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| ## THE EARLIEST AMERICANS         | ## Ar                             |
|                                   | cheology and Ethnography Program  |
| ## \<[**http://www.cr.            |                                   |
| nps.gov/aad/eam/**](http://www.cr | ## National Park Service          |
| .nps.gov/aad/eam/landmarks.htm)\> |                                   |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+

## 

# The Earliest Americans

# About the Study

To preserve the legacy of the earliest Americans, the National Park
Service asked the Society for American Archaeology to lead an initiative
to nominate archeological sites as National Historic Landmarks. In 1995,
that effort evolved into a study called "The Earliest Americans."
Advised by over 30 prominent archeologists---and a broad array of public
and private sector colleagues---we set the study goals shown opposite.

This website **highlights** historic contexts for regions east of the
Mississippi. The contexts---which synthesize the latest science in ways
that can be quickly grasped by nonspecialists---are consensus statements
rigorously reviewed by scholars, avocationalists, preservationists, and
public land managers. NPS and SAA invite archeologists, avocationalists,
and others to use the **theme study's** contexts as guides for
nominating new landmarks and properties for listing on the National
Register of Historic Places.

# A Note About C14 Dating 

The dates in this feature are provided in calendar years, but are based
on radiocarbon dating technology. Radiocarbon dating has revolutionized
archeology, but discrepancies can occur when calendar dates and
radiocarbon dates are compared. The farther we go back in time, the
harder it is to say that a calendar date is the same as a radiocarbon
date.

Calendar time refers to measured years before the present - one
revolution of the earth around the sun equals one year. Radiocarbon
years are based on the rate at which the carbon 14 isotope decays.
Living things, such as seeds, plants, and bone, absorb carbon 14 from
the atmosphere. When organisms die, absorption stops and the C14 begins
to decay at a constant rate. Archeologists estimate when the living
material died by measuring the amount of C14 remaining.

Radiocarbon dates are calibrated because there is progressively less
agreement between them and calendar dates as we go back in time. A
calendar date of 10,000 years before present is just that. A radiocarbon
date of 10,000 years before present is actually about 11,450 calendar
years ago.

Why is there a difference? Atmospheric carbon can vary from year to
year, altering the amount of carbon living things absorb. Even when
archeologists adjust their dates to allow for these fluctuations, their
calibration programs may differ. In general, the further back in time we
go the greater the difference between these scales. Radiocarbon time
becomes increasingly too young, or recent, by two thousand or more years
during the Paleoindian era. This has profound consequences for our
interpretation of the archaeological record.

What does the future hold? Increasingly sound calibrations are being
developed which link these two time scales well back in time. Calendar
years, however, should be used whenever possible in interpretations and
analyses. This is because the two time scales are not yet linked, and
there are plateaus, jumps, and reversals in the radiocarbon time scale
at various times in the past.

Nominating a Landmark

Nominations for landmark status are evaluated by at least one of these
themes:

-   Peopling places: Focuses on demography and settlement.

-   Creating social institutions: Examines how social life emerges and
    develops.

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-   Expressing cultural values: Looks at issues of belief and its
    representation.

-   Shaping political landscapes: Deals with identity, territoriality,
    and interaction.

-   Developing economies: Explores how people extract, produce,
    distribute, exchange, and consume resources.

-   Expanding science and technology: Looks at material remains,
    technology, and technological organization.

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-   Transforming environments: Examines humans' response to the
    environment and their impact upon it.

-   Changing roles in the world: Assesses major contributions to
    knowledge and how events related to the rest of the globe.

Learn More

Kids

Cooper, Margaret

2001 Exploring the Ice Age. 1st edition. Atheneum, New York.

Describes the lives of those dwelling in Europe during the Ice Age and
discusses how they survived the harsh conditions of that period. (Grades
6 and up)

Hakim, Joy

1998 The First Americans. 2nd edition. Oxford University Press, New
York.

Presents the history of the Native Americans from prehistoric times
through the arrival of the first Europeans. (Grades 6 and up)

Lange, Ian

2002 Ice Age Mammals of North America: A Guide to the Big, the Hairy,
and the Bizarre. Mountain Press Publishing, Missoula, Montana.

