Coming into the Country, 37 years later. Did we get it right? (Maybe not entirely.) Did we do something useful? (Probably.)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The timing and nature of terminal Pleistocene colonization of the western hemisphere is central to the career of David Meltzer. In 1988, as young, wet-behind-the-ears professionals, we presented a narrative model to explain several facets of early Paleoindian archaeology: the nature of faunal processing, the association with megafauna, the stone tool technology, the lack of use of caves/rockshelters, the lack of plants in the diet, the small site phenomena, and the apparent rapidity of movement across the North American continent. Meltzer has critiqued this model several times. Considering those critiques, did we get it right? And, if we didn’t, did we do anything useful?

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• 2025 Fryxell Award Symposium: Papers in Honor of David J. Meltzer Part I

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 51127