Beschreibung

This book presents the multidisciplinary results of an extensive underwater excavation in north Florida. This yielded the most complete results of interactions between early Paleoindians and late Pleistocene megafauna, in a rich environmental context in eastern North America. The data provides fundamental insights into "the Peopling of the Americas" and "The Extinction of the Megafauna". An excellent color photo section expresses the uniqueness of this project.

Inhaltsangabe

Foreword By Robin C. Brown Preface By S. David Webb Chapter 1 Underwater Excavation Methods By Joseph M. Latvis and Irvy R. Quitmyer SECTION A: GEOLOGY Chapter 2 Geography and Geomorphology of the Aucilla River Region By Joseph F. Donoghue Chapter 3 Stratigraphy and Sedimentation By David C. Kendrick Chapter 4 Carbon Dates By S. David Webb and James S. Dunbar Chapter 5 Pleistocene-Holocene Climate Change: Chronostratigraphy and Geoclimate of the Southeast United States By James S. Dunbar SECTION B: PALEOBOTANY Chapter 6 Setting the Stage: fossil Pollen, Stomata and Charcoal By Barbara C. S. Hansen Chapter 7 Paleoenvironmental Aspects of the Macrophytic Plant Assemblage By Lee A. Newsom SECTION C: LATE PLEISTOCENE EVIDENCE Chapter 8 Vertebrate Paleontology By S. David Webb and Erika Simons Chapter 9 Non-marine Mollusca By Kurt Auffenberg, Irvy R. Quitmyer, James D. Williams and Douglas S. Jones Chapter 10 Mastodon (Mammut americanum) Diet and Foraging Patterns Based on Paleofecal Material By Lee A. Newsom and Mathew C. Mihlbachler Chapter 11 Mastodon Tusk Recovery By S. David Webb Chapter 12 Five Years in the Life of an Aucilla Mastodon By Daniel C. Fisher and David L. Fox Chapter 13 The Biogeochemistry of the Aucilla River Fauna By Kathryn A. Hoppe and Paul L. Koch Chapter 14 Paleoindian Archaeology By James S. Dunbar SECTION D: EARLY HOLOCENE EVIDENCE Chapter 15 Terrestrial Soil or Submerged Sediment?: The early Archaic at Page-Ladson By Sylvia Scudder Chapter 16 Early Holocene Vertebrate Paleontology By Tanya Peres and Erika Simons Chapter 17Biogenic Silica as an Environmental Indicator By Russ McCarty and Larry Schwandes Chapter 18 Early Archaic Archaeology By Brinnen C. Carter and James S. Dunbar Chapter 19 Bolen Hearths By Mark P. Muniz and C. Andrew Hemmings SECTION E: CONCLUSIONS Chapter 20 Paleoindian Land Use By James S. Dunbar Chapter 21 Conclusions By S. David Webb

Klappentext

Over the last 20 years the Aucilla River Prehistory Project has been one of the most f- cinating stories unfolding in Florida. This project, uncovering the remains of plants and animals from the end of the last Ice Age and the beginning of Floridäs human oc- pation, is answering questions important to the entire western hemisphere. Questions such as when did people first arrive in the Americas? Were these newcomer scavengers or skillful hunters? Could they have contributed to the extinction of the great Ice Age beasts animals such as elephants that were creatures native to Florida for the pre- ous million or so years? And how did these first Florida people survive 12, 000 years ago at a time when sea level was so low that this peninsula was double its present size, sprawling hugely into the warm waters of the Caribbean? Much of Florida at that time was almost desert. Fresh water for both man and beast was hard to find. The lower reaches of today s Aucilla River are spellbinding. Under canopies of oak and cypress, the tea-colored water moves slowly toward the Gulf of Mexico, sometimes sinking out of sight into ancient drowned caves and then welling up again a few feet or a few miles downstream. Along the river bottom, the remains of long extinct animals and Floridäs earliest people lie entombed in orderly layers of peat, sand, and clay.