The Search for the First Americans: Science, Power, Politics. By Robert V. Davis Jr.

Abstract

The question of who the First Americans were continues to evolve as new sites are found and dated, sometimes in previously unexplored regions (e.g., the continental shelf), and new technologies employed. Robert Davis offers a fresh take on the extensive and sometimes contradictory literature, on contentious claims, and on different ways of ways of knowing the past. As a non-archaeologist (a Ph.D. in science and technology, and a career in public service with the federal government), he has no vested interest in any particular interpretation. This volume, however, is not a review of the facts, but rather an interrogation of what various beliefs (Indigenous) and lines of evidence (Science) offer—to use Davis’s dichotomy here. He notes “This examination of the search for the First Americans is a case study in the complex relationships between the biological findings of science and the social importance of cultural beliefs” (p. x). This frames his approach, but he states equal interest in the “often fractious relationships across the sciences” and the “hegemonic and often racist assumptions… embedded in how science has been conducted” (p. x). Clearly there is a packed agenda in this volume.