Publications & Archives

The Center for the Study of the First Americans actively publishes a news magazine, journal, and books of interest to both the professional archaeologist and public.

Mammoth Trumpet

The Mammoth Trumpet provides interesting articles about the First Americans.  Articles include breaking news on important discoveries and issues facing First Americans research.  This publication is designed for both the general public and scholarly community.  The Mammoth Trumpet is published 4 times a year.

Current Research in the Pleistocene

This is a scholarly journal that has been published by the Center since 1984.  It provides syntheses on significant topics in the field, updates on ongoing site excavations, and the results of important research.  Short peer-reviewed articles keep you up to date.  Current Research in the Pleistocene is published once a year. Visit the archives to purchase you copy today ($25.00).

Annual deadlines for submission of manuscripts to CRP is February 15^th.
Download the current Call for Papers.

CSFA/TAMU Press Book Series

The Center book series includes site reports and syntheses of important topics in First American studies.  These books can be purchased from the Texas A&M University Press.

Clovis Lithic Technology:
Investigation of a Stratified Workshop at the Gault Site, Texas
By Michael R. Waters, Charlotte D. Pevny, & David L. Carlson


Some 13,000 years ago, humans were drawn repeatedly to a small valley in what is now Central Texas, near the banks of Buttermilk Creek. These early hunter-gatherers camped, collected stone, and shaped it into a variety of tools they needed to hunt game, process food, and subsist in the Texas wilderness. Their toolkit included bifaces, blades, and deadly spear points. Where they worked, they left thousands of pieces of debris, which have allowed archaeologists to reconstruct their methods of tool production. Along with the faunal material that was also discarded in their prehistoric campsite, these stone, or lithic, artifacts afford a glimpse of human life at the end of the last ice age during an era referred to as Clovis. The area where these people roamed and camped, called the Gault site, is one of the most important Clovis sites in North America. A decade ago a team from Texas A&M University excavated a single area of the site--formally named Excavation Area 8, but informally dubbed the Lindsey Pit--which features the densest concentration of Clovis artifacts and the clearest stratigraphy at the Gault site. Some 67,000 lithic artifacts were recovered during fieldwork, along with 5,700 pieces of faunal material. In a thorough synthesis of the evidence from this prehistoric "workshop," Michael R. Waters and his coauthors provide the technical data needed to interpret and compare this site with other sites from the same period, illuminating the story of Clovis people in the Buttermilk Creek Valley.

8.5x11, 256 pages

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From the Yenisei to the Yukon:
Interpreting Lithic Assemblage Variability in Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene Beringia
Edited by Ted Goebel & Ian Buvit


Who were the first people who came to the land bridge joining northeastern Asia to Alaska and the northwest of North America? Where did they come from? How did they organize technology, especially in the context of settlement behavior?

During the Pleistocene era, the people now known as Beringians dispersed across the varied landscapes of late-glacial northeast Asia and northwest North America.

The twenty chapters gathered in this volume explore, in addition to the questions posed above, how Beringians adapted in response to climate and environmental changes. They share a focus on the significance of the modern-human inhabitants of the region. By examining and analyzing lithic artifacts, geoarchaeological evidence, zooarchaeological data, and archaeological features, these studies offer important interpretations of the variability to be found in the early material culture the first Beringians.

The scholars contributing to this work consider the region from Lake Baikal in the west to southern British Columbia in the east. Through a technological-organization approach, this volume permits investigation of the evolutionary process of adaptation as well as the historical processes of migration and cultural transmission. The result is a closer understanding of how humans adapted to the diverse and unique conditions of the late Pleistocene.

8.5x11, 408 pages

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Paleoamerican Origins: Beyond Clovis
Edited by Robson Bonnichsen, Bradley T. Lepper, Dennis Stanford, & Michael R. Waters


Paleoamerican Origins is an outgrowth of the Clovis and Beyond Conference held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1999. This book presents 23 up-to-date syntheses of important topics surrounding the debate over the initial prehistoric colonization of the Americas. These papers are written by some of the foremost authorities who are on the trail of the first Americans. The papers in this volume include a discussion of the archaeological evidence for Clovis and Pre-Clovis sites in North America (11 papers) and South America (2 papers). In addition, papers on the genetic evidence (2 papers) and skeletal evidence (4 papers) provide insights into the origins of the first Americans. Additional papers include ideas on the changing perceptions of Paleoamerican prehistory, public policy and science, and a comprehensive concluding synthesis.

9x11, 364 pages

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Ice Age Peoples of North America:
Environments, Origins, and Adaptations of the First Americans
Edited by Robson Bonnichsen & Karen L. Turnmire

This volume provides an up-to-date summary of important new discoveries from Northeast Asia and North America that are changing perceptions about the origin of the First Americans. Even though the peopling of the Americas has been the focus of scientific investigations for more than half a century, there is still no definitive evidence that will allow specialists to say when the First Americans initially arrived or who they were.

The nineteen papers collected here provide regional archaeological syntheses and address such topics as ice marginal dynamics, the impact of plant nutrients in glacial margins, and periglacial ecology of large mammals. The concluding chapter discusses conceptual frameworks used to explain the peopling of the Americas.

