Archaeologists have developed various methods of studying cultural remains to infer population movement and other kinds of migration. Irving Rouse, author of much distinguished work in this field, here evaluates research on prehistoric migrations and explains why some of these methods have been more successful than others.

Rouse begins with a discussion of the nature and ways of formulating migration hypotheses. He then focuses on four instances in which migration hypotheses have been successfully formed and tested: studies of the origins of the Polynesians, Eskimos,...

In 1946 and 1953, Irving "Ben" Rouse led archaeological excavations at prehistoric to protohistoric sites on the island of Trinidad. This book presents an analysis of these excavations--until now unpublished--relating the results of Rouse's work to subsequent research at these sites by other investigators and to current knowledge of Trinidad's cultural sequence and Amerindian ethnohistory. The first detailed study of indigenous cultural development in Trinidad covering its entire pre-Columbian through the historical Amerindian sequence, this work is a significant addition to the data on...