2nd Edition

Prehistoric America An Ecological Perspective

Edited By Piotr Makowski Copyright 1972

    The cultural parallels between widely separated but environmentally similar regions are often extraordinary, yet these parallels are discounted by anthropologists on the basis that they ignore a large mass of less similar data. Too often cultural parallels between distant regions have been taken for granted rather than recognized as phenomena that need to be explained. The thesis of Prehistoric America is that they are neither fortuitous nor inconsequential, but an indication of the strength of environmental pressures on cultural development. This work is an excellent introduction to the prehistoric cultures of North and South America, one that will help the reader to discover and enjoy the intellectual adventure of archeology.

    1: Introduction; 2: Settling The Hemisphere; 3: Cultural Development in Nuclear America and the intermeidate area; 4: Apaptation to permissive environments: the forests, the deserts, and the plains; 5: Environmental limitiation on cultural complexity: The pacific coasts, the marginals, and the arctic; 6: Problems and speculations

    Biography

    Piotr Makowski