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Becoming Eloquent: Advances in the emergence of language, human cognition, and modern cultures by Dr Francesco d'Errico and Jean-Marie Hombert (John Benjamins Publishing Company) Few topics of scientific enquiry have attracted more attention in the last decade than the origin and evolution of language. Few have offered an equivalent intellectual challenge for interdisciplinary collaborations between linguistics, cognitive science, prehistoric archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics, neurophysiology, computer science and robotics. The contributions presented in this volume reflect the multiplicity of interests and research strategy used to tackle this complex issue, summarize new relevant data and emerging theories, provide an updated view of this interdisciplinary venture, and, when possible, seek a future in this broad field of study.

"This is an extremely sophisticated example of cooperative research. With such an interdisciplinary approach to language origins and diffusion, the field is bound to make progress understanding these and related issues. The scale of comparisons and syntheses, alone, are bound to result in new ways of thinking about language among Neandertals, and even earlier species, and modern humans." ---Lewis Binford, Emeritus University Professor, University of New Mexico

Few topics of scientific enquiry have attracted more attention in the last decade than the origin and evolution of mankind and language. Few have offered scholars an equivalent intellectual challenge and an equal opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration from such a wide range of disciplines. This collective endeavour, however, has rarely been recognised as a necessarily joint venture by research funding agencies and encouraged by them through the launching of specific programmes. The EUROCORES programme "The Origin of Man, Language and Languages (OMLL)" of the European Science Foundation represents a remarkable exception to this rule.

The aim of the European Collaborative Research Scheme (EUROCORES) is to enable researchers in different European countries to collaborate in developing a scientific synergy in areas where European scale and scope are required to reach the critical mass necessary for top class science in a global context. EUROCORES provides a flexible framework that allows national basic research funding and participatory organisations to join forces to support quality European research in and across all scientific areas.

Traditionally, the study of the origin of language was considered too speculative and insufficiently anchored in empirically based studies to merit serious scientific attention. However, around the time of the launch of the OMLL programme, new data had been collected by scholars from several disciplines which had profound implications for the origin of this distinctly human means of communication. New perspectives opened by genetics, evolutionary anthropology, neurophysiology, and cognitive science were expected to converge and offer a solid ground for a fresh approach to the old problem of the origin of language(s).

Discoveries in archaeology and paleoanthropology, grounded in a more reliable chronological framework, thanks to advances in radiometric and luminescence dating methods, were providing pertinent evidence to test novel evolutionary scenarios. Following the pioneer intuition of L. Cavalli Sforza, comparative

maps of genetic and linguistic human families were produced, showing similarities between the distribution of genetic diversity and that of linguistic groups while, at the same time, challenging oversimplifications in this field of study. Similarly, the development of linguistic skills was seen to be linked to the evolution of the brain and of cognitive strategies.

In sum, towards the end of the 20th century, the study of the origin of language and of languages was emerging as a promising field for multidisciplinary research, where prehistoric archaeology, palaeoanthropology, genetics, linguistics, neurophysiology, cognitive science, as well as computer science and robotics, could profitably collaborate, and where international collaboration was expected to provide great benefits.

The launching of the OMLL programme in early 2001 marked the end of an intensive preparation phase and the beginning of a unique research scheme crossing boundaries not only between very diverse disciplines, but also within Europe. Sixteen national funding organisations from twelve different European countries brought together a programme budget of six million Euros to create a platform for pan-European research on the question of the origins of human language and the current distribution of languages and language families across the globe.

The programme invited proposals on six different themes: Language and Archaeology, Language and Genes, Language Acquisition and Language Universals, Language and Brain, Language and Animal munication, Language Evolution and Computer Modelling. After an ternational peer-review process managed by the ESF, 21 Collaborative Research projects were launched in 2003. These 21 collaborative research teams consisted of 44 individual research projects based in 12 different European countries. Bringing together expertise from such a broad range of disciplines and such a wide variety of countries with different research traditions has been a unique opportunity for the participating researchers and students. Now that these networks have contributed concrete results advancing our knowledge of the emergence of human language, it is clear that these collaborations must be continued and strengthened in order to answer new challenging questions which have emerged from these recent studies.

The contributions presented in this volume are intended to depict a panorama of the topics explored by various research teams in the framework of the OMLL programme, to summarize new relevant data and emerging theories, to provide an updated view of this interdisciplinary venture, and, when possible, to provide directions for future research. In their variety, the collected papers cover the original call for proposals and reflect the multiplicity of interests and research strategy used to tackle this complex issue.

It is obvious that the papers included in this volume do not cover all aspects of research in the vast scientific area of the EUROCORES Programme "The Origin of

Man, Language and Languages". The editors are conscious that some areas have been inadequately covered and/or are not represented in this volume. This is especially true for instance in the case of Historical Linguistics. In this area, the European Science Foundation has recently funded a special workshop "New directions in Historical Linguistics" addressing specifically the relevance of recent research in Historical linguistics and the dispersal of languages. Contributions from this workshop are available at http://25images.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/Portails/NDHL/.

Language and archaeology

Speech does not fossilize but the interpretation of artefacts obtained from archaeological sites can be used to infer the degree of complexity of the communication system necessary to produce these artefacts and sometimes their associated behaviour. The degree of complexity of tool technology is often used as a marker for the level of cognitive ability but it is difficult to extrapolate the need of a sophisticated system of communication from tool technology alone. One reason is that the ability to manufacture complex tools can be learned from observation and imitation without explicit tutoring requiring the use of language. Intentional burials and sea faring are activities that appear to require a greater reliance on linguistic communication for the purpose of enacting rituals and solving problems.

The proximity between Neanderthals and anatomically modern humans has been debated since the discovery of the first Neanderthal fossils. At first, the Neanderthals were classified as our direct ancestors with limited cognitive abilities. The current view is that the Neanderthals belong to a genetic branch which separated from the human lineage some 500.000 years ago. Recent studies have also shown that Neanderthals had greater cognitive abilities than previously thought (more complex tool technology, more sophisticated hunting techniques). Were these new cognitive accomplishments the results of contacts with groups of anatomically modern humans or were they Neanderthal innovations? The two theories are currently under discussion and evaluation. If Neanderthals were able to exhibit complex behaviours, what was the nature of their communication system? Contrary to what has been accepted since the 70's, their peripheral speech production system was probably not very different from ours.

