This volume is an extensive collection of chapters discussing Folsom artifacts and sites, as well as innovative experiments undertaken to understand Folsom technology and lifeways. Public and private collections of Folsom artifacts were brought together with professional and amateur lithic analysts and knappers in an attempt to determine how the ancient stone tools were made and used. In addition, Folsom Technology and Lifeways summarizes interaction among knappers and analysts, and the attempts to replicate specific artifact types represented. It is a unique volume in that it examines the variation present in technology and behavior across a wide range of Folsom localities.

In the late 1920s outside a sleepy remote New Mexico village, prehistory was made. Spear points, found embedded between the ribs of an extinct Ice Age bison at the site of Folsom, finally resolved decades of bitter scientific controversy over whether the first Americans had arrived in the New World in Ice Age times. Although Folsom is justly famous in the history of archaeology for resolving that dispute, for decades little was known of the site except that it was very old. This book for the first time tells the full story of Folsom. David J. Meltzer deftly combines the results of extensive new excavations and laboratory analyses from the late 1990s, with the results of a complete examination and analysis of all the original artifacts and bison remains recovered in the 1920s - now scattered in museums and small towns across the country. Using the latest in archaeological method and technique, and bringing in data from geology and paleoecology, this interdisciplinary study provides a comprehensive look at the adaptations and environments of the late Ice Age Paleoindian hunters who killed a large herd of bison at this spot, as well as a measure of Folsom's pivotal role in American archaeology.

Folsom lithic technology is associated with hunter-gatherer groups who inhabited the terminal Pleistocene grasslands of west-central North America. Archaeologists from that region--with two outliers from Texas and Argentina--explore variation in the chipped stone technology from several perspectives and at different scales, illustrating and expanding on the diversity of current models used to account for structure and variation. Their work is in progress so their reports may help design further research. The 11 studies are not indexed. Paper edition (unseen), $35.00Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

This monograph summarizes findings from nine seasons of excavation at Barger Gulch Locality B, a Folsom campsite in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. Archaeologist Todd A. Surovell explains the spatial organization of the camp and the social organization of the people who lived there.

Human development is a long and steady process that began with stone tool making. Because of this skill, humans were able to adapt to climate changes, discover new territories, and invent new technologies. "Pressure knapping" is the common term for one method of creating stone tools, where a larger device or blade specifically made for this purpose is use to press out the stone tool. Pressure knapping was invented in different locations and at different points in time, representing the adoption of the Neolithic way of life in the Old world. Recent research on pressure knapping has led for the first time to a global thesis on this technique. The contributors to this seminal work combine research findings on pressure knapping from different cultures around the globe to develope a cohesive theory. This contributions to this volume represents a significant development to research on pressure knapping, as well as the field of lithic studies in general. This work will be an important reference for anyone studying the Paleolithic, Mesolithic, and Neolithic periods, lithic studies, technologies, and more generally, cultural transmission.

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?

The American Southwest is one of the most important archaeological regions in the world, with many of the best-studied examples of hunter-gatherer and village-based societies. Research has been carried out in the region for well over a century, and during this time the Southwest has repeatedly stood at the forefront of the development of new archaeological methods and theories. Moreover, research in the Southwest has long been a key site of collaboration between archaeologists, ethnographers, historians, linguists, biological anthropologists, and indigenous intellectuals. This volume marks the most ambitious effort to take stock of the empirical evidence, theoretical orientations, and historical reconstructions of the American Southwest. Over seventy top scholars have joined forces to produce an unparalleled survey of state of archaeological knowledge in the region. Themed chapters on particular methods and theories are accompanied by comprehensive overviews of the culture histories of particular archaeological sequences, from the initial Paleoindian occupation, to the rise of a major ritual center in Chaco Canyon, to the onset of the Spanish and American imperial projects. The result is an essential volume for any researcher working in the region as well as any archaeologist looking to take the pulse of contemporary trends in this key research tradition.