More than 12,000 years ago, in one of the greatest triumphs of prehistory, humans colonized North America, a continent that was then truly a new world. Just when and how they did so has been one of the most perplexing and controversial questions in archaeology. This dazzling, cutting-edge synthesis, written for a wide audience by an archaeologist who has long been at the center of these debates, tells the scientific story of the first Americans: where they came from, when they arrived, and how they met the challenges of moving across the vast, unknown landscapes of Ice Age North America. David J. Meltzer pulls together the latest ideas from archaeology, geology, linguistics, skeletal biology, genetics, and other fields to trace the breakthroughs that have revolutionized our understanding in recent years. Among many other topics, he explores disputes over the hemisphere's oldest and most controversial sites and considers how the first Americans coped with changing global climates. He also confronts some radical claims: that the Americas were colonized from Europe or that a crashing comet obliterated the Pleistocene megafauna. Full of entertaining descriptions of on-site encounters, personalities, and controversies, this is a compelling behind-the-scenes account of how science is illuminating our past.

A study of Ice Age Americans, highlighting genetic, archaeological and geological evidence that has revolutionized our understanding of their origins, antiquity, and adaptations.

A transnational history of how Indigenous peoples mobilised en masse to support the war effort on the battlefields and the home fronts.

"Who were the first humans to inhabit North America? According to the now familiar story, mammal hunters entered the continent some 12,000 years ago via a land bridge that spanned the Bering Sea and introduced the distinctive stone tools of the Clovis culture. Drawing from original archaeological analysis, paleoclimatic research, and genetic studies, noted archaeologists Dennis J. Stanford and Bruce A. Bradley challenge that narrative. Their hypothesis places the technological antecedents of Clovis technology in Europe, with the culture of Solutrean people in France and Spain more than 20,000 years ago, and posits that the first Americans crossed the Atlantic by boat and arrived earlier than previously thought."--Back cover.

"Meltzer's compelling account of the data and the debates takes readers behind the scenes of the often contentious arguments that have redirected the scientific pursuit of the first Americans."--Tom D. Dillehay, author of The Settlement of the Americas "In remarkably comprehensive and lucid fashion, Meltzer synthesizes the complex and commonly conflicting evidence for the earliest human presence in the Americas and provides an honestly told lesson about the workings of scientific thought."--David Hurst Thomas, author of Skull Wars "A natural storyteller, David Meltzer gives us a vivid picture of both the colonizing bands of humans who moved into the Americas and the researchers who followed their footsteps from Alaska to Chile. This is an insider's account, told with a keen eye and sense of humor, as if Meltzer were there when discoveries were made and when disputes were aired--as, indeed, he often was."--Ann Gibbons, author of The First Human: The Race to Discover our Earliest Ancestors "The settling of the Americas has been a first-rate scientific puzzle since Columbus stumbled across the peoples of the Caribbean. David Meltzer is its ideal chronicler: a major participant in the research that is unlocking the mystery and a fine writer with a wry humor. Thank goodness there aren't too many scientists like him--science journalists like me would be out of business."--Charles C. Mann, author of 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus

There’s no excuse for getting lost these days—satellite maps on our computers can chart our journey in detail and electronics on our car dashboards instruct us which way to turn. But there was a time when the varied landscape of North America was largely undocumented, and expeditions like that of Lewis and Clark set out to map its expanse. As John Rennie Short argues in Cartographic Encounters, that mapping of the New World was only possible due to a unique relationship between the indigenous inhabitants and the explorers. In this vital reinterpretation of American history, Short describes how previous accounts of the mapping of the new world have largely ignored the fundamental role played by local, indigenous guides. The exchange of information that resulted from this “cartographic encounter” allowed the native Americans to draw upon their wide knowledge of the land in the hope of gaining a better position among the settlers. This account offers a radical new understanding of Western expansion and the mapping of the land and will be essential to scholars in cartography and American history.

The World of Indigenous North America is a comprehensive look at issues that concern indigenous people in North America. Though no single volume can cover every tribe and every issue around this fertile area of inquiry, this book takes on the fields of law, archaeology, literature, socio-linguistics, geography, sciences, and gender studies, among others, in order to make sense of the Indigenous experience. Covering both Canada's First Nations and the Native American tribes of the United States, and alluding to the work being done in indigenous studies through the rest of the world, the volume reflects the critical mass of scholarship that has developed in Indigenous Studies over the past decade, and highlights the best new work that is emerging in the field. The World of Indigenous North America is a book for every scholar in the field to own and refer to often. Contributors: Chris Andersen, Joanne Barker, Duane Champagne, Matt Cohen, Charlotte Cote, Maria Cotera, Vincente M. Diaz, Elena Maria Garcia, Hanay Geiogamah, Carole Goldberg, Brendan Hokowhitu, Sharon Holland, LeAnne Howe, Shari Huhndorf, Jennie Joe, Ted Jojola, Daniel Justice, K. Tsianina Lomawaima, Jose Antonio Lucero, Tiya Miles, Felipe Molina, Victor Montejo, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Val Napoleon, Melissa Nelson, Jean M. O'Brien, Amy E. Den Ouden, Gus Palmer, Michelle Raheja, David Shorter, Noenoe K. Silva, Shannon Speed, Christopher B. Teuton, Sean Teuton, Joe Watkins, James Wilson, Brian Wright-McLeod