Three thousand to four thousand years ago, the Native Americans of the mid-Atlantic region experienced a groundswell of cultural innovation. This remarkable era, known as the Transitional period, saw the advent of broad-bladed bifaces, cache blades, ceramics, steatite bowls, and sustained trade, among other ingenious and novel objects and behaviors. In The Nature and Pace of Change in American Indian Cultures, eight expert contributors examine the Transitional period in Pennsylvania and posit potential explanations of the significant changes in social and cultural life at that...

The essays in Foragers and Farmers of the Early and Middle Woodland Periods in Pennsylvania reflect a range of recent thought and research on what Paul Raber describes as one of the most "enigmatic periods of Pennsylvania's prehistory." The essays represent a variety of viewpoints and approaches to the period, from the site-specific to the synthetic, and they include evidence from all parts of the commonwealth. Together, they define the principal themes and issues in Early and Middle Woodland studies and show a variety of ways in which researchers in Pennsylvania are attempting to...