Southwestern Minnesota Archaeology: 12,000 Years in the Prairie Lake Region

Drawing together a century of widely scattered scientific and technical reports, as well as 25 years of first-hand experience in the field, Scott Anfinson provides the first comprehensive overview of the peoples who inhabited the Prairie Lake Region of the northeastern Plains before the arrival of European explorers.

Minnesota Prehistoric Archaeology Series #14

Focusing on southwestern Minnesota, north-central Iowa, and southeastern South Dakota, the author describes the dramatic environmental changes that occurred during the precontact millennia and their impact on the human, animal, and plant cultures of the region once treated as the insignificant edge of the Great Plains and Eastern Woodlands.

Dr. Anfinson's synthesis reveals how the successions of peoples in this transition region selectively accepted—and denied—influences from the better-known cultures that flourished around them.

Archaeologists and historians of Native Americans, as well as amateur and armchair archaeologists, will welcome this valuable addition to the region's geological, natural, and cultural history.