Entering America
Northeast Asia and the Beringia Before the Last Glacial Maximum

Edited by D. B. Madsen

400 pp., 6 x 9
104 illustrations
Cloth $50.00
ISBN 978-0-87480-786-8
Archaeology / Anthropology

Where did the first Americans come from and when did they get here? That basic question of American archaeology, long thought to have been solved, is re-emerging as a critical issue as the number of well-excavated sites dating to pre-Clovis times increases. It now seems possible that small populations of human foragers entered the Americas prior to the creation of the continental glacial barrier. While the archaeological and paleoecological aspects of a post-glacial entry have been well studied, there is little work available on the possibility of a pre-glacial entry.

Entering America seeks to fill that void by providing the most up-to-date information on the nature of environmental and cultural conditions in northeast Asia and Beringia (the Bering land bridge) immediately prior to the Last Glacial Maximum. Because the peopling of the New World is a question of international archaeological interest, this volume will be important to specialists and nonspecialists alike.

“Provides the most up-to-date information on a topic of lasting interest.”
—C. Melvin Aikens, University of Oregon

D. B. Madsen is a research associate at the Division of Earth and Ecosystem Science, Desert Research Institute, Reno, and at the Texas Archaeological Research Laboratory, University of Texas, Austin. He lives in Austin, Texas.

Contents and Contributors:

Paleoenvironmental Conditions in Western Beringia Before and During the Last Glacial Maximum
Julie Brigham-Grette, Anatoly V. Lozhkin, Patricia M. Anderson, Olga Y. Glushkova

Environments of Northwest North America before the Last Glacial Maximum
John J. Clague, Rolf W. Mathewes, and Thomas A. Ager

Late Wisconsin Environments and Archaeological Visibility on the Northern Northwest Coast
Daryl W. Fedje, Quentin Mackie, E. James Dixon, and Timothy H. Heaton

Pre-Clovis Sites and their Implications for Human Occupation Before the Last Glacial Maximum
J. M. Adovasio and David R. Pedler

The Nature of Clovis Blades and Blade Cores
Michael B. Collins and Jon C. Lohse

Molecular Genetic Diversity in Siberians and Native Americans Suggests an Early Colonization of the New World
Theodore G. Schurr

Hunter-Gatherer Population Expansion In North Asia And The New World
Robert L. Bettinger and David A. Young

Time-Space Dynamics in the Early Upper Paleolithic of Northeast Asia
P. Jeffrey Brantingham, Kristopher W. Kerry, Andrei I. Krivoshapkin

Humans along the Pacific Margin of Northeast Asia before the Last Glacial Maximum: Evidence for Their Presence and Adaptations
Fumiko Ikawa-Smith

The Search for a Clovis Progenitor in Subarctic Siberia
Ted Goebel

On Possibilities, Prospecting and Patterns: Thinking about a Pre-LGM Human Presence in the Americas
David J. Meltzer

Monte Verde, Field Archaeology, and the Human Colonization of the Americas
Donald K. Grayson

The Relative Probabilities of Late Pre-LGM or Early Post-LGM Ages for the Initial Occupation of the Americas
David B. Madsen