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Preface
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Preface The year 1992 marked the SOOth anniversary of the initiation of European colonization and settlement of the New World, and to many people, the year 1492 remains the date of the "discovery" of the Americas. In this volume, we celebrate the true discovery process, a record of exploration and human achievement of epic proportions that is emerging through archaeological research. Our focus is the first 3,500 years or so of human settlement in the lower southeastern United States, spanning the Paleoindian and EarlyArchaic cultural periods, from approximately 11,500 to 8000 B.P. In the pages that follow, ideas and evidence about this time in the Southeast are summarized, illustrating how our knowledge of these earliest Americans continues to develop. The geographic focus for our research comprises the area roughly south of the Ohio River-West Virginia -Pennsylvania area to just west of the Mississippi River. This volume is divided into three parts. In Part 1, following introductory remarks about paleoenvironment and chronology, models of Paleoindian and Early Archaic settlement, subsistence, and technological organization are presented from across the region. In Part 2, Paleoindian and Early Archaic research is summarized on a state-by-state basis from across the Southeast by the leading authorities for each area, and primary data are presented on a number of important Paleoindian and Early Archaic sites and artifacts. In Part 3, commentary and directions for future research are offered. This volume is based on a symposium held at the University of South Carolina in Columbia on 14 September 1991. The meeting was sponsored by the Council ofSouth Carolina ProfessionalArchaeologists and the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, under the auspices of a Survey and Planning Grant awarded by the South Carolina Department of Archives and History. Christopher Judge was the project principal investigator and handled local arrangements. The symposium was open to the public, and over 70 avocational and professional archaeologists from around the Southeast attended. A limited number of copies of the papers from this meeting were printed in late 1992 in a volume entitled Paleoindian and Early Archaic Period Research in the Lower Southeast: A South Carolina Perspective, edited by David G. Anderson, Kenneth E. Sassaman, and Christopher Judge, and released by the Council of South Carolina ProfessionalArchaeologists. The demand for this volume, which was unavailable within a month of its release, was truly astonishing and prompted us to release this revised and updated version. The papers herein were produced in final form by their authors in early 1995. While we have tried to make this volume as up to date and xvi Preface comprehensive a regional reader and summary as possible, some gaps occur in our coverage. These typically reflect areas where excellent overviews have been recently presented elsewhere, or else where no researchers are working on these early periods. The Southeast has a tremendously rich and varied Paleoindian and Early Archaic record, furthermore, and new data are coming to light all the time. Accordingly, a primary goal has been to give our colleagues some sense of just how rich the early Southeastern record actually is; we suspect that a regional synthesis a decade or two from now will be far more extensive, and will contain answers to many of the questions that currently puzzle us. We wish to thank the many colleagues who helped us prepare this manuscript, not the least of whom are Judith A. Knight and the staff of the University of Alabama Press, whose encouragement was crucial to seeing this manuscript through to completion. Albert C. Goodyear and Stephen Williams provided detailed comments on earlier drafts of the manuscript, while Trinket Shaw of Samford University provided extensive help with the copy-editing. Dean Quigley of St. Petersburg deserves special thanks for allowing us to use one of his wonderful reconstructions of Paleoindian life in Florida for the cover/frontispiece. The majority of the text illustrations were drawn or arranged by Julie Barnes Smith who, as usual, has done a superb job. We wish to thank the Society for AmericanArchaeology, the Kentucky Heritage Council, the Eastern States Archaeological Federation, the Society for Georgia Archaeology, the Archeological Society of Virginia, The University of Tennessee Press, the Journal of Middle Atlantic Archaeology, Ernest S. Burch, Jr., Hazel and Paul Delcourt, Arthur S. Spiess, and the Virginia Deparbnent of Historic Resources for their permission to reprint, in somewhat modified form, some of the material found herein. The editors wish to thank our employers , the National Park Service and...