The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
The Archaeology of the North American Great Plains
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USDIn this volume, Douglas B. Bamforth offers an archaeological overview of the Great Plains, the vast, open grassland bordered by forests and mountain ranges situated in the heart of North America. Synthesizing a century of scholarship and new archaeological evidence, he focuses on changes in resource use, continental trade connections, social formations, and warfare over a period of 15,000 years. Bamforth investigates how foragers harvested the grasslands more intensively over time, ultimately turning to maize farming, and examines the persistence of industrial mobile bison hunters in much of the region as farmers lived in communities ranging from hamlets to towns with thousands of occupants. He also explores how social groups formed and changed, migrations of peoples in and out of the Plains, and the conflicts that occurred over time and space. Significantly, Bamforth's volume demonstrates how archaeology can be used as the basis for telling long-term, problem-oriented human history.
- Uses archaeology as the basis for telling long-term, problem-oriented human history
- Brings together a century of published and unpublished research into a synthetic narrative
- Provides a focused synthesis of human history at a very large geographic scale
Reviews & endorsements
‘… a comprehensive study of the region’s archaeology … Recommended’ L. L. Johnson, Choice Connect
‘[A] well written and nicely illustrated guide to the human history of the Great Plains, and indeed to North America as a whole. … It is an invaluable resource for archaeologists and students and can be informative to laypeople interested in the archaeological record and human history of the Plains. … Bamforth’s work is a good template for other scholars who are considering writing comprehensive archaeological overviews of physiographic regions anywhere in the world.’ Rolfe D. Mandel, Great Plains Research
Product details
November 2021Hardback
9780521873468
350 pages
260 × 185 × 26 mm
1.11kg
Available
Table of Contents
- 1. Introduction
- 2.Where and what are the Great Plains?
- 3. Peopling the continent, peopling the Plains: pre-Clovis to 10,800 B.C
- 4. Paleoindian hunters (and gatherers):
- 10,800 to 6900 B.C.
- 5. Diversity, environmental change
- and external connection: the Plains Archaic, 6900 to 600 B.C.
- 6. Mounds, pots, pipes, and bison: the Plains Woodland Period, 600 B.C. to A.D. 950
- 7. The context of maize farming on the Great Plains
- 8. Settled farmers and their neighbors, Part I: the early Plains Village period, A.D. 950 to 1250
- 9. Settled farmers and their neighbors continued: the Plains Village Period Part II: A.D. 1250 to 1400
- 10. The Plains Village Period, Part III: fifteenth century transformations
- 11. One promise kept: the Colonial Era, A.D. 1500 to the twentieth century
- 12. Afterward.
