Product Description
As the Ice Age waned, Clovis hunter-gatherers began to explore and colonize the area now known as Colorado. Their descendents and later Paleoindian migrants spread throughout Colorado's plains and mountains, adapting to diverse landforms and the changing climate. In this new volume, Robert H. Brunswig and Bonnie L. Pitblado assemble experts in archaeology, paleoecology-climatology, and paleofaunal analysis to share new discoveries about these ancient people of Colorado.

The editors introduce the research with scientific context. A review of seventy-five years of Paleoindian archaeology in Colorado highlights the foundation on which new work builds, and a survey of Colorado's ancient climates and ecologies helps readers understand Paleoindian settlement patterns.

Eight essays discuss archaeological evidence from Plains to high Rocky Mountain sites. The book offers the most thorough analysis to date of Dent--the first Clovis site discovered. Essays on mountain sites show how advances in methodology and technology have allowed scholars to reconstruct settlement patterns and changing lifeways in this challenging environment.

Colorado has been home to key moments in human settlement and in the scientific study of our ancient past. Readers interested in the peopling of the New World as well as those passionate about the methods and history of archaeology will find new material and satisfying overviews in this book.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 2.0 based on 1 review)

Not written for the avocational archaeologist or public

This book must have been written as a textbook for students in archaeology, or for self gratification. It certainly is far above the level of interest of the avocational archys out here in the real world. Don't the archaeologists know how to write for the public? Is that taught in your university classes???
This book will be right down your alley if this kind of lingo gets your heart pumping (from page 143):
"For dP4 (DMNH 1895; solid triangles, Figures 4.6b), samples 2-1 and 2-3 are very close to the values they were expected to replicate. Sample 2-2 differs from the value it was expected to replicate, but this probably reflects only an improper amount of graphite, and we interpret sample series 2-(1-3) as (at least approximate) confirmation of the orignal profile. For dP3 (DMNH 1897; solid dots, Figure 4.6c), samples 3-1 and 3-3 are close to other values at similar postions relative to the pulp cavity on this speciman."

On the other hand, there are a few parts of the book (written by many authors) which make sense and leave me with a few new insights as to the way Clovis peoples hunted and lived, and the Mammoth at the Dent site were killed, how they were killed, etc. So of the 370 or so pages of this book, I was able to actually enjoy maybe 1/2. For a price of $60, I fully expected much more. I would recommend you spend your hard earned money on the book Ice Age Peoples of North America by Bonnichsen and Turnmire, which is much more readable and enlightening, not to mention cheaper.

March 06, 2008

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