This engaging introduction to ice age mammals describes the geologic
events that led to the great Ice Ages and discusses the possible causes
for the mass extinction of so many species. (All Ages)

Levy, Elizabeth and J.R. Havlan

2000 Who Are You Calling a Wooly Mammoth? Prehistoric America.
Scholastic, New York.

Travel through the age of the dinosaurs, the great ice ages, and arrive
to see the appearance of the first humans. (Grades 3-6)

Matthews, Rupert O.

1990 Ice Age Animals. Watts Franklin, New York.

Describes how the Pleistocene Ice Age affected the climate, vegetation,
animal life, and the world in general. (Grades 3-6)

Searcy, Margaret Zehmer

1995 Eyr the Hunter: A Story of Ice-Age America. Pelican Publishing,
Gretna, Louisiana.

Fiction - Eyr, a young hunter living 12,000 years ago near Alaska, plays
an important role in the survival of his band. (Grades 3-6)

Stille, Darlene R.

1990 Ice Age. Childrens Press, Chicago.

Describes the earth\'s many Ice Ages, with an emphasis on the climate,
people, and animals of the last great Ice Age. (Grades 1-3)

Watson, Lucilla and John James

1997 Ice Age Hunter. Rourke Enterprises, Vero Beach, Florida.

Describes the daily life of Ice Age people and discusses how they lived
and hunted. Includes a glossary of terms. (Grades 6 and up)

Adults

Adovasio, J.M. and Jake Page

2002 The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery.
Random House, New York.

Barton, Miles et al.

2003 Prehistoric America: A Journey Through the Ice Age and Beyond. Yale
University Press, New Haven.

Dewar, Elaine

2001 Bones: Discovering the First Americans. Random House of Canada,
Toronto.

Dillehay, Thomas D.

2000 The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. 1st edition.
Basic Books, New York.

Dixon, E. James

2000 Bones, Boats and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of
Western North America. University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

1992 Quest for the Origins of the First Americans. University of New
Mexico Press, Albuquerque.

Fagan, Brian M.

2000 Ancient North America: The Archaeology of a Continent. Revised.
Thames and Hudson, New York.

Gibbon, Guy E. and Kenneth M. Ames (Editors)

1998 Archaeology of Prehistoric Native America: An Encyclopedia.
Garland, New York.

Meltzer, David J.

1993 Search for the First Americans. Smithsonian Books, Washington, D.C.

Pielou, E.C.

1992 After the Ice Age: The Return of Life to Glaciated North America.
University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

Pringle, Heather

1996 In Search of Ancient North America: An Archaeological Journey to
Forgotten Cultures. John Wiley and Sons, New York.

Snow, Dean R.

1989 The Archaeology of North America. Chelsea House, New York.

Discusses the origins of America\'s Indians, their myths, and their
culture from the earliest of times up to the time of the conquest.

Stanford, Dennis J. and Jane Stevenson Day

1992 Ice Age Hunters of the Rockies. University Press of Colorado,
Niwot, Colorado.

Tankersley, Kenneth B. and Douglas Preston

2002 In Search of Ice Age Americans. Gibbs Smith, Layton, Utah.

Tanner, Helen Hornbeck and Robert Ostergren

1995 The Settling of North America: The Atlas of the Great Migrations
into North America from the Ice Age to the Present. Macmillan Publishing
Company, Inc.

Thomas, David Hurst

2000 Skull Wars: Kennewick Man, Archaeology, and the Battle for Native
American Identity. Basic Books, New York.

Professional

Adovasio, J. M., D. R. Pedler, J. Donahue, and R. Stuckenrath

1998 Two Decades of Debate on Meadowcroft Rockshelter. North American
Archaeologist 19(4):317-341.

Anderson, David G. and Michael K. Faught

1998 The Distribution of Fluted Paleoindian Projectile Points: Update
1998. Archaeology of Eastern North America 26:163-188.

Anderson, David G. and Kenneth E. Sassaman

1996 The Paleoindian and Early Archaic Southeast. University of Alabama
Press, Tuscaloosa.

Bense, Judith A.

1994 Archaeology of the Southeastern United States: Paleoindian to World
War I. Academic Press, San Diego.

Boldurian, Anthony T. and John Cotter

1999 Clovis Revisited: New Perspectives on Paleoindian Adaptations from
Blackwater Draw, New Mexico. University Museum, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia.

Bonnichsen, Robson (Editor)

1999 Who Were the First Americans? Proceedings of the 58^th^ Annual
Biology Colloquium, Oregon State University. Center for the Study of the
First Americans, Corvallis, Oregon.

