These essays show how the Falls region was an attractive place to live due to its diverse ecological zones and its abundance of high-quality chert. In chronological studies ranging from the Early Archaic to the Late Mississippian periods, contributors portray the rapids as at times a boundary between Native American groups living upstream and downstream and at other times a hub where cultures converged and blended into a distinct local identity. The essays analyze and track changes in stone tool styles, mortuary traditions, settlement patterns, plant consumption, and ceramic production.

Together, the chapters in this volume illustrate that the Falls of the Ohio was a focal point on the human landscape throughout the Holocene era. Providing a foundation for future work in this location, they show how the region's geography and ecology shaped the ways humans organized themselves within it and how in turn these groups impacted the area through their changing social, economic, and political circumstances.

David Pollack, director of the Kentucky Archaeological Survey at Western Kentucky University, is the author of Caborn-Welborn: Constructing a New Society after the Angel Chiefdom Collapse.

Anne Tobbe Bader is the owner of Corn Island Archaeology in Louisville, Kentucky.

Justin N. Carlson is project director for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey at Western Kentucky University.