While Plainview was one of the earliest Paleoindian point types to be formally described (Krieger, Geological Society of America Bulletin 58:938–952) after the excavations of the Plainview site itself in the 1940s (Sellards et al., Geological Society of America Bulletin 58:927–954), the geographic and temporal boundaries of Plainview have remained ambiguous, partly because the type rapidly became a catchall for unfluted lanceolate points on the Plains, which has hindered any true understanding of Plainview lifeways. This volume, inspired by a daylong session at the 2011 Plains Conference in Tucson, has gathered 13 papers by 26 researchers whose contributions are grounded in entire careers spent upon the Great Plains and whose combined expertise would measure in the centuries.

Holliday, Johnson, and Speer—Speer's contributions are based upon posthumous investigation of her research notes—lead off with a summary of what is known about the Plainview site's history, geologic context, and zooarchaeological remains. The most extensive excavation occurred in the 1940s by Sellards, during which a large bone bed was defined in association with what became known as Plainview points. Sporadic investigations occurred through 2015. This chapter provides a synthesis of these repeated investigations, including photos of the original excavations in progress, which serves to resolve some ambiguities about the materials and allows for a more nuanced discussion of the site. Knudson's detailed analysis of the entire known lithic assemblage from the site follows seamlessly, defining the reduction strategies used by people at the site that led her to group the Plainview points there into three distinct styles. An extensive illustrated catalog of “Plainview-like” assemblages on the southern and central Plains led her to conclude that Plainview should be separated from Goshen, Midland, and other variants.

Holliday and colleagues extend the discussion to the stratigraphic context and radiocarbon dates for Plainview and Plainview-like points on the southern Plains, considering Plainview to date to something in the range of ~12,100–~11,300 cal BP (p. 97), although some Plainview traits may manifest as early as ~12,650 cal BP. Plainview seems to at least partially overlap with Milnesand, Lubbock, Agate Basin, and San Patrice, which they consider to be separate types. Johnson updates earlier paleoecological studies of the Younger Dryas on the Llano Estacado—more than 30 years of research provide a nuanced discussion of what was changing when—and notes that bison, antelope, and deer resources would have been relatively stable and reliable for Paleoindian hunters. This is followed by a report of the Bull Creek site in Oklahoma (Carlson and Bement), a late Paleoindian campsite with faunal and hearth preservation.

The following seven chapters provide in-depth discussion of several unfluted lanceolate point styles with the goal of delimiting what Plainview is and is not. The mixed results well highlight the problems with typologies, as the authors’ sophisticated analyses convincingly demonstrate that most of the variation in unfluted lanceolates is not statistically significant, so most of the points should be lumped under the Plainview type. However, some styles do seem to be significantly different. Hester sees St. Mary's Hall, a Texas style, to be unilaterally different. Belen points, a New Mexico style discussed by Baker and then by Holliday and colleagues, appears to be a regional variant with less basal concavity. Huckell and Merriman determine that points on the upper Little Colorado River in Arizona could comfortably be grouped as Plainview. Rondeau and colleagues investigate Black Rock Concave Base points in the Great Basin, concluding that the style is not well defined but does not appear similar to Plainview in technology or morphology. Haynes and Hill note that Goshen is a variety of Plainview, while Midlands are, as has long been proposed, unfluted Folsoms. Buchanan and colleagues use geometric morphometrics to demonstrate that, as noted, variation in unfluted lanceolates is mainly not statistically significant and that only Lubbock-style points can be differentiated. The final chapter summarizes the overarching trends and highlights where and how the authors disagree on typologies, suggesting how future studies might resolve these contradictions.

In short, this volume contextualizes old excavations, defines the geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental context for late Pleistocene cultural components on the southern Plains, summarizes data from new explorations, and approaches the eternal archaeological problem of typology through both traditional methods and new tactics, synthesizing what is known and what still needs to be investigated regarding the Plainview typology and Plainview peoples. The result is a nuanced discussion needed by any Paleoindian researcher or Great Plains archaeologist.