty years of research and addresses many of today’s controversial questions in the archaeology of the early Southeast, such as the sudden demise of the Clovis technoculture and the recognition of the mysterious "Middle Paleoindian" period. Contributors: Robert J. Austin | Mark J. Brooks |Christopher R. Moore | I. Randolph Daniel, Jr. | Joseph E. Wilkinson | Joseph Schuldenrein | Allen West | David K. Thulman | James K. Feathers | Terry E. Barbour II | Douglas Sain | Thomas A. Jennings | Albert C. Goodyear | Andrew H. Ivester | Dr. Malcolm A. LeCompte | Adam M. Burke | James S. Dunbar | Jon Endonino | Richard Estabrook | H. Blaine Ensor | A. Victor Adedeji | Douglas J. Kennett | Ashley M. Smallwood | Kara Bridgman Sweeney | Sam Upchurch | James P. Kennett | Wendy S. Wolbach | M. Scott Harris | Ted Bunch | David G. Anderson | C. Andrew Hemmings | James. M. Adovasio | Dr. Frank J. Vento | Dr. Anthony J. Vega

Building on the first Wild Things volume (Oxbow Books 2014), which aimed to showcase the research putting archaeologists researching the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic at the cutting edge of understanding humanity’s past, this collection of contributions presents recent research from an international group of both early career and established scientists. Covering aspects of both Palaeolithic and Mesolithic research in order to encourage dialogue between practitioners of archaeology of both periods, contributions are also geographically diverse, touching on British, European, North American, and Asian archaeology. Topics covered include transitional periods, deer and people, stone tool technologies, pottery, land-use, antler frontlets, and the development of prehistoric archaeology an 'age of wonder'.

This book in the SAA Press Current Perspectives Series represents a period-by-period synthesis of southeastern prehistory designed for high school and college students, avocational archaeologists, and interested members of the general public. It also serves as a basic reference for professional archaeologists worldwide on the record of a remarkable region.

New research and the discovery of multiple archaeological sites predating the established age of Clovis (13,000 years ago) provide evidence that the Americas were first colonized at least one thousand to two thousand years before Clovis. These revelations indicate to researchers that the peopling of the Americas was perhaps a more complex process than previously thought. The Clovis culture remains the benchmark for chronological, technological, and adaptive comparisons in research on peopling of the Americas. In Clovis: On the Edge of a New Understanding, volume editors Ashley Smallwood and Thomas Jennings bring together the work of many researchers actively studying the Clovis complex. The contributing authors presented earlier versions of these chapters at the Clovis: Current Perspectives on Chronology, Technology, and Adaptations symposium held at the 2011 Society for American Archaeology meetings in Sacramento, California. In seventeen chapters, the researchers provide their current perspectives of the Clovis archaeological record as they address the question: What is and what is not Clovis?