There are plenty of useful and short introductory guides to how archaeologists study the past. A few of the best are:
Ashmore, Wendy & Robert Sharer. 2013. Discovering Our Past: A Brief Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Bahn, Paul. 2012. Archaeology: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Fagan, Brian. 2016. Archaeology: A Brief Introduction. London: Routledge. [Brian is a prolific writer, and his textbooks have deservedly been standards in archaeology courses for many years.]
New evidence related to the earliest human settlement of the Americas is published so frequently, it is extremely difficult for book publishers to keep up. A book published today will likely be out of date very quickly, especially regarding advances made in DNA recovery and analysis. Nevertheless, there are several good reads on the subject. For general readers, though several years old now, I still highly recommend David Meltzer’s book on the subject. He is a wonderful writer and a thoughtful researcher.
Adovasio, J. M. & Jake Page. 2009. The First Americans: In Pursuit of Archaeology’s Greatest Mystery. New York: Modern Library. [James Adovasio was the director of excavations at Site 1, Meadowcroft Rockshelter.]
Dillehay, Thomas D. 2008. The Settlement of the Americas: A New Prehistory. New York: Basic Books.
Graf, Kelly E., Caroline V. Ketron & Michael R. Waters (eds.). 2014. Paleoamerican Odyssey. College Station, Texas: Texas A&M University Press.
Meltzer, David J. 2009. First Peoples in a New World: Colonizing Ice Age America. University of California Press.
If you want to learn about the latest discoveries related to the First Peoples, your best bet is to go online and search the Science News website: www.sciencenews.org.
The best place to read about the myth of the mound builders is Robert Silverberg’s book:
Silverberg, Robert. 1989. The Mound Builders. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press.
An early publication of the Smithsonian Institution has spectacular nineteenth-century illustrations of what the mounds looked like:
Squire, E. G., and E. H. Davis. 1848. Ancient Monuments of the Mississippi Valley: Comprising the Results of Extensive Original Surveys. Smithsonian Contributions to Knowledge, Vol. 1. New York: AMS Press. (Reprinted in 1973 for the Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology, Harvard University.)
For a great read with fantastic photos and illustrations, I highly recommend Brad Lepper’s book (listed below). Its focus is ancient Ohio peoples, with their remarkable complement of burial, enclosure, and effigy mounds.
Lepper, Bradley T. 2004. Ohio Archaeology: An Illustrated Chronicle of Ohio’s Ancient American Indian Culture. Wilmington, Ohio: Orange Frazer Press.
There are a number of terrific books that focus on the platform mound builders along with mound builder villages of the Midwest and Southeast, some highlighting individual sites in my list of fifty:
Birmingham, Robert A. & Lynne G. Goldstein. 2005. Aztalan: Mysteries of an Ancient Indian Town. Madison, Wisconsin: Wisconsin Historical Society. [Site 22]
Gibson, J. L. 2001. The Ancient Mounds of Poverty Point: Place of Rings. Gainesville, Florida: University of Florida Press. [Site 11]
Milner, George. 2004. The Moundbuilders: Ancient Peoples of Eastern North America. London: Thames and Hudson.
Welch, Paul D. 1991. Moundville’s Economy. Tuscaloosa, Alabama. University of Alabama Press. [Site 2]
And then there’s Cahokia [Site 9]:
Iseminger, William. 2010. Cahokia Mounds: America’s First City. Charleston, South Carolina: The History Press. [If you read one or two books about Cahokia, this should be one of them.]
Pauketat, Timothy R. 1994. The Ascent of Chiefs: Cahokia and Mississippian Politics in Native America. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press.
———. 2009. Cahokia: Ancient America’s Great City on the Mississippi. New York: Viking. [If you read one or two books about Cahokia, this should be one of them.]
Pauketat, Timothy R., T. E. Emerson & Susan Alt (eds.). 2015. Medieval Mississippians: The Cahokian World. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research.
Bill Iseminger is an archaeologist and the assistant site manager of the Cahokia Mounds State Historic Site. Tim Pauketat is a professor in the Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. Both have devoted their careers to the study and preservation of Cahokia, and both are terrific writers.
