The time and place of the arrival of the first humans in the Western Hemisphere and their spread throughout the Americas has been a fiercely debated issue for decades. Florida's People During the Last Ice Age documents the indisputable evidence of the spread of human populations into Florida nearly 14,000 years ago. Other syntheses of Florida archaeology tend to gloss over the Paleoindian period. Barbara Purdy is the first to offer, in a single work, a summary of more than one hundred years of research on Florida's Paleoindian occupation. She also provides dates, radiocarbon information, and thorough, succinct overviews of the principal known archaeological sites for this era. No other source offers such unique site summaries; indeed some are published here for the first time anywhere. Purdy is the first to present all the dates, radiocarbon and other, for the earliest archaeological sites in Florida in a single work. In discussing the still unresolved issue of whether people were in the Western Hemisphere, particularly Florida, at an even earlier date, she recommends new technologies and expertise that could shed light on this enduring mystery.

“This lively and fascinating book is an intelligent examination of how scientific endeavor operates over time and how community life can be focused and energized. It’s also filled with portraits of colorful personalities.”—Florida Weekly "A fascinating recounting of the early discovery of a Paleolithic human and the issues that were engendered by various opposing scientific views of the validity of the discovery and its analysis."--Dennis Stanford, coauthor of Across Atlantic Ice: The Origin of America's Clovis Culture "Since the site's discovery long ago, the complete story of the Old Vero Site has never been told. This is an informative and entertaining account of this remarkable site and its history in American archaeology."--Thomas D. Dillehay, author of The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory "Johnson has thoroughly investigated, and transformed into a very readable narrative, an entire century of accumulated knowledge about the research, controversy, and curiosity surrounding the Old Vero archaeological site."--Barbara A. Purdy, author of Florida's People During the Last Ice Age "An engaging account of the first Paleoindian site discovered in eastern North America."--Robert S. Carr, author of Digging Miami "Johnson skillfully weaves a tale of prehistoric life in Florida with the 100-year search to understand that long lost world at the Vero Site."--Andy Hemmings, Florida Atlantic University In 1916, to the shock of the scientific community and the world at large, a Florida geologist discovered human remains mixed with the bones of prehistoric animals in a Vero Beach canal and proclaimed that humans had lived in North America since the Ice Age. These new findings by Elias Sellards flew in the face of prevailing wisdom, which held that humans first came to the continent only 6,000 years ago. His claim was snubbed by the top scientists of his day, he was laughed out of the state, Vero's fame declined, and the skull Sellards found--famously known as "Vero Man "--was lost. An Ice Age Mystery tells the story of Sellards's exciting find and the controversy it sparked. In the years that followed, other archaeological discoveries and the rise of radiocarbon dating established that humans did arrive in North America earlier than previously thought. The skull, however, was never recovered, and many people began to wonder: What exactly had Sellards found at Vero? And what else might be buried there? One hundred years after the first Vero discovery, construction plans threatened to cover up the legendary dig site, and a band of citizens and archaeologists protested. Excavations were reopened. Archaeologists uncovered 14,000-year-old burnt mammal bones and charcoal, signs of a human presence, and found further evidence to indicate a continuous human occupation of the site for several thousand years. Prior to the latest excavations an etching on a bone possibly 13,000 years old was discovered that could be the oldest piece of art in America. Sellards had been right all along. Many questions still remain. Who were these people? Where did they come from? And how did they get here? This book draws readers into the past, present, and future of one of the most historic discoveries in American archaeology.

"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?"--

Florida has an amazing biohistory. Its fossil record reveals that 8-ton ground sloths, giant beavers, and tiny horses once roamed its 66,000 square miles. Its human history is the story of people who arrived some 12,000 years ago after a journey that took them from Asia across the Bering land bridge and then south across the North American continent. Today, Florida is home to historic St. Augustine, the futuristic Kennedy Space Center, and the mysterious Everglades. Hosting a diverse ecology and a rich human history, Florida now faces a tenuous future as its natural resources are depleted, new species of plants, animals and diseases invade, and climate changes loom. This fascinating biohistory, prehistoric to present-day, and with an eye to the future, is told with verve and clarity. The result is a fascinating story of how they all interrelate.

Presenting the most current research and thinking on prehistoric archaeology in the Southeast, this volume reexamines some of Florida’s most important Paleoindian sites and discusses emerging technologies and methods that are necessary knowledge for archaeologists working in the region today. Using new analytical methods, contributors explore fresh perspectives on sites including Old Vero, Guest Mammoth, Page-Ladson, and Ray Hole Spring. They discuss the role of hydrology—rivers, springs, and coastal plain drainages—in the history of Florida’s earliest inhabitants. They address both the research challenges and the unique preservation capacity of the state’s many underwater sites, suggesting solutions for analyzing corroded lithic artifacts and submerged midden deposits. Looking towards future research, archaeologists discuss strategies for finding additional pre-Clovis and Clovis-era sites offshore on the southeastern continental shelf. The search is important, these essays show, because Florida’s prehistoric sites hold critical data for the debate over the nature and timing of the first human colonization of the Western Hemisphere.

Susan Cerulean’s memoir trains a naturalist’s eye and a daughter’s heart on the lingering death of a beloved parent from dementia. At the same time, the book explores an activist’s lifelong search to be of service to the embattled natural world. During the years she cared for her father, Cerulean also volunteered as a steward of wild shorebirds along the Florida coast. Her territory was a tiny island just south of the Apalachicola bridge where she located and protected nesting shorebirds, including least terns and American oystercatchers. I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird weaves together intimate facets of adult caregiving and the consolation of nature, detailing Cerulean’s experiences of tending to both. The natural world is the “sustaining body” into which we are born. In similar ways, we face not only a crisis in numbers of people diagnosed with dementia but also the crisis of the human-caused degradation of the planet itself, a type of cultural dementia. With I Have Been Assigned the Single Bird, Cerulean reminds us of the loving, necessary toil of tending to one place, one bird, one being at a time.

Explore Florida history with this nonfiction book that builds literacy skills while discussing social studies topics. Florida's American Indians through History features engaging social studies content through a variety of text features such as headings, sidebars, a glossary, an index, and a "Your Turn" activity. This fascinating book is aligned to national and state standards.