Paleoindians first arrived in Texas more than eleven thousand 
years ago, although relatively few sites of such early peoples 
have been discovered. Texas has a substantial post-Paleoindian 
record, however, and there are more than fifty thousand 
prehistoric archaeological sites identified across the state. 
This comprehensive volume explores in detail the varied 
experience of native peoples who lived on this land in prehistoric
times. Chapters on each of the regions offer cutting-edge
research, the culmination of years of work by dozens of the
most knowledgeable experts.

    Based on the archaeological record, the discussion of the 
earliest inhabitants includes a reclassification of all known 
Paleoindian projectile point types and establishes a chronology 
for the various occupations. The archaeological data from across 
the state of Texas also allow authors to trace technological 
changes over time, the development of intensive fishing and 
shellfish collecting, funerary customs and the belief systems 
they represented, long-term changes in settlement mobility and 
character, landscape use, and the eventual development of 
agricultural societies. The studies bring the prehistory of 
Texas Indians all the way up through the Late Prehistoric period 
(ca. A.D. 700–1600).

    The extensively illustrated chapters are broadly cultural-
historical in nature but stay strongly focused on important 
current research problems. Taken together, they present careful 
and exhaustive considerations of the full archaeological (and 
paleoenvironmental) record of Texas.

_________________________________________________________

TIMOTHY K. PERTTULA, a Fellow of the Texas Archaeological 
Society, is an archaeologist with Archaeological & Environmental 
Consultants, LLC, and lives in Austin, Texas.


Number Nine: Texas A&M University Anthropology Series


What people are saying about this book

". . . a real and substantive work that will be on the bookshelves of 
every scholar of Texas history and prehistory for years to come."
—Southern Historical Quarterly, April 2006