Frazier, Kendrick. 1999. People of Chaco: A Canyon and Its Culture. New York: W. W. Norton and Company. [Site 31]
Noble, David Grant. 1991. Ancient Ruins of the Southwest. Flagstaff, Arizona: Northland Publishing.
Plog, Stephen. 1997. Ancient Peoples of the American Southwest. London: Thames and Hudson.
Reid, Jefferson & Stephanie Whittlesey. 1997. The Archaeology of Ancient Arizona. Tucson, Arizona: University of Arizona Press.
One of the best writers about exploring the Southwest is the prolific David Roberts. He writes with enormous passion about his visits to various archaeological sites in a couple of wonderful books I recommend highly:
Roberts, David. 1996. In Search of the Old Ones: Exploring the Anasazi World of the Southwest. New York: Simon and Schuster.
———. 2015. The Lost Worlds of the Old Ones. New York: W. W. Norton.
There are lots of books about American rock art. The absolute standard is Polly Schaafsma’s Indian Rock Art of the Southwest. After that, there are lots of detailed regional guides. A few of the best are:
Cole, Sally J. 2009. Legacy on Stone: Rock Art of the Colorado Plateau and Four Corners Region. Boulder: Johnson Books.
Grant, Campbell, James W. Baird & J. Kenneth Pringle. 1968. Rock Drawings of the Coso Range. Ridgecrest, California: Maturango Museum. [Site 34, Little Petroglyph Canyon]
Micnhimer, D. Russel & LeeAnn Johnston. 2010. Where to See Rock Art: Washington, Oregon, Idaho. Prineville, Oregon: Pendulum Press. [Site 48]
Schaafsma, Polly. 1971. The Rock Art of Utah. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press.
Spangler, Jerry D. 2013. Nine Mile Canyon: The Archaeological History of an American Treasure. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press. [Site 44]
Spangler, Jerry D. & Donna K. Spangler. 2003. Horned Snakes and Axle Grease: A Roadside Guide to the Archaeology and History of Nine Mile Canyon. Salt Lake City: Uinta Publishing. [Site 44; this is an extremely detailed, mile-by-mile tour of Nine Mile Canyon.]
Whitley, David S. 1996. A Guide to Rock Art Sites: Southern California and Southern Nevada. Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing.
To read more about Site 40, Horseshoe Canyon, the National Park Service provides an online book with a number of articles by archaeologists. You can access it here: www.nps.gov/cany/planyourvisit/upload/HorseshoeBook.pdf.
The best book to get an archaeologist’s perspective on alternative, out-there archaeology is Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology. That was written by, now, what is his name . . . oh, yeah . . . Kenneth L. Feder. That would be me. I know what you’re thinking: Man; he is shamelessly plugging another one of his books here. That’s entirely untrue. I am very much ashamed.
Feder, Kenneth L. 2014. Frauds, Myths, and Mysteries: Science and Pseudoscience in Archaeology, 8th edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Arizona
• Honanki Heritage Site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honanki). Small cliff dwelling with rock art easily accessible from Sedona.
• Palatki Heritage Site (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palatki_Heritage_Site). Small cliff dwelling with rock art easily accessible from Sedona. Nearby are some truly beautiful pictographs, ensconced in a cave near an abandoned homestead.
• Pueblo Grande Museum (www.pueblogrande.org). Great House and evidence of ancient irrigation, located in downtown Phoenix. Great on-site museum.
• Tonto National Monument (www.nps.gov/Tont/index.htm). Dramatic cliff dwellings.
• Tuzigoot National Monument (www.nps.gov/tuzi/index.htm). Ancient pueblo dramatically situated atop a hill.
• V-Bar-V Petroglyph Heritage Site (www.verdevalleyarchaeology.org/VBarV). A short hike brings you to a small panel of some very impressive petroglyphs.
California
• Inscription Canyon/Black Canyon (www.blm.gov/ca/st/en/fo/barstow/petroglyph1.html). Great rock art, but you’ll need a four-wheel-drive vehicle to access it.
