Description
Book Synopsis A century ago, the Old Vero Site was brought to prominence by Elias Sellards upon his claim that the site contained early human remains associated with Pleistocene fauna. It was the first serious challenge to the belief, widely accepted until the Folsom discoveries in 1926, that humans had not entered Florida before the current Holocene geological epoch. The claim that human remains at the site were contemporary with late Ice Age animals stirred enduring controversy. Recent construction near the site resulted in new archaeological work being completed from 2014 to 2017.
The Old Vero Site (8IR009) details the course of the recent re-excavations of the Old Vero Site while also summarizing the original excavations from a century ago. Additionally, the volume lays out the sequence and results of the recent project, using these new data to assess the accuracy of Sellards’s assertions. This re-examination determined that Sellards’s claims are not supported by the evidence. Adovasio, Hemmings, and Vento provide the data to settle the matter definitively: human remains at the site were intrusive from a later time horizon, as critics of the original work had vociferously argued.
Trade ReviewWith contributions by an eminent group of natural scientists, archaeologists, and others, this volume examines the Old Vero site, which was first excavated in the early 1900s and has since become integral to understanding scholarly debates on early people in the Western Hemisphere. It is thus an ideal location for exploring theories and databases about the role of these types of sites in early American life." —Tom Dillehay, Vanderbilt University
Table of Contents
- List of Figures
- List of Tables
- Acknowledgments
- 1. Introduction
- 2. General Setting
- 3. History of Research
- 4. Environmental Setting by A. J. Vega
- 5. Research Design and Excavation Methodology
- 6. Field Results
- 7. Material Culture and Ecological Remains
- 8. Conclusions
- Afterword
- Appendix A
- Appendix B
- Appendix C
- Appendix D
- Appendix E
- Appendix F
- Appendix G
- Appendix H
- References
- List of Contributors
