Three thousand to four thousand years ago, the Native Americans of the mid-Atlantic region experienced a groundswell of cultural innovation. This remarkable era, known as the Transitional period, saw the advent of broad-bladed bifaces, cache blades, ceramics, steatite bowls, and sustained trade, among other ingenious and novel objects and behaviors. In The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures, eight expert contributors examine the Transitional period in Pennsylvania and posit potential explanations of the significant changes in social and cultural life at that time. Building upon sixty years of accumulated data, corrected radiocarbon dating, and fresh research, scholars are reimagining the ancient environment in which native people lived. The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures will give readers new insights into a singular moment in the prehistory of the mid-Atlantic region and the daily lives of the people who lived there. The contributors are Joseph R. Blondino, Kurt W. Carr, Patricia E. Miller, Roger Moeller, Paul A. Raber, R. Michael Stewart, Frank J. Vento, Robert D. Wall, and Heather A. Wholey.

The Fairchild site (LA 45732) is a huge archeological site covering an area of at least one-half by one-quarter mile on a west slope alluvial fan of the Sacramento Mountains. This report covers limited surface collection and subsurface testing of a 1500 ft long section of a 50 ft wide right-of-way through the site. The right of wells to Holloman Air Force Base. This report contains the results of archeological testing by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Albuquerque District, in November 1983, and also by the Office of Contract Archeology in May 1984. Systematic 10 percent surface collection shows that archeological materials are scattered across the right-of-way, with some areas of much greater material density. These high-density areas are primarily discrete concentrations of fire-cracked rock, ranging from less than 1 m to more than 4 m in diameter. Subsurface test excavations uncovered no subsurface features within the right-of-way, not even beneath the fire-cracked rock concentrations. Analysis of the recovered artifacts and ecofacts reveal that the right-of-way area was used by groups of hunter-gatherers on a scheduled round of seasonal mobility. We suspect that it was used primarily as a location for roasting succulents during the spring. Mesquite may also have been procured and processed at the site during the fall.