This volume provides an up-to-date summary of important new discoveries earlier than ten thousand years old from Northeast Asia and North America that are changing our perceptions about the origin of the First Americans. It offers a detailed compendium of late-Pleistocene Paleoamerican archaeological records that can serve as a foundation of existing knowledge in this field and for creating the next generation of models that seek to explain the peopling of the Americas.

9x11, 536 pages

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New Perspectives on the First Americans
Edited by Bradley T. Lepper & Robson Bonnichsen

The field of first American studies is undergoing significant changes. The traditional model that the Americas were only peopled once by Clovis big-game hunters from Siberia at the end of the last Ice Age has seriously been challenged. Most now believe that the Americas were peopled more than once.

Against this backdrop of controversy, the CSFA and its partners convened the Clovis and Beyond Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1999, and brought many of the major players of the field to the conference forum who have a stake in the future of America's past.

New Perspectives on the First Americans contains short and concise papers from this conference that focus on the following themes: pre-Clovis archaeology, Clovis-era archaeology, Paleoamerican paleobiology, new approaches to the study of Paleoamericans, Paleoamericans and public policy, and new directions for Paleoamerican archaeology.

Collectively, these papers represent the intellectual ferment in a field seeking to reconcile itself with changing scientific developments in an evolving social/political context.

6x9, 240 pages

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Where the South Winds Blow:
Ancient Evidence for Paleo South Americans
Edited by Laura Miotti, Monica Salemme, Nora Flegenheimer; Editor in Chief: Robson Bonnichsen

The early prehistory of South America is poorly known by the English speaking world. This edited volume, translated from Spanish, contains twenty-one short papers documenting some of the most important recently investigated early archaeological sites from South America.

These papers report Paleoamerican complexes and excavations of sites older than eleven thousand radiocarbon years before present, as well as cover issues in geoarchaeology, geochronology, Pleistocene extinction, and paleoecology. Numerous graphics are used to illustrate site locations, excavations, and artifacts.

6x8, 240 pages

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Who Were the First Americans
Edited by Robson Bonnichsen

Proceedings of the 58th Annual Biology Colloquium, Oregon State University. Seven chapters include genetic and craniometric studies and what they mean in regard to the initial peopling of the Americas.

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Bone Modification
Edited by Robson Bonnichsen & Marcella H. Slog

Thirty chapters provide a comprehensive discussion of the human modification of animal bones through breaking, polishing, and flaking to produce expedient and formal tools. Authorities from around the world provide insights into bone taphonomy and how to interpret modified bones from archaeological contexts. Bone tools and other modified bones from sites in North America, Asia, Africa, and Europe are discussed and cover the range from early hominids to Clovis. Other chapters include discussions of experimental replication of bone breakage patterns and tool manufacture, ethnographic examples of the modification of bone, bone use-wear studies, and the interpreting and documenting of modified bone from archaeological sites.

9x11, 534 pages

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Method and Theory for Investigating the Peopling of the Americas
Edited by Robson Bonnichsen & D. Gentry Steele

Sixteen chapters provide an overview of important topics in First Americans research. Leading authorities in the field discuss the history of archaeological investigations into the peopling of the Americas, AMS radiocarbon dating, geoarchaeology of Paleoindian sites, blood residue analysis on stone tools, and an evaluation of the Pacific coast migration route from Asia to North America. Several chapters provide valuable information on the biological and linguistic evidence for the first pioneers to the Americas.

9x11, 264 pages

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Projectile Point Technology and Economy
A Case Study from Paiján, North Coastal Peru: Pampa de Los Fosiles 14, Unit 1
Edited by Claude Chauchat & Jacques Pelegrin

The Paijan complex, of late Pleistocene to early Holocene age, is known from numerous open-air sites and one rock shelter and occurs more than one thousand kilometers off the Peruvian coastal desert. Claude Chauchat and his team present a detailed archaeological case study of the Cupisnique region at the Pampa de Los Fosilies locality on the north coast of Peru. This volume exemplifies the use of the Chaine operationaire approach, which views lithic assemblages as a succession of technical actions beginning at the moment of raw material acquisition, manufacture, utilization, and finally abandonment of tools.

This case study documents raw material use at flaking loci, description of cores, flakes, flake tools, limaces, bifaces, and lithic reduction practices of the Paijan site occupants. In addition to providing a detailed history of stone tool flaking activities, raw material acquisition patterns combined with regional survey data provide the foundation for inferring mobility models for the Paijan people.

8 1/2x11, 120 pages

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Brazilian Studies
The Sambaqui at Forte Marechal Luz, State of Santa Catarina, Brazil: Archaological Research at Six Cave or Rockshelter Sites
By Alan L. Bryan

Brazilian Studies includes an analysis of the Sambaqui at Forte Marechal Luz in Santa Catarina on Brazil's south coast, plus archaeological research at six cave or rockshelter sites in interior Bahia.

9x11, 168 pages

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Taima-Taima
A Late Pleistocene Paleo-Indian Kill Site in Northernmost South America
- Final Reports of 1976 Excavations -
Edited by Claudio Ochsenius & Ruth Gruhn

A reprint from the South American Quaternary Documentation Program reporting on a northern Venezuela Paleoindian kill site, this volume includes examinations of environment, excavations, stratigraphy, dating, artifacts, faunal analysis, mastodon procurement, and the Taima-Taima site in context.

6x9, 138 pages

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