In their paper d'Errico, Vanharen, Henshilwood, Lawson, Maureille, Gambier, Tillier, Soressi and van Niekerk review the evidence suggesting that the traits used to define behavioral modernity are not specific to our species. Instead the authors argue for a very gradual emergence of these traits over a long period of time on different continents and among different populations, including Neandertals. The evidence evoked in their demonstration comes from the use of pigment,

engraved or painted representations, personal ornaments, burial practices, musical tradition , anatomy and encephalization. The authors' argument contradicts the hypoth is of a symbolic revolution coinciding with the arrival of anatomically ern humans in Europe some 40,000 years ago and highlights inconsistencies in the anatomically — culturally modern equation and the potential contribution of anatomically "pre-modern" human populations to the emergence of these abilities.

The so-called "Neolithic revolution" has had a major impact on population growth and human migrations. It involved domestication of plants and animals. In their article Tresset, Bollongino, Edwards, Hughes and Vigne examine the early diffusion of bovids in Europe as a trace of human migrations, contacts and exchanges. By investigating the localisation of wild ancestors and process of dissemination of different species they show that different processes took place. Sheep and goats had no wild ancestors in Europe, consequently domesticated sheep and goats can be considered as good tracers for the expansion of farming advance or at least of Neolithic influence. Cattle and pigs on the other hand had potential ancestors in Europe which means that independent local domestication or hybridization with animals imported from the Near East was possible. Genetic data indicate that domesticated sheep, goats and cattle were introduced in Europe with no interaction with local populations for goats and sheep or very little in the case of bovines. For pigs, the process was very different; a first introduction from the Near East was followed by a local domestication of the wild boar leading to the disappearance of the original Eastern lineages.

Language and genes

Genetic data from modern populations have been used to provide dates for the emergence of anatomically modern humans and to locate their continent of origin. They have also been used to infer information concerning more recent population movements. On the basis of linguistic data collected from modern languages it is possible to reconstruct earlier groupings of currently spoken languages into language families and thus infer population movements associated with these language groupings. In this volume, four geographical/linguistic areas are investigated: West-Central Africa, Northern Africa, Central Asia and the Himalayas. These studies illustrate the complexity of the relationship between genes and languages and clearly show that a better understanding of such historical scenarios will only be possible with the joint contribution of linguistic and genetic research.

Van der Veen, Quintana-Murci and Comas focus on West-Central Africa and address issues related to the so-called "Bantu expansion" and more specifically to

the peopling of the Cameroon-Gabon area. In this region, two populations with
different lifestyles - farming villagers on the one hand and small groups of hunter-
gatherers on the other - have been closely living together for a long period of time.

In their study, linguistically and culturally based hypotheses about specific relationships between Bantu-speaking groups and the peopling of the area over the last few millennia were compared to the results of genetic analyses (maternally-inherited mitochondrial DNA and paternally-inherited Y-chromosome variation). The analysis of mtDNA diversity did not show a clear correlation between languages and genetic markers for the Bantu-speaking agriculturalists. However, there are significant genetic differences between the agriculturalist ("Bantu") populations and the semi-nomadic hunter-gatherer populations (the so-called "Pygmies"). The mtDNA analysis strongly suggests (i) an initial divergence of the ancestors of contemporary "Pygmies" from an ancestral Central African population starting not earlier than —70,000 years ago, (ii) a period of isolation between the two groups needed to explain their phenotypic differences, and (iii) long-standing and asymmetrical maternal gene flow from Pygmies to (proto) agriculturalists, starting not earlier than —40,000 years ago and persisting until the last few thousands of years. The Y-chromosome study on the other hand suggests a Bantu to Pygmy flow of paternal lineages (i.e., introduction of male "bantu" villagers into the hunter-gatherers genetic pool). Jointly these results illustrate a sexually-asymmetrical mating pattern between "Pygmies" and "Bantu" and a strong process of language replacement in this region.

The objectives of the article presented by Dugoujon, Coudray, Torroni, Cruciani, Scozzari, Moral, Louali and Kossman are to correlate linguistic, historical and genetic studies from Berber languages and populations. In order to understand the peopling of North Africa, they compare the mtDNA diversity of Berber populations with geographically related populations (in particular from South-Western Europe, the Middle East and Sub-Saharan areas). The results show that Berber populations have, in the total mitochondrial diversity, an intermediate position between European and Sub-Saharan populations. More precisely, the data show a genetic differentiation between North-Western and North-Eastern Berber groups: populations from the Maghreb are related to European and Eastern populations (from Siwa in Egypt) and share more affinities with East and Sub-Saharans populations. The authors argue that one of the elements necessary for

understanding the possible links between genetics and linguistics is the linguistic

analysis of the time depth and geographical spread of a language. Some of the problems encountered in this respect in the specific case of Berber in Northern Africa are discussed, and some approximate indications on the chronology and geography of the Berber homeland are given.

The three following papers examine the relationship between the people and languages around the Himalayan range.

Jacquesson describes the ethnic and linguistic situations in the linguistically complex Assam corridor (North-East India). He stresses the importance of geographical locations, specifically the role of altitude, access to food resources and population densities. Looking at the process of language maintenance and language replacement, Jacquesson highlights the difficulty of the interaction between linguistic, political and economic constraints in this region.

Heyer and Mennecier's contribution shows hows population genetics facilitates the reconstruction of the history of population in Central Asia, especially Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan. A comparison between linguistic and genetic data is also provided. Seven ethnic groups (Tajiks, Yagnob, Kyrgyz, Karakalpaks, Uzbeks, Kazaks and Turkmen) were sampled. The results of this study show that the genetic diversity clusters in two groups: Indo-European populations and Turk-Mongol populations (except for Uzbek). There is a good correlation between linguistic and genetic data especially with the Y-chromosome analysis (paternal line).

Kraayenbrink, Parkin, Carvalho-Silva, Van Driem, Barbujani, Tyler-Smith, Jobling and de Knijff examine the linguistic vs. genetic situation in the Nepal-Bhutan area. Three major questions are addressed: (1) Is there a correlation between language, genes, and geography in the Himalayan region?; (2) Is it possible to determine the genetic relationships (ancient ancestors) of the Bhutanese and deduce possible migration routes?; and (3) What can be said about the relative ages of the various groups if one compares the few real «aboriginal» groups with the others?

The authors collected genetic data from about 2000 individuals in Nepal and Bhutan and compared their results with those obtained on individuals from China and India in order to establish connections with outside genetic/linguistic groupings. They also find a good correlation between linguistic groupings and genetic similarities with a boundary running east to west, south of the border between India and Bhutan and through Southern Nepal. This border separates languages (and populations) speaking Indo-European languages vs. Tibeto-Burman speaking populations. Given the available genetic evidence, it is difficult to argue that any Nepalese or Bhutanese language group has been the genetic source for other Asian populations. Thus, it seems highly unlikely that there has been a major "outof-Bhutan" or "out-of-Nepal" migration to either the south (India) or the north (Tibet/China). They conclude that the populations located today in Nepal and Bhutan probably originated outside their current locations but further genetic analyses will be necessary to propose more precise homelands.

Language acquisition and language universals

It is widely acknowledged that the ontogeny-recapitulates-phylogeny» position is an oversimplification of evolutionary processes. In the realm of language origin, researchers have been reluctant with few exceptions to extrapolate results from language acquisition in children into possible evolutionary scenarios of language origin. This does not mean, however that ontogenetic studies are irrelevant to the understanding of evolutionary processes but it does mean that, when conducting research in this field, one ought to keep in mind the different contexts of language acquisition and language origin - language developing in a linguistically rich environment and a rapidly developing brain as opposed to a poor or non-existent linguistic context and a possibly a slowly evolving brain.

The emergence of complexity in human language can be compared with potential correlates of emerging complexity in contemporary ontogeny. The aim of the contribution of Kern, Davis and Zink is to compare the developmental trajectory of speech production capacities in children acquiring different languages from the babbling period to the emergence of early grammar. This paper focuses on the question of phonetic continuity between babbling and the early lexicon by asking the following questions: Do all children follow the universal trends described in the literature? Are sound patterns in babbling the same as those used in first words across language environments? The consistent data collection procedures adopted in the paper are designed to distinguish common trends vs. individual and language differences. The languages investigated are Dutch, French, Romanian, and Tunisian Arabic. Lexical and phonetic characteristics are longitudinally and crosslinguistically analyzed from various point of view: cumulative vocabulary, consonant place and manner of articulation, vowel types, and intrasyllabic and intersyllabic co-occurrence patterns. Despite prominent individual differences, the majority of children tended to follow the common trends reported in the literature. To address the question of the influence of language input, the authors compared child language frequencies to patterns in a 1,000 word dictionary data set for each language. Results indicate that input does not play an obvious role on observed patterns across the chosen languages for either consonants or vowels. In several other areas there is some evidence that perceptual learning from input influence the children's production-output patterns. In these cases, prevalent trends in the adult form of the languages studied are also those preferred by the majority of the children. However, it should be noted that in these cases the children's preferred trends are also favoured throughout the languages of the world. The data provide an answer to the question of continuity across babbling, first word, and later word periods. Results indicate that phonetic complexity expands after the lexical spurt due in part to a diversification and increasing complexity in

speech characteristics. This increase in complexity could be related to increasing control over speech articulators, which enable increase in capacities for matching language forms

Language and animal communication

Language is often used as a central distinctive feature of our species. Consequently, it is crucial to be able to provide a detailed account for the emergence of this specific behaviour. Is it just a system comparable but different from other animal communication systems or does it constitute a radically different way of communicating with other members of one's own species? A fast growing literature on animal communication clearly indicates that animals are capable of communicating information and exhibiting behaviour far more complex than previously thought.

Zuberbühler, Ouattara, Bitty, Lemasson and Noe examine the communicative abilities of several species of monkeys and apes and draw a comparison with the development of anatomical, neural, behavioral and cognitive features of human language. Wild groups of monkeys and apes were observed during their daily activities in order to understand what communication signals they are able to produce, under what circumstances they produce them, and what sorts of responses they elicit from listeners. Subsequently recorded samples of particular calls were presented to naïve receivers. For example, chimpanzees produce different types of food grunts depending on the type of food they find, e.g. differentiating between apples or bread. These calls are shown to be meaningful to other chimpanzees in the sense that if the receiver listens to "apple grunts" he is more likely to look for food in places where he previously found apples, but not bread, and vice versa. In conclusion, this comparative study shows that a number of properties of human language are also found in the communication systems of non-human primates. Individuals of these species are able to encode information about an external event and can also modify the meaning of messages as a function of their audience.

Language evolution and computer modelling

Computer modelling has been used quite extensively in recent years to simulate the evolution of the human vocal tract and the emergence of sound systems, lexicon, and syntax.

The notion of self-organisation in complex systems was first applied to the field of biology. Recently, it has been found to be relevant to the field of linguistics

where some encouraging results have been obtained for predicting the emergence of sound systems and linguistic structures in the evolution of communicative behaviours of our hominid ancestors.

In his paper, Steels presents the relevance of agent-based evolution models. His research shows how grammatical languages about complex scenes can emerge. After presenting the different types of models that have been developed, Steels focuses on socio-cognitive models. These models are necessarily complex if they aim at approaching reality; they have to take into account perception, memory, conceptualization, planning, joint attention, etc. The basic constituents of these models are the agents (i.e., a population of individuals), a world in which these agents operate and a type a interaction between these agents called a language game. In the author's simulations, agents have the capability to visually perceive dynamic scenes and analyze them in terms of event structures. Then they play a language game in which one agent describes to another a recently perceived event. In order to succeed in the game agents are required to invent and negotiate lexicon and grammar. Steels shows that an abrupt genetic modification is not a necessary step for the emergence of language but rather insists on the importance of the right social context and cognitive mechanisms.

In conclusion, the contributions collected in this volume do not claim to tell the last word on what was the first word. They fully demonstrate, however, that the origin and diversification of language has become a mature field of interdisciplinary study and that researchers working in this field are able to tackle general as well as technical issues. Funding of the EUROCORES OMLL programme was the necessary first step in developing fruitful long term collaborations across disciplines on these complex and multi-faceted issues related to the origin of language. New avenues of research have emerged through these collaborations and the scientific interest of a fast growing number of young researchers observed in recent years is clearly a very encouraging sign for the future.

Anaximander and the Architects: The Contributions of Egyptian and Greek Architectural Technologies to the Origins of Greek Philosophy by Robert Hahn (S U N Y Series in Ancient Greek Philosophy: State University of New York Press) and Studies of Anaximander in Context: New Studies on the Origins of Greek Philosophy by Dirk Couprie, Robert Hahn, Gerard Naddaf (State University if New York Press) manages to place the development of Anaximander's thought squarely within social, political, cosmological, astronomical, and technological contexts. It brings to the forefront of modern debates the importance of cultural context, and the indispensability of images to clarify ancient ideologies. Opens a previously unexplored avenue into Presocratic philosophy--the technology of monumental architecture. The evidence, coming directly from sixth century BCE. building sites and bypassing Aristotle, shows how the architects and their projects supplied their Ionian communities with a sprouting vision of natural order governed by structural laws. Their technological innovations and design techniques formed the core of an experimental science and promoted a rational, not mythopoetical, discourse central to our understanding of the context in which early Greek philosophy emerged. Anaximander's prose book and his rationalizing mentality are illuminated in surprising ways by appeal to the ongoing, extraordinary projects of the archaic architects and their practical techniques.More

Archaeology In Practice: A Student Guide To Archaeological Analyses by Jane Balme, Alistair Paterson (Blackwell Publishing Professional) (Paperback) This volume is intended for archaeology students who are learning how to analyze archaeological materials. For many years, we have been involved in teaching university courses in field and laboratory techniques in archaeology. Over a cup of coffee during one of these courses, we were bemoaning the fact that, although there are many books on field methods (especially excavation techniques), much less is available on archaeological analysis techniques beyond the introductory first-year archaeology level. What we wanted was a series of essays that showed students how different kinds of archaeological materials are used to answer research questions. In our experience, students are more likely to understand this link when they learn from archaeologists who are talking about their own research problems and how they solved them. It brings a sense of immediacy to the work that makes it much more fun for them to read. Thus, to remedy the problem of the lack of such mater­ials for students to read, we decided to assemble a collection of essays by experts on archaeological analysis.

There is such a variety of archaeological evidence, and so many differences across time and space, that we could not possibly cover all material types in all places and all time periods. To make the book manageable, we have restricted ourselves to those topics that are usually covered in general university courses on archaeological analysis. To identify which topics to include, with the help of Blackwell Publishing, we sent out a questionnaire to university teachers of field and laboratory methods mainly in North America, the United Kingdom, and the Australia Pacific region, asking them which topics they would want included in a text for higher undergraduate / lower graduate students. The final selection of chapters for this book is a result of the respondents' feedback, for which we were very grateful.

Not surprisingly, given our original reasons for beginning this book, most of the topics suggested by our reviewers are about post-excavation analysis. Thus the 15 chapters that comprise this volume concentrate on what archae­ologists do with the archaeological evidence, rather than on how to obtain the archaeological evidence in the field. "Finding sites" (Chapter 1) and "Rock-art" (Chapter 3) are the main exceptions to this. They have been included because, although neither the sites nor the art are brought back from the field for analysis, the records of both are. We were also keen to have a chapter on the ethical context of doing archaeology (Chapter 2, "Consulting stakeholders"), so that students are constantly aware of this important issue in all the work that they do. Most of the remaining chapters deal with particular types of evidence available to archaeologists. The final chapter on writing up the results is the important conclusion to any analysis in archaeology, and its usefulness to students will be self-evident.

When we originally imagined this book we thought that each chapter would include student exercises, but it seems from our respondents that teachers like to do their courses their own way. What they wanted instead was a series of essays that drew together the main areas of the subject matter and directed students to related further reading.

All of the authors who have contributed to this book are leading experts in their subject areas. Because the book is intended as a textbook, for the most part we selected contributors who have experience in teaching at university level. As a guide to the content of each chapter, we asked authors to think about what they would like their students to know about their particular topic in a university course on laboratory methods in archaeology. The remaining part of their brief was to make sure that they explained the main techniques of analysis, and used examples from their own work to demonstrate how some of those techniques are applied.

The resulting book of essays does not pretend to cover all aspects of all possible forms of analysis of the archaeological evidence discussed. To do so would have resulted in a book of insufficient depth for our target audience. We therefore had to make some decisions about what could and could not be included within each topic. Thus, for example, Chapter 6 is restricted to stone artifacts in prehistory, as this technology provides the major evidence for most of the human past and is an important aspect of most university courses. Rather than trying to include something on every historical period, we included a chapter on artifacts of the modern world (Chapter 13), as this topic was nominated by our respondents.

We have not attempted to provide case studies from every corner of the globe. As we have said above, our overall objective was to demonstrate the link between research question, analysis, and conclusion rather than produce a book on world archaeology. By and large, the methods by which archae­ologists achieve their aims are global. To show the diverse applications of techniques, each chapter provides additional references to other work on the particular archaeological evidence that has been discussed. We expect that the book will be relevant to many archaeology students across the globe and that it will provide insight into the breadth of modern archaeology.

Chapter 1: This chapter provides an introduction to the many ways and means by which both submarine and terrestrial landscapes may be explored for archaeological sites, and how these can be further examined and mapped using nondestructive techniques. Attention is given to aerial and satellite remote imaging, but the main emphasis is on ground-based and submarine geophysical methods. These are areas of highly significant recent development and they hold considerable potential in the future of cultural resource management.

Chapter 2: Archaeology's stakeholders are many and diverse, but we must learn to con­sult with them. Many believe that they own the past of their ancestors; that it is not a public heritage. The chapter briefly examines the history of archae­ological interaction with stakeholders and epistemological issues that may block successful consultation. Consultation problems involve informed consent, competing claims, and notions of cultural property. Successful consultation involves building partnerships out of mutual respect.

Chapter 3: Rock-art is an evocative form of material evidence for past peoples. Rock-art takes many different forms around the world. Two primary forms result from their production either as engraving or by the use of pigment. Rock-art can be classified according to technique, form, motif, and size. The recording tech­nique will depend on the site context. Effective field recording will require technical skills and training. The appropriate analysis of rock-art will depend on the questions asked by researchers, and might include spatial distribution analysis, information exchange and stylistic analyses, questions of gender, statistical techniques, dating techniques, and examination of change over time and space.

Chapter 4: Stratigraphy is the study of stratification; that is, the interpretation of layers that form the deposits of a site over time. This study of stratification is of crucial importance for understanding what happened at an archaeological site – in particular, the order in which events occurred. There are four main principles, drawn from Earth science disciplines, upon which the interpreta­tion of stratigraphy is based, but the human element in the accumulation of archaeological sites makes the application of these principles especially diffi­cult. Discussion of change over time within and between sites is usually done by creating analytical units that are formed by combining material from stratigraphic units.

Chapter 5: The varieties of methods that archaeologists use to obtain age estimates for the materials that they analyze are outlined under the term "chronometry." Most of the major techniques are discussed, with a particular emphasis on radiocarbon. The chapter then reviews the range of assumptions involved in taking the resulting age estimates and developing these into archaeological chronologies. Case studies emphasize the need for archaeologists to relate the temporal scales at which deposits may be resolved to the nature of the infer­ences about past behavior that they subsequently draw.

Chapter 6: This chapter discusses a range of methodological issues and analytical techniques that offer modern alternatives to traditional typology of stone artifacts. This approach emphasizes the identification and description of variation and time-ordering in manufacturing activities and their effects on artifact form, selection for further modification, and discard. A range of issues are also dis­cussed, including research design, classification, data management, sample size effects, statistics, fragmentation, sourcing, and other topics of relevance to current and prospective stone analysts.

Chapter 7: Usewear and residues can provide reliable indicators of how stone, bone, ceramic, and other artifacts were used in the past. In this chapter, procedures and methods are described for undertaking functional analysis, including intro­ductory experiments and microscope equipment. The identification of organic residues requires knowledge of typical plant and animal structures, properties, and composition. Stone tools provide an example for discussing the main forms of usewear (scarring, striations, polish, and edge rounding), and the wear pat­terns that are diagnostic of particular tasks, such as sawing bone, cutting wood, and scraping hides. There is a focus on recent archaeological applications and methodological problems.

Chapter 8: After describing the geology and chemistry of clays and technology of ceramic production, suggestions are provided for excavating, cleaning, marking, and handling of ceramics, followed by discussion of sampling and quantitative ana­lysis. Initiating an analytical program requires appropriate laboratory methods matched carefully with areas of ceramics research (technology studies, usewear studies, dating, identification of potters, and provenance studies). Also included are suggestions for further study, a table of analytical methods, and a ceramics examination report.

Chapter 9: The chapter stresses the importance of project planning and recovery pro­cedures of animal bones. Consistency in sieving and sampling and full doc­umentation of all on-site procedures are essential to ensure data quality. Recording protocols balance the need for an archive and the research aims of the project. We discuss the categories of data that form the majority of any zooarchaeological record, and exemplify the link between recording and analysis by reviewing bone quantification.

Chapter 10: Plant remains survive at archaeological sites more often than might be expected. This chapter briefly reviews the major areas of current research into macro­scopic plant remains in archaeology. The first of these areas is the question of what plant remains can contribute to archaeology as a whole; the second is the problems associated with the identification and origin of plant remains; and the third is the available methods that can be effectively used to retrieve and analyze plant remains.

Chapter 11: This chapter describes the processes involved in analyzing a shell midden site, which is defined as an archaeological deposit that contains 50 percent or more by weight of shellfish remains, or one in which the principal visible constituent is shell. Problems in the identification of such sites are discussed, as are processes that may disturb them. Sampling issues are critical in midden analysis, and appropriate excavation techniques are canvassed. Some basic approaches to analyzing shell remains are described, and more complex tech­niques are mentioned.

Chapter 12: Although the focus in archaeology is on material culture, it is the sedimentary matrix containing the material culture that provides key contextual informa­tion such as chronology, site formation, and paleoenvironments essential for fully understanding human behavior. Some of the most common techniques used in laboratory sediment analysis are grain size, pH, organic matter, and phosphorous content. The selection of the particular analyses performed will depend on the nature of the samples, the research questions at hand, and, of course, cost. Granulometry was the main laboratory method used to understand the vulnerability of Hokokam canal systems in the American Southwest, while several techniques were used in combination to determine the age of Kennewick Man in Washington State, without recourse to destructive sampling of the skeleton.

Chapter 13: Basic principles used in cataloging artifacts common to historical archaeological sites are reviewed, together with some of the major categories of artifacts found at historical archaeological sites. These categories include domestic ceramics and glass, building materials, and, more briefly, clay tobacco pipes, beads and buttons, glass tools, firearms, and metal containers. Methods used by historical archaeologists for quantifying and analyzing artifact information are discussed, with specific reference to minimum vessel counts and mean dates, and a guide to the most important literature on historic artifacts is provided.

Chapter 14: A review of historical sources includes general guidelines for research preparation, selecting materials, and judging source credibility. A case study illustrates the use of documents at Braudel's three broad scales of history: long-term history, social time, and individual time. Relationships between documents and archaeological evidence are described as (i) identification, (ii) comple­ment, (iii) hypothesis formation and testing, (iv) contradiction, (v) confronting myths, and (vi) creating context. An appeal is made for archaeological contri­butions to history.

Chapter 15: The starting points of writing are knowing what you want to say and who your audience is. Writing in the science structure – aims, background, methods, results, and conclusions – is suitable for most presentations, especially if you remember KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). All writing benefits from being read and critiqued by your friends and colleagues; writing well requires constant practice. When writing for publication, follow the instructions meticulously, use only clear and relevant illustrations, and get your references right. 

Handbook Of Archaeological Methods edited by Herbert D. G. Maschner, Christopher Chippindale (Altamira Press) comprises 37 articles by leading archaeologists on the key methods used by archaeologists in the field, in analysis, in theory building, and in managing cultural resources. The book is destined to become the key reference work for archaeologists and their advanced students on contemporary archaeological methods.

This handbook gathers original, authoritative articles from leading archaeologists to compile the latest thinking about archaeological methods in a single place. Topics range from theoretical models undergirding research to concrete strategies for fieldwork and laboratory analysis. Public archaeology topics such as curation, collaboration, funding, and publication are also included among the thirty-four chapters of these two volumes. Chapters are authored by well-known scholars on both sides of the Atlantic including Fagan, Hodder, Chippindale, Kvamme, McManamon, and many others. An extensive bibliography accompanies each chapter. As a single reference for current information on contemporary archaeological field methods, this handbook is unmatched.

Contributors: Mark Aldenderfer, William Andrefsky, J. Barto Arnold III, John W. Arthur, Michele R. Buzon, Christopher Chippindale, Cathy Lynne Costin, Jacqueline T. Eng, Brian Fagan, T. J. Ferguso,n Mark Feulner, Gayle J. Fritz, Mark Gillings, Michael A. Glassow, Christopher L. Hill, Ian Hodder, John Kantner, Kenneth G. Kelly, Carl Knappett, Kenneth L. Kvamme, Joseph B. Lambert, Patricia M. Lambert, W. Fredrick Limp, Lawrence L. Loendorf, Michael Love, R. Lee Lyman, Herbert D. G. Maschner, Marilyn A. Masson, James Mcglade, Francis P. McManamon, Barbara J. Mills, Brian Leigh Molyneaux, Paul B. Pettitt, Alistair W. G. Pike, Izumi Shimada, John M. Steinberg, Rafael Vega-Centeno, Phillip L. Walk, Joe Watkins, Kathryn J. Weedman, David Wheatley, and David S. Whitley.

When Augustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers was developing field methods to better understand the archaeology of his inherited estate in southern England in the late nineteenth century (Pitt-Rivers 1887-1898) or when William Matthew Flinders Petrie was formulating the skills and techniques in Egypt that led to the publication of Methods and Aims in Archaeology in 1904, neither could have imagined the range and complexity of archaeological methods available today. Most of the methods developed, elaborated, or codified up to World War II were built on the shoulders of some of our nineteenth-century founding fathers and emphasized skills to discover the past. These were refinements to already tested methods in excavation, site mapping, stratigraphy, architectural analysis, and of course, relative dating.

Postwar, the character of archaeology radically changed. Archaeologists were not so concerned with building better methods to discover the past but rather with methods to organize the past in time and space. Dating techniques, taxonomies and classifications, taphonomy and faunal analysis, multivariate analyses, regional surveys, and detailed regional chronologies dominated archaeology. The literary arguments of the time were not built on field methods per se nor were they yet fully concerned with interpretations; rather the methods for organizing the past, as typified in the great debate between Albert Spaulding (1953) and Richard Ford (1954) about the best methods for ceramic classification, dominated the archaeological dialogue. This period in the history of archaeology is perhaps best summarized in one of the most important archaeological works ever done: Gordon Willey and Philip Phillip's Method and Theory in American Archaeology (1958), where they laid out what they considered the methods of organizing the past.

In the 1960s this changed. What began as an effort to find a means to better excavate the past as the bridge to building more robust interpretations, which became methods to better organize the past, now was focused on developing methods to better interpret the past to build stronger theoretical statements about people and society. I was in grade school when Lewis Binford published his three most provocative works of the 1960s: "Archaeology as Anthropology" (1962), "A Consideration of Archaeological Research Design" (1964), and "Archaeological Systematics and the Study of Cultural Processes" (1965). Although he was considered by most to be the founding father of the new archaeology, and further considered by nearly all to have been primarily concerned with archaeological theory, the bulk of these critically important contributions were substantially about archaeological method. For Binford, theory building was really about the construction of robust methods that allowed us to link the statics, or material remains, of the archaeological record with the dynamic behaviors of the people who created it. Here theory was in most instances about the methods of interpretations.

Binford was my undergraduate advisor when some of his most enduring works were published. Again, papers such as the "Dimensional Analysis of Behavior and Site Structure" (1978a), "Willow smoke and dogs' tails" (1980), and "The Archaeology of Place" (1982) were not articles about theory; they were papers about methods of analysis and methods of interpretation. Even more so, his monographs such as Nunamiut Ethnoarchaeology (1978b) and Bones: Ancient Men and Modern Myths (1981) were methods landmarks, not new developments in archaeological theory per se. It was at about this time that Michael Schiffer created his classic work on the cultural and natural processes that affect the archaeological record (1976) and that Kent Flannery put together The Early Mesoamerican Village (1976), in my mind perhaps the greatest volume on method ever written. In fact,many of the most classic works on the method of interpreting archaeological data were created at this time, such as Renfrew's work on polities (1978), Brains's important taphonomic studies (1981), and Coles's research into the archaeology of wetlands (1984). Although some archaeologists were truly concerned with theory (e.g., Salmon 1982; Watson et al. 1971), even Flannery's classic parody on the culture of archaeology in the late 1970s, published as "The Golden Marshalltown" (1982), was really a statement about the method of archaeology, not about the theoretical developments of the time.

