Read this as an undergraduate and liked it okay, though can't remember details. From Amazon:

Since its discovery in 1996, the issues surrounding Kennewick Man have grown ever more complicated and controversial. Out of this fracas comes Skull Wars, David Hurst Thomas's masterful contribution to the debate. The book is sure to stir passions even as it seeks to offer a better way for archeologists, anthropologists, and Native Americans to work together in the future. When it was determined that Kennewick Man, a skeleton with Caucasoid features discovered near Kennewick, Washington, was estimated to be more than 9,000 years old, it effectively lobbed a grenade into the already tense arena of the origins of the pre-Columbus peoples of the United States. Thomas, curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, leads the reader through the development of American anthropology and archeology, the many reinterpretations of Native Americans by non-Indians, an assertion of native rights, and the eventual intercession of the federal government, ironically, as protective party. Skull Wars is a gripping account of the way race, scientific practice, history, and politics converged around an ancient skeleton.

Off to Lisa-B through BookRelay.

Received today! Thanks a lot!

From the first page:
"A NOTE ABOUT HUMAN REMAINS

This books argues, among other things, that scientists must deal with human bones in a more respectful and sensitive manner. Several Native American elders have requested that I not publish photographs or other depictions of American Indian skeletal remains. In specific response to this request, no such images appear in this book."

Sorry for entering my comment so late, in fact I have finished reading it some weeks ago.

This is an extremely interesting book, simultaniously a history of Native Americans and a history of anthropology in the 19th and 20th century. A good companion to Stephen Jay Gould's and Marvin Harris's books. Not an easy read, though.

Released on Saturday, February 21, 2004 at Oxfam Book Store in Darmstadt, Hessen Germany.

I found it difficult to think of an appropriate place to release this excellent and, I assume, relatively rare book. Finally I decided to release it at Oxfam.
Oxfam is a charity organisation with a very nice bookstore in Darmstadt, on Schulstrasse. Here I can be sure that nothing bad happens to the book, and that eventually somebody buys it, because he or she is interested in the book. Some Euros will go to the good cause from this, and that is not too bad either.

i bought this particular book at oxfam in darmstadt. it´s a rather uncommn topic for europeans. but, this archeologic view on this original american historic facts is even more compelling and disturbing. summmarising it´s a good read. and you can learn a lot about history, even without thinking. if that´s your way of learning. it´s up to you to believe, or not if a 9000 year old skull proves a european preaborigenal ancestry in us america or not. i believe that native american claims stand in their own right. so believe it or not, their claims are not to be deniedon grounds of this finding.

history is a serial of injustices, done from one to another.

CAUGHT IN DARMSTADT HESSEN GERMANY