Bonnichsen, Robson and D. Gentry Steele (Editors)

1994 Method and Theory for Investigating the Peopling of the Americas.
Center for the Study of the First Americans, Corvallis, Oregon.

Bonnichsen, Robson and Karen L. Turnmire (Editors)

1991 Clovis: Origins and Adaptations. Peopling of the Americas
Publications, Center for the Study of the First Americans, Corvallis,
Oregon.

1999 Ice Age Peoples of North America. Oregon State University Press for
the Center for the Study of the First Americans, Corvallis, Oregon.

Byers, Douglas S.

1954 Bull Brook---A Fluted Point Site in Ipswich, Massachusetts.
American Antiquity 19:343-351.

Curran, Mary Lou

1994 New Hampshire Paleo-Indian Research and the Whipple Site. The New
Hampshire Archeologist 33/34:29-52.

Custer, Jay F. and R. Michael Stewart

1990 Environment, Analogy, and Early Paleoindian Economies in
Northeastern North America. In Early Paleoindian Economies of Eastern
North America, edited by Kenneth B. Tankersley and Barry L. Isaac, pp.
303-322. Research in Economic Anthropology, Supplement 5, JAI Press,
Greenwich, Connecticut.

Dillehay, Tom D. and David J. Meltzer (Editors)

1991 The First Americans: Search and Research. CRC Press, Boca Raton,
Florida.

Dillehay, Tom D.

1989 Monte Verde: A Late Pleistocene Settlement in Chile. Smithsonian
Institution Press, Washington, D.C.

Dincauze, Dena F.

1993 Fluted Points in the Eastern Forests. In From Kostenki to Clovis:
Problems in Late Paleolithic Adaptations, edited by O. Soffer and N. D.
Praslov, pp. 279-292. Plenum, New York.

Fisher, Daniel C.

1987 Mastodon Procurement by Paleoindians of the Great Lakes Region:
Hunting or Scavenging? In The Evolution of Human Hunting, edited by M.
Nitecki and D. Nitecki, pp. 309-421. Plenum, New York.

Frison, George C. (Editor)

1974 Casper Site: A Hell Gap Bison Kill on the High Plains. Academic
Press, New York.

Frison, George C. and Lawrence C. Todd (Editors)

1987 Horner Site: The Type Site of the Cody Cultural Complex. Academic
Press, Orlando.

Frison, George C.

1991 Prehistoric Hunters of the High Plains. Academic Press, San Diego.

Haynes, Gary

2002 The Early Settlement of North America: The Clovis Era. New York,
Cambridge University Press.

1991 Mammoths, Mastodonts, and Elephants: Biology, Behavior, and the
Fossil Record. Cambridge University Press, New York.

King, James E., and Jeffrey J. Saunders

1984 Environmental Insularity and the Extinction of the American
Mastodon. In Quaternary Extinctions: A Prehistoric Revolution, edited by
P. Martin and R. Klein, pp. 315-339. University of Arizona Press,
Tucson.

Mason, Ronald J. and Carol Irwin

1960 An Eden-Scottsbluff Burial in Northeastern Wisconsin. American
Antiquity 26:43-57.

Morse, Dan F., David G. Anderson, and Albert C. Goodyear, III

1996 The Pleistocene-Holocene Transition in the Eastern United States.
In Humans at the End of the Ice Age: The Archaeology of the
Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, edited by Lawrence Guy Strauss, pp.
319-338. Plenum Press, New York.

Tuohy, Donald R. and Amy Dansie (Editors)

1997 Papers on Holocene Burial Localities Presented at the Twenty-fifth
Great Basin Anthropological Conference, October 10-12, 1996. Nevada
Historical Society Quarterly, 40(1).

Overstreet, David F.

1993 Chesrow: A Paleoindian Complex in the Southern Lake Michigan Basin.
Great Lakes Archaeological Press, Milwaukee.

Spiess, Arthur E., Deborah Brush Wilson, and James Bradley

1998 Paleoindian Occupation in the New England Maritimes Region: Beyond
Cultural Ecology. Archaeology of Eastern North America 26:201-264.

1996 Still More on Cultural Contexts of Mammoth and Mastodon in the
Southwestern Lake Michigan Basin.

Current Research in the Pleistocene 13:36-38.