Prehistoric Man and His Environments: A Case Study in the Ozark Highland offers a preliminary model for the paleoecology of the western Ozark Highland in Missouri for the last 35,000 years and an interpretation of how humans have adapted to and exploited the area for the 10,500 years they are known to have lived there. The model, a set of hypotheses that includes a putative explanatory framework for the observations made at Ozark, is based on more than a decade of interdisciplinary fieldwork. Comprised of 14 chapters, this volume begins with a background on the interdisciplinary studies undertaken in the Pomme de Terre River Valley. The research has centered on the post-glacial deposits at the Rodgers Shelter and on five nearby spring bogs, each of which contained the bones of extinct mammals, pollen, and other material dating from late Pleistocene and early Holocene times. The archaeological investigations and subsequent analyses of these sites are discussed in detail. Sedimentary processes, changing subsistence patterns, material culture, and human burials at Rodgers Shelter are then analyzed. The final chapter describes the direction of research in the Ozark Highland, including plans to test aspects of the proposed model. This book will be of interest to anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, geologists, and botanists.
