State of the art in archaeological forager studies as reflected in the special issue ‘American Foragers’

The papers in this special edition devoted to “American Foragers: Advances in Archaeological Studies of Human-Environmental Interactions in North and South America” explore complexities of human ecology across diverse geographies and time spans. There are nonetheless several common threads that unite them. Firstly, this set of papers makes clear that biases often obstruct our view of past foragers. These range from (actually or artificially) sparse records to historical preconceptions and skewed research attention. Yet, while such blind spots are evident in these papers, the authors deliberately and methodologically work to correct them, which is the second common thread. A third theme that emerges from this set of papers is that, to advance foraging theory and confront intractable challenges, we must redouble our efforts to study variability at broad geographic scales, through cross cultural comparison and with an eye towards environment and ecology. By holding in tension the general and the specific, the local and the global, this set of papers highlights past diversity, challenges prevailing assumptions, and identifies fruitful new research agendas that crosscut ecological and cultural landscapes.