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OverviewWhen many scholars are asked about early human settlement in the Americas, they might point to a handful of archaeological sites as evidence. Yet the process was not a simple one, and today there is no consistent argument favoring a particular scenario for the peopling of the New World. This book approaches the human settlement of the Americas from a biogeographical perspective in order to provide a better understanding of the mechanisms and consequences of this unique event. It considers many of the questions that continue to surround the peopling of the Western Hemisphere, focusing not on sites, dates, and artifacts but rather on theories and models that attempt to explain how the colonization occurred. Unlike other studies, this book draws on a wide range of disciplines archaeology, human genetics and osteology, linguistics, ethnology, and ecology to present the big picture of this migration. Its wide-ranging content considers who the Pleistocene settlers were and where they came from, their likely routes of migration, and the ecological role of these pioneers and the consequences of colonization. Comprehensive in both geographic and topical coverage, the contributions include an explanation of how the first inhabitants could have spread across North America within several centuries, the most comprehensive review of new mitochondrial DNA and Y-chromosome data relating to the colonization, and a critique of recent linguistic theories. Although the authors lean toward a conservative rather than an extreme chronology, this volume goes beyond the simplistic emphasis on dating that has dominated the debate so far to a concern with late Pleistocene forager adaptations and how foragers may have coped with a wide range of environmental and ecological factors. It offers researchers in this exciting field the most complete summary of current knowledge and provides non-specialists and general readers with new answers to the questions surrounding the origins of the first Americans. Full Product DetailsAuthor: C.Michael Barton , Geoffrey A. Clark , David R. Yesner (University of Alaska, Anchorage, USA) , Georges A. PearsonPublisher: University of Arizona Press Imprint: University of Arizona Press Dimensions: Width: 21.80cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 28.50cm Weight: 1.137kg ISBN: 9780816523238ISBN 10: 0816523231 Pages: 281 Publication Date: 01 October 2004 Audience: College/higher education , Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Out of Print Availability: Out of stock Table of ContentsReviewsOf great value to the ongoing, and sometimes contentious, debate about the New World peopling. --Journal of Field Archaeology The peopling of the Americas is an exciting topic, one that crosses disciplinary boundaries and reaches out to the general public. As such, this book will be of interest to non-anthropologists and non-professionals alike. Author InformationC. Michael Barton is Professor of Anthropology at Arizona State University. Geoffrey A. Clark is Regents' Professor of Anthropology, both at Arizona State University. David R. Yesner is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alaska, Anchorage. Georges A. Pearson is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Kansas. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |