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zy AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST
comprehensive synthesis of the African mate-
rial. Phillipson fills that gap. He is a field ar-
cheologist of some twenty years’ standing who
has investigated large areas of eastern and
central Africa, as well as a wide variety of pre-
historic manifestations. He is well suited to the
task. He knows the literature, and he writes
well. Though content to catalog rather than
explain, he presents the facts reliably. The il-
lustrations are generally apt. More detailed
maps and a thorough discussion of landforms,
features, climates, and environments through
time would be of some use though.
The author misses an opportunity to intro-
duce his subject. There is no history ofpast re-
search or emphases and no overview of the
questions Africanist archeologists seek an-
swers to today. This notwithstanding, he at-
tempts a wide-ranging overview of the ar-
cheology.
There is an adequate presentation of the
fossil evidence for early man, followed by
chapters devoted to the development of hu-
man technology throughout the continent.
Chapter 3 describes technologies in which
hand axes figure prominently and chapter 4
those based on the reduction of flakes, or
blades, from prepared cores. Phillipson di-
vides his subject matter by geography but
misses an opportunity to relate this to the pro-
cess of culture formation.
Chapter 5 describes post-Pleistocene adap-
tations to the generally wetter environments
persisting along the southern fringes of the Sa-
hara and Nile valley. He tends to dismiss the
significance of these as seen by Sutton and
other more ecologically oriented investigators.
The final two chapters chronicle the emer-
gence of food production on the continent, its
spread, along with other technologies, to the
southern savanna, and the subsequent rise of
some complex societies. Phillipson has a pen-
chant for coining words, often prematurely or
with little relation to archeological reality.
This time, his Chtfirm6at.e for all of the subcon-
tinent’s earliest Iron Age manifestations is de-
cidedly out of place.
The volume contains no concluding sum-
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mary, and the continua of African prehistory
are generally ignored. Lacking a theoretical
viewpoint unifying the many threads of Afri-
can prehistory, this volume serves as an intro-
ductory text but unfortunately misses the
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grander view.
Andean Ecology and Civilization: An In-
terdisciplinary Perspective on Andean
Ecological Complementarity. Shozo Masuda,
[88, 19861
Izumi Shimada, and Craig Mom’s, eds. Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 1985. 582 pp.
$44.50 (cloth).
F. LYNCH
THOMAS
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Comll Universib
Murra defined verticality or ecological com-
plementarity as a model consciously used by
Andean peoples for ordering their environ-
ment, but most participants at the Wenner-
Gren Symposium at Cedar Cove treated it as
a model of Andean adaptation. This distinc-
tion is made by Salomon (p. 526), who also
notes that the word “ecology” was used
mostly in a colloquial sense that is inappro-
priate to the study of models ofadaptation. It
is truly remarkable that only one (Craig) of
the 21 contributors to this volume is a natural
scientist-and none an ecologist-despite the
title. However, there is throughout an evident
and useful tension between the desire to know
and understand environmental adaptations in
the Andes, at one level or another, and the
equally exciting, very difficult, anthropologi-
cal challenge of learning how Andean peoples
saw and organized their environments and so-
cieties.
Even so, the editors perceptively note that
insufficient attention was given to social and
ideological dimensions of ecological comple-
mentarity. Outstanding in this regard is a gem
of an essay by Morris, in which he looks at the
organization and administration of Tawantin-
sup in its own terms and decides that the bril-
liance of the Inca achievement lay in accept-
ance, use, and even fostering of variability.
His conclusion is apt for the entire enterprise:
“The patterns are too big and complex to un-
derstand in economic terms alone. At the
same time the more cognitive studies of reli-
gion and ritual cannot be very helpful if iso-
lated from the economic and political activi-
ties they helped coordinate” (p. 488).
From another camp, Onuki gives a niaster-
ful review and synthesis of economic develop-
ment and resource exploitation in the central
Andes. Granting only lip service to symbolic
aspects of culture, Onuki crafts a bold thesis
linking the maize-yuca complex of his Yunga
tradition (valleys) with the llama-potato com-
plex of thepuna, Formative exploitation of the
qeshwa zone, and the origins ofvertical control.
