The Archaeology of Native Americans in Pennsylvania. KURT W. CARR, CHRISTOPHER A. BERGMAN, CHRISTINA B. RIETH, BERNARD K. MEANS, and ROGER W. MOELLER, editors, and ELIZABETH WAGNER, associate editor. 2020. University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia. 3 volumes, viii + 894 pp. $145.00 (hardcover), ISBN 978-0-8122-5078-7

Frank Vento, Anthony Vega, and Harold Rollins set the scene in a lead chapter on environments from the Late Pleistocene through the Holocene in Part I. Chapters about the earliest peoples of Pennsylvania by Kurt Carr, James Adovasio, and Christopher Bergman cover periods prior to 6000 cal RCYBP and consider the region as a whole, including the famous Meadowcroft Rockshelter site, which was excavated and dated with such care and precision that it has withstood repeated criticisms by skeptics better than other pre-Clovis candidates. [...]that richness promises that as new evidence continues to emerge, and as new research techniques are deployed, our understanding is bound to deepen, become more complex, and become more interesting as a consequence. [...]as we move forward from 2020, these seminal volumes will lose their immediacy, and new research will gradually leave them behind. The lesson for us all is that the fine work summarized in this publication should not be an end for its authors, but it can and should be a continuously evolving foundational starting point for future research and reporting.