“Dunbar presents new information, perspectives, and interpretations that will have a significant impact on the way archaeologists think about the initial settlement of the lower Southeast and how the dynamic late Pleistocene–early Holocene landscape influenced the lives of Paleoindian people.”—Richard W. Jefferies, author of The Archaeology of Carrier Mills: 10,000 Years in the Saline Valley of Illinois
“Dunbar takes the reader on an extensive, multidisciplinary journey and presents a composite picture of an environment and a way of life at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary.”—Barbara Purdy, coauthor ofHow to Do Archaeology the Right Way, second edition
For more than 130 years, research aimed at understanding Paleoindian occupation of the coastal Southeast has progressed at a glacial pace. In this volume, James Dunbar suggests that the most important archaeological and paleontological resources in the Americas still remain undiscovered in Florida's karst river basins.
The late Pleistocene–early Holocene landscape hosted more species and greater numbers of them in the Southeast compared to any other region in North America at that time. Through extensive research, Dunbar demonstrates a masterful understanding of the lifeways of the region's people and the animals they hunted, showing that the geography and diversity of food sources was unique to that period. Building a case for the wealth of information yet to be unearthed, he provides a fresh perspective on the distant past and an original way of thinking about early life on the land mass we call Florida.
