A century ago, the Old Vero Site was brought to prominence by Elias Sellards upon his claim that the site contained early human remains associated with Pleistocene fauna. It was the first serious challenge to the belief, widely accepted until the Folsom discoveries in 1926, that humans had not entered Florida before the current Holocene geological epoch. The claim that human remains at the site were contemporary with late Ice Age animals stirred enduring controversy. Recent construction near the site resulted in new archaeological work being completed from 2014 to 2017. The Old Vero Site (8IR009) details the course of the recent re-excavations of the Old Vero Site while also summarizing the original excavations from a century ago. Additionally, the volume lays out the sequence and results of the recent project, using these new data to assess the accuracy of Sellards’s assertions. This re-examination determined that Sellards’s claims are not supported by the evidence. Adovasio, Hemmings, and Vento provide the data to settle the matter definitively: human remains at the site were intrusive from a later time horizon, as critics of the original work had vociferously argued.

The end of the Pleistocene era brought dramatic environmental changes to small bands of humans living in North America: changes that affected subsistence, mobility, demography, technology, and social relations. The transition they made from Paleoindian (Pleistocene) to Archaic (Early Holocene) societies represents the first major cultural shift that took place solely in the Americas. This event--which manifested in ways and at times much more varied than often supposed--set the stage for the unique developments of behavioral complexity that distinguish later Native American prehistoric societies.
Using localized studies and broad regional syntheses, the contributors to this volume demonstrate the diversity of adaptations to the dynamic and changing environmental and cultural landscapes that occurred between the Pleistocene and early portion of the Holocene. The authors' research areas range from Northern Mexico to Alaska and across the continent to the American Northeast, synthesizing the copious available evidence from well-known and recent excavations.With its methodologically and geographically diverse approach, "From the Pleistocene to the Holocene: Human Organization and Cultural Transformations in Prehistoric North America" provides an overview of the present state of knowledge regarding this crucial transformative period in Native North America. It offers a large-scale synthesis of human adaptation, reflects the range of ideas and concepts in current archaeological theoretical approaches, and acts as a springboard for future explanations and models of prehistoric change.