New Archaeological Evidence on the Peopling of the New World

Debates and ideas about when, from where, and by what route Native American Indians peopled the Americas are often “resolved” within generalized models based on an assumption of north to south expansion processes. Likewise, these generalized models of the peopling of the Americas assume either single or multi-wave pulses of Native American Indians entering North America and migrating internally down through North America or along the Pacific Coast. Recently, however, models focused on Iberian chipped stone similarities and African or Austronesian skeletal similarities have introduced additional, “extra-Beringial,” migration scenarios to the peopling of the Americas debate. As a result, one way to address these competing models is to reconstruct the pattern and progression of population growth of the earliest viable and archaeologically visible populations in the Americas to see which models are supported.

Reconstructing the pattern and progression of the earliest viable Native American Indian populations into the Americas can be accomplished, or at least begun, by comparing the geographical distributions and progressions of archaeological sites with the earliest known accurate and precise radiometric dates. By comparing the geographical and chronological distributions of the earliest known archaeological sites, the directions from which the earliest viable Native American Indian populations came into the continents and how they expanded can begin to be understood. In Archaeological Roots of Human Diversity in the New World: A Compilation of Accurate and Precise Radiocarbon Ages from Earliest Sites, researcher Michael K. Faught has published the results of such a study.

Read more on the new archaeological evidence of the peopling of the Americas here.

Shamanism in North America: The Definitive Bibliography

Shamans and Shamanism: A Comprehensive Bibliography of the Terms Use in North America

Shamanism… what is it? Is it a phenomenon with a clear definition or with a set of clearly definable attributes? Has the phenomenon changed over time, or are today’s versions found in suburban basements the same as those that were practiced hundreds of years ago by various tribal people? What can we figure out about shamanism if we simply look at the term itself and how it has been employed over time? What if we restrict ourselves to one geographic location? These are some of the questions grappled with, and partially answered, in this book. By discussing the historical use of the terms shamanism and shaman in North America, Peter N. Jones offers fresh insights into the history of this phenomenon. Comparing current understandings and descriptions of the phenomenon with those of the historical and archival record, Shamans and Shamanism presents a comprehensive analysis of the terms use over time. Included in the book is a comprehensive bibliography of the term’s use in North America. Shamans and Shamanism is an important resource for anyone interested in this phenomenon. It provides new insights into the history of the terms, their use in both academic and pop literature, and offers a starting point for future investigations of the phenomenon.

Check out Shamanism and Shamans in North America: The Comprehensive Bibliography here.

Indigenous Peoples and Archaeology: Towards a New Theory

The social sciences have experienced a number of rapid and expansive theoretical developments over the course of the last hundred years. From fighting for their existence as an intellectual endeavor within academia and the university during the 19th century, to experiencing a series of popular and wide scale adoptions with such theoretical epistemologies as positivism and behaviorism, the social sciences are currently at an epistemological crossroads. In the aftermath of such powerful critiques as deconstructionism, postmodernism, postcolonialism, and the Frankfurt School’s singular attack on positivism and the Vienna School, the social sciences are struggling to find their epistemological footing. This is particularly true within the field of anthropology, including its daughter discipline of archaeology, for not only has the theoretical foundations of the discipline been called into question, but the field’s subject matter – its source of data and existence – has also been brought to bear. In an effort to reestablish some form of theoretical footing, the social sciences have begun to open their epistemological doors to cultures and ways of knowing historically allowed to only represent data. In this process, indigenous peoples and their epistemology have played a key role.

Over the past two decades a significant amount of academic energy has been invested in professing the urgent need and essentialness for developing what some have called an indigenous archaeology. Books, essays, and academic conferences have discussed, defined, and designed a multiplicity of paths towards this goal. Very little effort has been expanded, however, in seriously examining the intellectual viability or the social and cultural desirability of this project. In a recent paper entitled Aboriginalism and the Problems of Indigenous Archaeology Robert McGhee attempts to examine this theoretical endeavor within the field of archaeology.

Read more about indigenous peoples archaeology and the development of social science theory here.