In the 1980s archaeology split in two directions. One was truly theoretical and involved the development of symbolic, structural, interpretive, contextual, and other archaeologies that became known as postprocessualism (Hodder 1982a, 1982b, 1986; Leone 1982; Wylie 1982). These are discussed little in this volume because there were few methods available to pursue any form of analysis under these headings, and in fact, many forms of analysis already in place were considered inappropriate, imperialistic, gender biased, or simply irrelevant to the subject. Thus, for the first time, theory and method became disarticulated. It took nearly 20 years for Ian Hodder to develop reflexive methods that could be formulated in terms that were usable in the field and laboratory (1999, this volume) and move these theoretical perspectives beyond critique and into the realm of applicability.

The other developments of the 1980s split are directly relevant to this volume. With the rise of the personal computer, the demographic diversification of the field, and the increasing sophistication of many analytic techniques, new methods changed the face of archaeology. A suite of elaborate methods were created that changed everything, from our surveys and excavations to how we organized the data to how we ultimately interpreted those data. Regional analyses coupled with geographic information systems (GIS) or the use of a GIS to organize spatial data at the site level, satellite- and ground-based remote-sensing techniques, and the development of computer programs for statistical calculations opened up entirely new areas of research for all archaeologists (Ebert 1980; Kvamme 1985, 1989), which were further elaborated in the 1990s (Aldenderfer and Maschner 1996; Allen et al. 1990; Kvamme 1999; Maschner 1996a).

Methods to investigate many of the more pressing theoretical debates of the new archaeology, such as the origins of agriculture, trade and exchange, craft specialization, urbanism, and inequality, proliferated as an entirely new set of graduate students descended on Mesoamerica, the U.S. Southwest, the Mississippi, the Andes, and prehistoric Europe (see Renfrew and Bahn 2004 for a review; chapters in this volume and in the forthcoming Handbook of Archaeology Theory [Bentley, Maschner, and Chippendale 2005]). Building on the writings of Binford, hunter-gatherer studies evolved (Bettinger 1991) with highly sophisticated methods for investigating sedentism, subsistence, inequalities, and social organization, which occurred largely through the recognition of complex hunter-gatherers (Ames 1981, 1995; Hayden et al. 1985; Yesner 1980).

Throughout the last 25 years, as many of our more technical skills in archaeology have become more refined, analytic techniques developed in other fields have also made greater contributions to archaeology, especially in the laboratory. Chemistry, physics, mathematics, ecology, and even literary methods have made significant contributions to the field, even if the methods were originally developed for nonarchaeological applications. Much like the case of reflexive theory now having a method, as previously discussed (Hodder 1999), method has become again integrated with theory in other areas as well, especially in the realms of Darwinian approaches (Maschner 1996b; O'Brien and Lyman 2000, 2003; Shennan 2002), complex systems (Bintliff 1999; Bentley and Maschner 2003), gender (Nelson 1997; Nelson and Rosen-Ayalon 2002; Walde and Willows 1989; Wylie 1991) art and symbolism (Chippindale and 'fawn 1998; Whitley 2001), and a suite of mixed processual and postprocessual approaches that began with Stephen Mithen's important paper that demonstrated the common goals of postprocessual approaches and modern Darwinian approaches (1989).

Finally, and much to the betterment of the discipline, archaeological method has become more plural with a greater emphasis on historical representation and power (Arnold 1987; Gero and Root 1996) and alternative voices and interpretations (Anawak 1996; Anyon et al. 1997; Preucel and Hodder 1996; Trigger 1996). Traditional knowledge is becoming important tohow methods are applied and in which contexts. Cultural sensitivity and spirituality must be considered when applying certain methods to sacred places and landscapes. Indigenous groups are now taking an active role in creating research designs that ultimately must affect the kinds of methods used (Ferguson and Watson this volume; Swidler et al. 1997). With the rise of applied archaeology, where the past is investigated at least in part to specifically address problems faced by disenfranchised groups today (Maschner and Reedy-Maschner 2005), the methods one employs must stand up to legal scrutiny across many jurisdictional boundaries.

Thus, archaeological methods have diversified, been elaborated, become specialized, and in some cases, have become an independent field of study. On the other hand, many of the methods developed in the nineteenth century survive in the twenty-first century with little alteration. It is the goal of this volume to put these methods in context.

In some areas of archaeology today, theory for the sake of theory is an appropriate end product. But for most of us, theory structures the questions that we eventually want to ask of the past, and this requires a set of rigorous methods. This companion volume to the Handbook of Archaeological Theory (Bentley, Maschner, and Chippendale 2005) is an overview of the methods necessary to put theory into practice. What exactly is method? If your research question is what you want to know and your theoretical stance is why you want to know it, then your method is how you intend to know it. This is critical to the research process, because your method will not only determine your results, but will tie everything back together when you finally get to the point of organizing your research.

Introductions to archaeology tend to be dominated by methods whereas more advanced undergraduate courses and graduate courses tend more toward theory—why? Because a detailed understanding of the methods of archaeology, and their limitations, is much more difficult and time-consuming to master.

Building from such classic projects as Gordon Willey's Viru Valley survey (1953) and Charles Reher 's lesser-known Lower Chaco River project (1977), and forming the foundation of nearly all field research projects, archaeological survey is still one of the most important and enduring legacies of the development of archaeological methods, and it is certainly a needed first step if one wants to use many of the other methods discussed in this volume. Brian Molyneaux reports that "the results of a survey are mediated by one fundamental, irresolvable problem: a survey is an indeterminate, culturally relative activity designed to seek traces of many other indeterminate, culturally relative activities." In this sense, the archaeological survey provides the ultimate source of discovery that is bounded by cultural practices of both the surveys and the producers of the archaeological record.