Others attempt to dissect and organize the
phenomenon, as if to lay it out in boxes were
to understand it. Salomon is the most cornpre-
hensive and effective of the semantic game
players, but Mayer’s revel in complexity is
also stimulating. Shimada writes a major re-
view of his work in the North, as well as much
hopeful speculation. Harris, Hidalgo, and
ARCHEOLOGY
Mujica provide excellent and accessible ver-
sions of their already widely respected
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syntheses on the South, but as Shimada la-
ments, there is practically nothing on llamas
and caravans. There are the usual, highly eth-
nographic, data papers, while Rostworowski
and Ramirez are sharp, concise, and analyti-
cal on linguistic diversity and curacaqo. Julien
is extraordinarily successful combining sci-
ence and historical scholarship in her piece on
guano, resource control, and political organi-
zation in old Arequipa. She asks some hard
questions of Pease and of Murra, who is rep-
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resented by a republication and a tight “re-
visit,” in which he deplores that the Andean
ideal has been threatened by Tawantinsup, the
colonial and republican regimes, and finally
agrarian reform. “We understand the process
of erosion and destruction much better than
its florescence” (p. 1 I ) . One senses that the
Wenner-Gren conference in Florida will be the
last to focus on verticality.
Translations by Wolf d e Romero a n d
Mayer are thorough and idiomatic, yet retain
key Spanish and Quechua terms. Editing,
from cross-references to introductions, is thor-
ough. One seldom sees a book so well finished
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and produced, with so few typographical er-
rors and inconsistencies.
Archaeological Geology. George Rapp, Jr.,
and John A. Gaflord, eds. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press, 1985.453 pp. $35.00 (cloth).
CLAUDE ALBRITTON
Southern Methodist University
Archeological geology is here defined as the
application of geological principles and tech-
niques to the solution of archeological prob-
lems. In their introductory chapter the editors
trace this kind of scientific investigation from
its inception in the early 19th century to its
emergence as a recognizable subdiscipline in
the 1970s. The 13 amply and effectively illus-
trated chapters that follow show how infor-
mation derived from different kinds of geolog-
ical studies can be useful to archeologists.
Six chapters focus on geophysical and geo-
chemical techniques as applied to magnetic
and resistivity surveying of sites; relative and
absolute dating of magnetized archeological
materials; provenance of stone and metallic
objects as determined by stable isotope tech-
niques and identification of trace elements; ra-
diocarbon dating of lime mortar; and analysis
of soils modified by human activities.
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The reconstruction of environments con-
I029
temporary with human occupations and the
detailing of subsequent environmental
changes are recurrent themes in chapters
dealing with geomorphic, sedimentologic, pe-
trologic, and palynologic techniques.
Most of the essays contain case histories of
site investigations in which the authors have
played active roles. Most ofthese in turn relate
to historic sites, including such famous locali-
ties as Troy and Ephesus. Geographic distri-
bution of these localities is wide ranging: for
example, the chapter on tephrochronology
presents examples in Mexico and El Salvador,
while the one on mineral analysis of ancient
ceramics deals with materials from Ur.
The documentation is impressive. Upwards
of 800 references are carried in the text. An
even longer list of additional references, or-
dered according to time of publication or to
subject matter, constitutes the appendix.
Items in the appendix do not duplicate cita-
tions in E. H. Sellards’s two bibliographies for
early humans in America.
In reflecting on the status of archeological
geology, the editors regard it as a distinct sub-
field of geology, as are petroleum geology and
glacial geology. They point out that this
branch is growing conceptually through the
invention of new techniques of investigation.
As examples, they mention recent determina-
tion of the thermal history of carbonized
wheat grains by electron spin resonance; rel-
ative dating of archeological materials by the
diffusion of ions into minerals; and new strat-
egies for determining the thermal histories of
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cherts. Stimulus to further investigations was
provided in 1977 with the establishment of the
Division of Archaeological Geology of the
Geological Society of America. The present
volume should do much to promote interest in
what is surely a worthy intellectual enterprise.
The Archaeology of Slavery and Planta-
tion Life. Thcresa A . Singleton, ed. Orlando,
FL: Academic Press, 1985. 356 pp. $65.00
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(cloth).
J. W. JOSEPH
University of Pennsylvania
The Archaeology of Slavery and Plantation Life
brings together a series of related articles from
one of the more productive subfields in histor-
ical archeology. Unfortunately the authors
and their various works are only brought to-
gether, and never introduced. For interested
scholars who are not already on a first-name