• Volcanic Tablelands (www.thesierraweb.com/generalinfo/petroglyphs.cfm). Several hiking trails to rock art panels: Fish Slough, Chalfant, Chidago, and Red Canyon.
Indiana
• Kincaid Mounds (www.kincaidmounds.com). Well-preserved complex of platform mounds viewable from a distance.
Iowa
• Effigy Mounds National Monument (www.nps.gov/efmo/index.htm). Earth mounds in the shape of birds and bears. Lots of bears. No viewing towers, so the patterns are difficult to see.
Minnesota
• Indian Mounds Park (www.stpaul.gov/indian-mounds-regional-park). Well-preserved burial mounds in a municipal park, located on the bluffs near St. Paul.
• Jeffers Petroglyphs (http://jefferspetroglyphs.com). Thousands of images of animals, humanlike images, and atlatls etched into hard quartzite. Ask the site manager to give you a tour.
Mississippi
• Emerald Mound Site (www.nps.gov/nr/travel/mounds/eme.htm). Massive mound that effectively reconfigured the landscape, producing a monumental platform on the top of which native people constructed platform mounds and houses.
• Natchez Trace Parkway (www.nps.gov/natr/index.htm). Several small but impressive mound sites (Boyd, Bynum, Owl Creek, Pharr, Bear) are open to the public scattered along the 444-mile historical highway.
• Winterville Mounds (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winterville_Site). Impressive site with a number of platform mounds.
Nebraska
• Hudson-Meng Education and Research Center (www.fossilfreeway.net/hudson.php). Large accumulation of in-place bison bones, with a shelter built over the site. The animals were killed by human hunters, perhaps 10,000 years ago.
Nevada
• Valley of Fire State Park (http://parks.nv.gov/parks/valley-of-fire-state-park/). Impressive petroglyph panels including Atlatl Rock, with lots of examples of images of spear throwers.
New Mexico
• Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument (www.nps.gov/gicl/index.htm). Interesting cliff dwellings almost entirely within a couple of caves.
North Dakota
• Knife River Indian Villages National Historical Site (www.nps.gov/knri/index.htm). Visible remnants of an Indian village occupied into the nineteenth century and painted by the artist George Catlin.
Ohio
• Junction Group (www.earthworksconservancy.org/what-is-the-junction-group/). Though no longer visible, remote sensing has enabled these impressive mound enclosures to be reimagined in cut grass.
• Leo Petroglyphs State Memorial (http://leopetroglyph.com). Nice set of unique petroglyphs protected by a wooden shelter.
• Seip Earthworks (www.nps.gov/hocu/learn/historyculture/seip-earthworks.htm). Impressive mortuary complex. Some of the enclosure wall has been preserved, as has the primary burial mound, an impressive earthwork with an oval footprint.
Oklahoma
• Spiro Mounds (www.okhistory.org/sites/spiromounds.php). Large mound site. On-site museum with lots of replicas (oh, well) of very impressive shell artifacts excavated at the site.
Tennessee
• Chucallisa Indian Village (www.memphis.edu/chucalissa/). Mound and plaza complex. On-site C. H. Nash Museum devoted to the site.
Texas
• Hueco Tanks State Park and Historic Site (http://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/hueco-tanks/activities). Unique and beautiful pictographs. Contact the site for a guided tour of the most impressive examples of the art.
Utah
• Capitol Reef National Park (www.nps.gov/care/index.htm). There are some very impressive petroglyphs of bighorn sheep along the main road through the monument.
• Edge of the Cedars State Park (stateparks.utah.gov/parks/edge-of-the-cedars/). Kiva you can enter. Preserved and very beautiful kiva murals in the fantastic on-site museum.
Vermont
• Bellows Falls Petroglyphs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bellows_Falls_Petroglyph_Site). Phantasmagorical rock art of ghostly faces tucked alongside the Connecticut River.
Wyoming
• Legend Rock State Petroglyph Site (http://wyoparks.state.wy.us/Site/SiteInfo.aspx?siteID=34). Short trail along a low rock exposure with dozens of examples of impressive Dinwoody-style petroglyphs like those at Dinwoody Lake.