SETTING THE STAGE - PREVIOUS PALEOCLIMATIC RESEARCH IN TEXAS AND SURROUNDING AREAS

The relationship between culture and environment and the effects of va riable climatic conditions on past cultures have long been recognized, but have not always been pursued in archaeological investigations. Ea rly studies treated the environment as a static phenomenon, partly due to lack of precise dating methods and underdevelopment in the science of paleoclimatology. This paper outlines the history of paleoclimatic /paleoenvironmental reconstructions in relation to culture in the Sout hern Plains, tracing the work from research surrounding the Clovis sit e from the 1930s up to the present day. We introduce the following set of papers from a symposium at the 1994 joint Plains Conference/Texas Archeological Society Annual Meeting at Lubbock, which united research ers active in paleoclimatic studies in Texas.