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Koster

Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past

Stuart Struever and Felicia Antonelli Holton

Voted “one of the 100 best sci-tech books of the year” by Library Journal when first published, Koster: Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past is the extraordinarily well-told story of the long-term excavation of a deep Archaic site in the Lower Illinois Valley that pieces together a fascinating picture of the earliest known settlers in the Western Hemisphere. The Koster site in Kampsville, Illinois, is considered one of the most important archaeological treasures in North America. Hundreds of students, archaeologists, botanists, and geologists worked to explore the many layers of this remarkable settlement. From clues as small as pollen grains, mussel shells, and animal bone fragments unearthed at the Koster farm, they have been able to solve many intriguing mysteries about these earliest Americans—what they ate, how their tools were made and used, what diseases plagued them, and how they built their homes. Koster is a highly readable true-life adventure that offers clear, take-the-reader-along explanations of the thought processes involved in generating and testing hypotheses and inferences from available data.
 

$23.95 list, 258 pages

10-digit ISBN: 1-57766-167-2

13-digit ISBN: 978-1-57766-167-2

© 1979

Table of Contents

Part I. THE “ARKIES”

1. The Secret in the Cornfield

2. “Some Day You Ought to Dig There”

3. The “Arkies”

4. We Encounter an Early Human and His Best Friend

5. The Kingdom of Lowilva

6. “The Big Hole”

7. Mary and Teed

Part II. KOSTER, THE AMERINDIANS, AND THE NEW ARCHAEOLOGY

8. The New Archaeology

9. What Was the Climate Like in 7500 B.C.?

10. Reading the Past Environment from Mussel Shells

11. Early Organization Man

12. North America’s Earliest Permanent Houses

13. The “Kromebar People”

14. Keeping Track of Trash

15. Burial of the Dead

16. There Were No Invaders

17. A 1,400-Year-Old Skirt

18. Koster Rewrites History

19. A Day at Koster in 3500 B.C.

Appendix: Changes Needed in Archaeology

Epilogue