Leapfrog Migration: Bumppo and Beyond

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

David Anthony and I coined the concept and term "Leapfrog Migration" for a graduate seminar at the University of Pennsylvania in 1976. We called its first iteration the "Natty Bumppo model" after the frontier scout hero of Cooper’s "Leatherstocking Tales." We used it to explain the rapid, directional, but punctuated expansion of the earliest pioneer Neolithic farmers in southeastern Europe. Since then, leapfrog models have also been applied to other evidently rapid migrations, such as those of Paleoindians, Saladoid farmers in the Caribbean, Ontario Iroquoians, and Austronesians. I will review the history of the leapfrog model and assess how well it is holding up in the light of the most recent archaeological and archaeogenomic data from Europe and Anatolia.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Wheels, Horses, Babies and Bathwaters: Celebrating the Impact of David W. Anthony on the Study of Prehistory

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23251