ABSTRACT
The first peopling of the Americas provides us with a unique insight into the effects of human habitat preferences on dispersal rates. As colonizers entered the Americas from the high-latitude environments of Beringia, initial dispersal would have been southward – and, for the terrestrial biomes, up gradients of increased resource productivity. The habitats of the New World span the whole range from Arctic tundra to tropical rainforest. By mapping the archaeological record of the settlement prehistory of each such ecoregion, we can begin to evaluate different models of human habitat selection.
