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Title: The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory by Tom D. Dillehay, Thomas D. Dillehay ISBN: 0-465-07668-8 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 02 May, 2000 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.17 (6 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Thought provoking.
Comment: While Dillehay's book The Settlement of the Americas refers to both the northern and southern continents, it is primarily concerned with the archaeological evidence from South America, giving a thorough assessment of data from several sites. I suspect that the middle chapters on lithic technology may be less than engrossing to the average reader, but there is still much of interest for anyone interested in the topic. The author discusses the current debate, and while he has his own opinion, his assessment of the data is not overly credulous. In particular the heated contentions over the date and significance of the Pedra Furada site of Brazil are evaluated with a balance and thoroughness that is open minded but professional. The author's attention to taphonomy, geological processes, and off site data in the interpretation of the significance of on site finds is very good. It certainly shows the reader how archaeological data are interpreted and what the problems in doing so are. It also highlights why there is still so much disagreement between researchers.
The author, Thomas Dillehay is a professor of anthropology at the University of Kentucky and has conducted extensive research into the subject of early American origins. He has done research at Monte Verde in Chile, in Peru, Argentina, and Uruguay. The Monte Verde site, discussed at some length in the book, is particularly significant as it preserved many usually perishable artifacts that encapsulate a much fuller understanding of the lifestyle of the people living there than is usually the case with sites that preserve mostly only lithic cultural materials.
Of interest to me, if for no other reason that it had not occurred to me, is the author's note that some of the confusion over the first peopling of the Americas may be due to the fact that our information may be confusing itself. The author looks at things such as the possible back flow from the Americas to Siberia and Asia which may have mixed the genetics of the populations under study. While he notes that it is currently not provable, the fact that it might have been possible cannot be neglected. He also notes that skeletal material from the earliest period is conspicuously absent and that this may represent a paradigm shift necessitated by survival in new territories by the immigrants or a research bias based upon expectations drawn from research conducted in the Old World environment. He notes that until we are ready to shake free of preconceptions, we will probably not make much real headway.
The greatest contribution of the book to my own stock pile of information is the concept that the major factor affecting the survival and spread of modern humans in any environment may have been a change in the mental equipment of the human being. This may have been the ultimate change that divides the anatomically human from the intellectually human being. In particular the author speaks of cognitive maps involved with an exploring skill. Here too might reside the social skills required to roam into unknown territory , a willingness to take environmental risks based upon an effective evaluation of the costs and benefits of such a move and an ability to fall back on long range social contacts that spread out risk. Much has been written about the possible insurance activities in which Southwestern pueblo groups may have participated in a climatically unstable environment, but little-to my knowledge-has been made of the importance of these same risk-reducing social paradigms among even earlier human groups. Perhaps the reason that modern humans were able to spread as successfully as they did to every inhabitable environment on earth has to do with this capacity to maintain social links over long ranges. By these links, however great the temporal or spacial distance, early people could exchange information, mates, and help. Perhaps even shared links of tradition, remembered by elders much as they were and are among Arab groups, provided a measure of long term connection even after long separations. If one can recount ones linage back to a common ancestral root one can make claims of charity.
An intriguing book.
Rating: 2
Summary: No argument with the thesis but:
Comment: I have no argument with Dillehay's thesis but for the non-specialist the mind-numbing recitation of obscure dates (Before Present) and obscure locations is not enlightening.
I suspect that his research that refutes the Clovis theory is correct and that those academics who are not threatened by this refutation will find it useful but for the non-specialist I suggest that "The Zuni Enigma" by Nancy Yaw Davis which speculates on some of the same theories for the possible "Settlement of the Americas" is much more readable and accessible.
Also a minimally competent editor would have been helpful. On page 228 is the following statement: "Although calculations are interesting, however, they are not evidence."
Rating: 3
Summary: Accumulation of archaeological finds and some speculation.
Comment: Groundbreaking as this book may appear to be to some, it seems to be able to clarify little beyond that the over-riding theory that has been held through now (centering on the N. American "Clovis" culture) is mistaken. However, apart from the evidence (often inconclusive) and his taking part in the far easier task of deconstructing a theory, rather than in constructing, it seems that so little is known about the subject matter that it will be left to those living several decades in the future to have any real clue as to the complexity of migrations into the Americas. To imply this is a "New Prehistory" is saying too much. The work is entirely comprehensive but reads rather like an accumulation of archaeological work to date. If you are prepared to read two hundred pages of background and a run-down of all excavations and sites that have or might build a new picture of the migration models into the Western hemisphere followed by some of the authors own speculations (the "probably"s) as to how events actually may have occurred, then you will not be disappointed. Throughout you will be expected to keep track of fairly esoteric terminology, in his quest to draw comparison or lack thereof, but he does provide a glossary too.
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Title: In Search of Ice Age Americans by Douglas Preston, Kenneth B. Tankersley ISBN: 1586850210 Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publisher Pub. Date: 01 September, 2002 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: The First Americans : In Pursuit of Archaeology's Greatest Mystery by James Adovasio, Jake Page ISBN: 037575704X Publisher: Modern Library Pub. Date: 17 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Ancient Encounters : Kennewick Man and the First Americans by James C. Chatters ISBN: 068485936X Publisher: Simon & Schuster Pub. Date: 07 June, 2001 List Price(USD): $26.00 |
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Title: The First Americans: The Pleistocene Colonizations of the New World (Wattis Symposium Series in Anthropology) by Nina G. Jablonski, Paul L. and Phyllis Wattis Foundation Endowment Symposium 1999 Califo ISBN: 0940228505 Publisher: California Acad of Sciences Pub. Date: July, 2002 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: Bones, Boats, and Bison: Archeology and the First Colonization of Western North America by E. James Dixon ISBN: 0826321380 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: January, 2000 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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