Publisher description: "Koster: Americans in Search of Their Prehistoric Past" is the extraordinarily well-told story of the long-term excavation of a deep Archaic site in the Lower Illinois Valley that pieces together a fascinating picture of the earliest known settlers in the Western Hemisphere. The Koster site in Kampsville, Illinois, is considered one of the most important archaeological treasures in North America. Hundreds of students, archaeologists, botanists, and geologists worked to explore the many layers of this remarkable settlement. From clues as small as pollen grains, mussel shells, and animal bone fragments unearthed at the Koster farm, they have been able to solve many intriguing mysteries about these earliest Americans--what they ate, how their tools were made and used, what diseases plagued them, and how they built their homes. Koster is a highly readable true-life adventure that offers clear, take-the-reader-along explanations of the thought processes involved in generating and testing hypotheses and inferences from available data