Nearly twelve thousand years ago Native Americans began moving through and eventually settling along the rocky coast, rivers, lakes, valleys, and mountains of a region that would later become known as Maine. "Twelve Thousand Years" is the story of the many generations of Native peoples who for twelve millennia have called this region their home. The first to arrive were the Paleo-Indian peoples, mobile big-game hunters known for their striking stone tools. They were followed by maritime hunters, who left behind ritual sites that attracted some of America's earliest archaeologists. A very different group of immigrants replaced them, and the last three millennia of prehistory witnessed a revival of maritime cultures that engaged in exchange with faraway communities.Beginning in the sixteenth century, Native peoples in northern New England became tangled in the far-reaching affairs of European explorers and colonists. "Twelve Thousand Years" reveals how Penobscots, Abenakis, Passamaquoddies, Maliseets, Micmacs, and other Native communities both strategically accommodated and overtly resisted European and American encroachments.
Since that time, Native communities in Maine have endured, adapted when necessary, and experienced a political and cultural revitalization in recent decades. Included in this work is a valuable summary of the traditional material culture of Maine's Native peoples - what they ate, wore, fought with, and hunted with, and their methods of transportation.Bruce J. Bourque is chief archaeologist and curator of ethnography at the Maine State Museum and senior lecturer in anthropology at Bates College. His books include "Diversity and Complexity in Prehistoric Maritime Societies: A Gulf of Maine Perspective". Steven L. Cox is a professor of anthropology at the Center for Northern Studies and a research associate at the Maine State Museum. Ruth H. Whitehead is a research associate at the Nova Scotia Museum. She is the author of "The Old Man Told Us: Excerpts from Micmac History, 1500-1950" and other works.

Contributions by: Steven L. Cox, Ruth Holmes Whitehead