The U.S. Southeast continues to play a significant role in the surge of information concerning the earliest peopling of North America. Florida has been unique in that regard because of its wealth of underwater Paleoindian sites. With few exceptions, inundated inland or coastal sites are the central theme of this volume. First Floridians, as defined by the coeditors, span the Paleoindian and Early Archaic periods (ca. 15,000–9000 cal BP), although most chapters focus on the Paleoindian period.

The book contains three sections, excluding an introduction and conclusion by the coeditors. Part I, “The Past, Present, and Future of the Archaeology of Early Floridians,” includes five chapters. David Thulman (Chapter 1) reviews the history of Paleoindian studies in Florida, noting the state's unique Late Pleistocene environment and the subsequent relative rapid inundation of some sites during the Holocene. Michael Faught (Chapter 2) provides additional history detailing his pioneering efforts surveying submerged sites in the Big Bend area of the Gulf of Mexico beginning in the 1980s. Looking to the future, Jessi Halligan (Chapter 3) rightly points out that some basic culture history remains to be done in Florida. For example, although Paleoindian lanceolate point types—including Clovis, Suwannee, and Simpson—are known in Florida, none of them is dated with any precision.

Andy Hemmings (Chapter 4) provides an update on new excavations at the Old Vero site on Florida's east coast. Old Vero, of course, was made famous in the early twentieth century for the recovery of human remains purportedly associated with Pleistocene animal bone. Perhaps the most tantalizing new discovery includes the possible presence of a bone projectile tip between the ribs of an extinct tapir.

Less well known is the underwater Guest Mammoth site in northwest Florida, excavated by the University of Florida in the 1970s. Largely ignored by the profession, the site included the remains of three juvenile Columbian mammoths in apparent association with several lithic flakes and a small lanceolate but typologically undiagnostic point. Morgan Smith (Chapter 5) relocated the site and here argues that it represents the butchered remains of megafauna that died naturally.

Part II, “Early Floridian Studies in a Broader Context,” includes four chapters. In Chapter 6, Thulman and Jim Dunbar describe the potential for locating Paleoindian sites on the southeastern continental shelf, portions of which were dry land during the Last Glacial Maximum and likely inhabitable. Of course, they also recognize that the logistical challenges to their discovery are great.

Using landmark-based geometric morphometrics and Bayesian statistics, Thulman (Chapter 7) proposes that the relatively rapid change from the lanceolate Dalton (a “predicate form”) to various localized Early Archaic notched forms across the Southeast is better seen as the transmission of the idea of notching among existing populations than the widespread movement of people. Although this chapter lacks an underwater theme, I found it to be one of the most interesting with its novel approach to using point shapes to infer social processes.

Florida's allure for marketable Paleoindian artifacts is well known. Mary Glowacki and Dunbar (Chapter 8) discuss the history of illicit digging and collecting on public lands in Florida. The issue of private collecting looms large in the state because of its recently well-publicized success in thwarting large-scale looting rings.

Summarizing Florida sites that exhibit the contemporaneity of megafauna and humans, Rochelle Marrinan and Tanya Peres (Chapter 9) note that these projects were undertaken prior to the incorporation of modern zooarchaeological recovery techniques that probably overlooked smaller animal species. Consequently, the coauthors argue the need for the inclusion of zooarchaeologists in future projects to ensure that representative samples of all faunal remains are recovered.

Part III, “Technical Advances in the Study of Early Floridians,” includes four chapters. Ervan Garrison and Jessica Cook Hale (Chapter 10) discuss geoarchaeological approaches to evaluating offshore sites. Bulk sediment analysis of the Econfina Channel site revealed that site integrity was best preserved in an area of vegetative cover of eel grass in a lower-energy regime while sediments away from the midden deposit were deflated, with minimal archaeological materials lacking stratigraphic context.

Jessica Cook Hale (Chapter 11) discusses the effects of postdepositional corrosion on stone artifacts recovered from saltwater contexts on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. She identifies artifact corrosion and reconstructs their postdepositional history. The latter is particularly important as geochemical signatures in artifacts can reflect the surrounding sediments transition from upland to tidal marsh, and eventually to inundated conditions.

Tim de Smet and Morgan Smith (Chapter 12) discuss underwater applications of two remote sensing methods including lidar and GPR. Although more commonly applied to terrestrial site survey, both systems can identify underwater landforms that potentially contain archaeological remains. The authors indicate that the cost effectiveness of lidar is a serious limitation for its present use.

Big data is the focus of David G. Anderson and 11 coauthors (Chapter 13), who take a broader view of Paleoindian studies across the Southeast using databases such as PIDBA and DINAA. PIDBA, of course, focuses on individual Paleoindian artifacts, whereas DINAA focuses on sites. These databases complement each other, and the chapter coauthors use them together to address trends in site data over time and space, the morphological and spatial variability of point data, improvements in reporting standards, documentation of source biases, and other issues.

In the end, I am convinced that the contributors of this volume are taking Paleoindian archaeology in Florida in fruitful new directions. As such, New Directions in the Search for the First Floridians is true to its title in that it highlights new directions more than new discoveries in Paleoindian archaeology. To be sure, there are tantalizing glimpses of new findings from revisited sites, but this book is mostly about the potential that Florida holds for underwater Paleoindian archaeology. I look forward to a future volume, in which that potential is realized.