Douglas Bamforth is an archaeologist who works mainly on the Great Plains; he has also worked in the Colorado mountains, coastal California, the California desert, the Great Basin, Germany, and Ireland. He has a major technical interest in the study of how ancient people made and used stone tools. His research has focused on how human use of the Plains landscape responded to long-term environmental change during the Paleoindian period (from roughly 11,000 to 8000 BC); recently, his interests have shifted toward the archaeology of farmers on the central and northern Plains during the last 1,000 years. Working with the permission and collaboration of the Pawnee nation, he has just completed fieldwork on an immense site in northeastern Nebraska that seems to mark a major social change in the history of the Pawnee and the Arikara.