Finally, a comprehensive set of translations now exists for the enigmatic Calusa. Hann and Marquardt have assembled an exhaustive and diverse set of documents which locates the Calusa in their rightful place of importance in North American ethnography. Randolph Widmer, University of HoustonWhen Europeans arrived in southwest Florida in the early sixteenth century, they encountered a complex and powerful society. The Calusa, subject of this study by two of Florida s most eminent scholars, pose an enigma to anthropologists and historians. Their high political development marked by class...

For the Lucayan Arawaks of the Caribbean, the year 1492 marked the beginning of the end: the first people contacted by Christopher Columbus were the first extinguished. Within thirty years, a population of perhaps 80,000 had declined to, at most, a few refugees. Clearing new ground in the study of prehistoric societies, Keegan argues that a different perspective on the past provides an accurate portrait of a culture that became extinct almost 500 years ago.
Keegan terms his approach paleoethnography, developing a portrait of the past by linking archaeological field data and historical...