Paleoindians first arrived in Texas more than eleven thousand years ago, although relatively few sites of such early peoples have been discovered. Texas has a substantial post-Paleoindian record, however, and there are more than fifty thousand prehistoric archaeological sites identified across the state. This comprehensive volume explores in detail the varied experience of native peoples who lived on this land in prehistoric times. Chapters on each of the regions offer cutting-edge research, the culmination of years of work by dozens of the most knowledgeable experts. Based on the archaeological record, the discussion of the earliest inhabitants includes a reclassification of all known Paleoindian projectile point types and establishes a chronology for the various occupations. The archaeological data from across the state of Texas also allow authors to trace technological changes over time, the development of intensive fishing and shellfish collecting, funerary customs and the belief systems they represented, long-term changes in settlement mobility and character, landscape use, and the eventual development of agricultural societies. The studies bring the prehistory of Texas Indians all the way up through the Late Prehistoric period (ca. a.d. 700–1600). The extensively illustrated chapters are broadly cultural-historical in nature but stay strongly focused on important current research problems. Taken together, they present careful and exhaustive considerations of the full archaeological (and paleoenvironmental) record of Texas.

This account of the archaeology of a cave in southern New Mexico makes a dramatic contribution to the ongoing debate over how long human beings have lived in the Americas. The findings presented here show that human settlement may go back as far as 75,000 years before the present, whereas the long-accepted Clovis dates showed humans only about 12,000 years ago. MacNeish and his colleagues subjected the cave, its environs, and its contents to rigorous interdisciplinary investigation. The first section of this volume comprises their reports on the changing environment of the area. The second section concentrates on the excavation of the cave's layers, presenting the results of radiocarbon dating and describing the evidence of human occupation, including friction skin prints and human hair. The third section discusses the cultural implications of the materials recovered and suggests how the ancient peoples may have exploited the changing environment and developed different ways of life throughout the Americas before the time of Clovis man. No serious discussion of early inhabitants in the New World can disregard the findings presented in this monumental work of scholarship.

In the early 1970s, understanding of the Mimbres region as a whole was in its infancy. In the following decades, thanks to dedicated work by enterprising archaeologists and nonprofit organizations, our understanding of the Mimbres region has become more complex, nuanced, and rich. New Perspectives on Mimbres Archaeology brings together these experts in a single volume for the first time. The contributors discuss current knowledge of the people who lived in the Mimbres region of the southwestern United States and how our knowledge has changed since the Mimbres Foundation, directed by Steven A. LeBlanc, began the first modern archaeological investigations in the region. Many of these authors have spent decades conducting the fieldwork that has allowed for a broader understanding of Mimbres society. Focusing on a variety of important research topics of interest to archaeologists—including the social contexts of people and communities, the role of ritual and ideology in Mimbres society, evidence of continuities and cultural change through time, and the varying impacts of external influences throughout the region—New Perspectives on Mimbres Archaeology presents recent data on and interpretations of the entire pre-Hispanic sequence of occupation. Additional contributions include a history of nonprofit archaeology by William H. Doelle and a concluding chapter by Steven A. LeBlanc reflecting on his decades-long work in Mimbres archaeology and outlining important areas for the next wave of research.

Why and when human societies shifted from nomadic hunting and gathering to settled agriculture engages the interest of scholars around the world. One of the most fruitful areas in which to study this issue is the North American Southwest, where Late Archaic inhabitants of the Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts of Mexico, Arizona, and New Mexico turned to farming while their counterparts in Trans-Pecos and South Texas continued to forage. By investigating the environmental, biological, and cultural factors that led to these differing patterns of development, we can identify some of the necessary conditions for the rise of agriculture and the corresponding evolution of village life. The twelve papers in this volume synthesize previous and ongoing research and offer new theoretical models to provide the most up-to-date picture of life during the Late Archaic (from 3,000 to 1,500 years ago) across the entire North American Borderlands. Some of the papers focus on specific research topics such as stone tool technology and mobility patterns. Others study the development of agriculture across whole regions within the Borderlands. The two concluding papers trace pan-regional patterns in the adoption of farming and also link them to the growth of agriculture in other parts of the world.

How did agriculture come about in the American Southwest? What environmental and social factors led to the cultivation of plants? How, in turn, did the use of these new agricultural products affect the ancient peoples living in the region? In pursuit of answers to these questions, Barbara Roth synthesizes data from both CRM and academic research to explore the emergence and impact of Southwestern agriculture. Roth examines agricultural beginnings across the entire Southwest, both northern and southern, and across culture groups residing there. Beyond simply addressing the arrival and widespread adoption of specific cultigens, she pays particular attention to human factors such as patterns of production andvariability in agricultural developments. Her consideration of broad social and environmental dynamics affecting forager diets and adaptive strategies sheds new light on what we know—and what we should ask—about the transition fromforaging to farming.