Description

The first definitive evidence of Ice Age people in North America came from the Folsom site in northeastern New Mexico. Subsequent discoveries at Blackwater Draw and Arizona’s San Pedro Valley established the presence of Clovis mammoth hunters on the Southwestern landscape. In the ensuing decades, it became clear that underlying the relatively conspicuous archaeological record of the agricultural Southwest is an abundant record of Paleoindian occupations, with a correspondingly abundant history of significant discoveries and insights regarding late Pleistocene hunter-gatherers in western North America. This presentation reviews the role of the Greater Southwest, including the US and Mexico, in past and present Paleoindian research, touching on some of the classic sites as well as new discoveries that drive our understanding of the earliest chapters of Southwest prehistory.