Examination of vertebrate faunal remains held in museum collections is reported. To understand or identify human modification of bone and antler, the analysis emphasizes post-mortem processes including geological, biological and cultural ones that have led to the alteration and distribution of bone elements. In addition, to provide analogs for this analysis, bone breaking experiments were conducted.

This book focuses on highlights (species mentioned, locality, geological age, stratigraphic positions, etc.) of nearly 1000 items published between 1821 and 2000, dealing with the remains of vertebrates that lived from about 2 million to 5000 years ago.

Advances in Archaeological Method and Theory, Volume 8 is a collection of papers that discusses postprocessual archaeology, bone technology, and tree-ring dating in Eastern North America. One paper discriminates between the process and norm, and eliminates the dichotomy by locating human agency and the active. It focuses on monitoring individuals as being in the center of social theory. Another paper discuses the physical model and the textual model that describe the basic components of an archaeological record. For example, the first model implies that archaeological inferences move from material components of the record to material phenomena in the past. The second model assumes that archaeological inference should move from material phenomena to mental phenomena, from material symbols to the ideas and beliefs they encode. Another paper explains the use of analogy as a useful tool in archaeological considerations. One paper investigates bones as a material for study, including the analysis of carnivore-induced fractures or hominid-induced modifications from using bones as tools. The collection is suitable for sociologists, anthropologist, professional or amateur archaeologists, and museum curators studying archaeological artifacts.

The concept of taphonomy has been borrowed from paleontology and applied to the analysis of vertebrate fossils from the Old Crow region of the northern Yukon Territory. By means of this approach, archaeologically significant specimens have been isolated from the larger suite of materials which can be explained entirely in terms of natural processes. The analysis indicates that human occupation began in eastern Beringia more than 50,000 years ago and probably was continuous from that time onward, but primary archaeological deposits will be needed to clarify the historical and paleo-environmental significance of these finds.

Paleoecology of Beringia is the product of a symposium organized by its editors, sponsored by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, and held at the foundation's conference center in Burg Wartenstein, Austria, 8-17 June 1979. The focus of this volume is on the paradox central to all studies of the unglaciated Arctic during the last Ice Age: that vertebrate fossils indicate that from 45,000 to 11,000 years BP an environment considerably more diverse and productive than the present one existed, whereas the botanical record, where it is not silent, supports a far more conservative appraisal of the region's ability to sustain any but the sparsest forms of plant and animal life. The volume is organized into seven parts. Part 1 focuses on the paleogeography of the Beringia. The studies in Part 2 explore the ancient vegatation. Part 3 deals with the steppe-tundra concept and its application in Beringia. Part 4 examines the paleoclimate while Part 5 is devoted to the biology of surviving relatives of the Pleistocene ungulates. Part 6 takes up the presence of man in ancient Beringia. Part 7 assesses the paleoecology of Beringia during the last 40,000 years

The successful early adaptations of man involve a complex interplay of biological and cultural factors. There is a rapidly growing number of paleontologists and paleoanthropologists who are concerned with hominid foraging and the evolution of hunting. New techniques of paleoanthropology and taphonomy, and new information on human remains are added to the traditional approaches to the study of past human hunting and other foraging behavior. There is also a resurgence of interest in the early peopling of the New World. The present book is the result of the Ninth Annual Spring Systematics 10, 1986, in the Symposium, on the Evolution of Human Hunting, held on May Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. We are grateful to the NSF (grant no. BNS 8519960) for partial financial support in arranging the symposium. In preparation of this volume we have received assistance from many people, particularly the reviewers of individual chapters; it is impossible to name them all. We must however single out Drs. Richard G. Klein and Glen H. Cole for their encouragement at various stages of preparation of the symposium and this volume, and for being a help to the anthropological knowledge. Zbigniew Jastrzebski assisted with the figures and Paul K. Johnson diligently typed the camera-ready copy, and patiently coordinated the endless book-making chores.

Thirteen millennia ago, in a small creek valley in western South Dakota, two mammoths perished. The mammoths, an adult and a juvenile, likely a cow and calf pair, died at the edge of an ancient pond. The Lange/Ferguson site is the earliest dated archaeological site in South Dakota and one of the few North American sites that provides evidence of a Clovis-period mammoth butchering event. In addition to the preserved remains of the two mammoths, the site yielded diagnostic Clovis weaponry—three Clovis projectile points recovered in context and stratigraphically associated with the mammoth bonebed—and flaked bone tools. The site offers a rare snapshot in time detailing early Paleoindian interactions with now-extinct megafauna nearly 13,000 years ago. In Clovis Mammoth Butchery: The Lange/Ferguson Site and Associated Bone Tool Technology, L. Adrien Hannus provides a comprehensive look at one of the few New World Clovis-era sites with in-place buried deposits exhibiting evidence for an expedient bone tool technology. Multidisciplinary investigations include paleoenvironmental and geochronological reconstructions—pollen and phytoliths, geology and geomorphology, diatoms and ostracodes, mollusks, and vertebrate paleontology—as well as taphonomic evaluations and a microwear analysis of the chipped stone tools. Clovis Mammoth Butchery offers readers a rare glimpse into a singular moment in prehistory that captures human interaction with extinct animals during a rapidly changing world for which there is no modern comparison. This book shares great insight into hunting and procurement strategies used by big game hunters during the Late Pleistocene and Early Holocene.