The Paleoindian Southwest

This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "The Paleoindian Southwest," at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The North American Southwest looms large in American archaeology. It is characterized by a distinctive range of ecological conditions, formation processes, and preservation contexts that sets it apart from other regions. Its expansive landscapes, well-preserved architectural sites, and connections to modern people have enabled the region to serve as a laboratory for the development of archaeological methods and ideas. The pre-agricultural record of the Southwest is somewhat less conspicuous, but it has played a comparably critical role in the archaeology of early hunter-gatherers. The Clovis and Folsom archaeological cultures were both initially defined in New Mexico, and additional sites and surveys throughout the Southwest have contributed significantly to understanding them and their successors. The environmental diversity that characterizes the region coupled with the wetter and cooler climate of the Late Pleistocene appears to have sustained generations of foragers, and the resulting record traces initial colonization through the development of regionally distinct cultural patterns. The Southwest continues to contribute new discoveries, as well as new information from known sites, localities, and landscapes, that broadens our understanding of the earliest Americans. The papers in this symposium present current archaeological research from across the Greater Southwest.