Briefly Noted

Before California: An Archaeologist Looks at Our Earliest Inhabitants

Brian Fagan (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003) 400 PP, $24.95

Thirteen thousand years ago, Paleo-Indians probably wandered southward through the natural corridor of California’s Central Valley into a region that was considerably colder and wetter than it is now. These hunter-gathers left behind just a few traces of their lives—stone spear points, animal bones and shell beads. Around 2000 B.C., their descendants started adding acorns to their diet—a development that led to a sharper division of labor between men and women. Using artifacts, anthropological studies and tree-ring sequences, archaeologist Brian Fagan explains the changing gender roles, climatic shifts and trading patterns that shaped the lives of the Golden State’s first inhabitants.

In Search of Ice Age Americans