With years of field experience in a variety of contexts in the Santa Barbara Channel region, Michael Glassow takes us on a tour of excavation methods. These are not the methods of Schliemann at Troy (1880) or even Wheeler at Mohenjo Daro (1966), these are the methods of everyday modern archaeology. In the United States, the greatest number of excavations consist of a 1 x 1 m square, or some small combination of them. Glassow discusses this critical form of excavation and demonstrates the complexities of an excavation project, from site grids to sampling, one's choice of tools, recording, cleaning, and ultimately the curation of finds.

Sequence and stratigraphy are the foundations of all archaeological excavations, and Barbara Mills and Rafael Vega-Centeno, specialists in the prehistory of the southwest United States, the region where Kidder excavated Pecos Pueblo and spent so much effort on its stratigraphy (1924), are uniquely qualified to review this important foundation to archaeological inquiry. The authors state that "the concepts of sequence and stratigraphy are so fundamental to the excavation and interpretation of archaeological sites that they are often assumed, rather than explicitly discussed." But here the authors provide a detailed and enlightening study of the concept and its practical applications.

The reader might wonder at the inclusion of ethnoarchaeology in this early section of the volume. But building on the pioneering studies of, among many, Lewis Binford (1978b), William Longacre (1970), Carol Cramer (1979), Richard Gould (1980), and

John Yellen (1977) we find that ethnoarchaeology, founded in early studies of analogy and the direct-historical method, has become a key field method for interpreting and organizing the archaeological record. Here young scholars John Arthur and Kathryn Weedman demonstrate that the role of ethnoarchaeology is not only important but critical to understanding the dynamics of social interactions and their effects on archaeological patterning. Writing from firsthand experience in Africa, the authors review not only the methods and assumptions inherent in ethnoarchaeology but also the ethical and political consequences of doing studies with living peoples.

There is perhaps no more romanticized area of field research than maritime archaeology. Visions of crystal clear blue waters, sunken ships, and priceless treasures dominate both the imagination and public perception. Yet Mark Feulner and J. Barto Arnold III demonstrate that in reality this is a highly sophisticated area of archaeological field research providing data that are not available in any other research context. Maritime archaeology is being used today in many contexts, from Phoenician trading ships in the Mediterranean to the sea battles of World War II (Delgado 2001) and is providing important data, if not individual time slices, on the role of the sea in the structure of many societies.

Part 2, "Analytic Methods," begins with radiocarbon dating. As Paul Pettitt points out, no other method or skill has had a greater impact on the field than Libby's initial development of radiocarbon dating. Now refined and highly accurate with detailed calibration curves from a number of contexts, radiocarbon dating is the primary means by which archaeologists organize their data in many areas of the world. When radiocarbon dating is combined with a suite of alternative dating techniques ranging from dendrochronology to uranium isotopes, Alistair Pike and Paul Pettitt suggest that the fundamental question of when something occurred is of less debate today so that scholars can spend more of their time on explanations for past events.

Perhaps no method developed largely since 1980 has had a more profound effect on archaeological research than the proliferation of geographic information systems (GIS). As Mark Gillings and David Wheatley point out, the use of GIS is now widespread and integrated into almost every area of research.

They also state that "virtually everything archaeologists are interested in was found somewhere, and through their location in space, archaeological features and artifacts are related to other features of the natural or cultural environment." GIS techniques are being used for a suite of archaeological problems and have recently entered the analytic areas of spatial perception, cognition, symbolism, and landscape (Lock and Harris 1996; Maschner 1996c, 1996d; Ruggles and Medyckyj-Scott 1996; Wheatley 1996). When combined with a suite of remote-sensing and geophysical methods, we are now able to organize, analyze, and visualize large amounts of spatial data, which has revolutionized both site-specific and regional analyses. Ken Kvamme, perhaps best known for the early development of GIS techniques in archaeology, takes us on an in-depth tour of the available remote-sensing techniques of today and reviews the appropriateness of each for today's archaeological research. As he states, "archaeological remote sensing allows large regions to be rapidly investigated for archaeological features, at relatively low cost; it can detect features unseen on the surface, precisely map them, and offer interpretations based on their form, distribution, and context. In short, archaeological remote sensing may offer the only pragmatic means to locate, map, and inventory much of the world's archaeological resources." Reviewing both ground-and satellite-based techniques (e.g., Pasquinucci and Trément 2000), Kvamme argues that these technologies form the foundation of twenty-first-century archaeological survey.

For many of us, archaeological chemistry is an arcane method that seeks to identify trace elements or the molecular structures of things and then use those data to investigate everything from manufacturing techniques to craft specialization to trade and exchange. Although a few archaeologists such as Alexander Bentley and colleagues use bone chemistry to investigate migrations and marriage patterns (Bentley, Price, and Chikhi 2003; Bentley, Krause, Price, and Kaufmann 2003), most archaeological chemistry is done by chemists with an interest in the past. Joseph Lambert is one such scholar, and his initial book on the subject (1997) made an impact on the field. Here Lambert argues that "chemistry is concerned with matter and its changes. All of the materials of archaeology, from stone tools to humanskeletal remains, have compositions that may be analyzed by modern chemical techniques." Chemistry can be used for everything from diet to manufacturing techniques to artifact origins. It can be applied to a suite of other critical discoveries and is important to many archaeological investigations.

Quantification has played an important role in archaeology for nearly a century, yet the development of statistical methods in archaeology is a product of the last 50 years, first in the taxonomic debates of the 1950s and later as multivariate methods of association and clustering that closely mirrored the development of modern computing power (Aldenderfer 1987; Shennan 1997; Thomas 1976). As Mark Aldenderfer makes clear, there is little one can do in archaeology today without a basic understanding of statistical methods. The computing revolution of the 1980s not only changed our approaches to statistics, putting analytic power in the hands of all archaeologists, but further changed the way we use mathematical techniques in general. This is clear in the discussion of computer modeling and simulation, which form the basis for many studies in physics, ecology, and mathematics and also, as James McGlade shows, are critical both to the archaeology of the 1970s (Doran 1970; Hodder 1978a) and to modern archaeology (van der Leeuw and McGlade 1997). McGlade points out that modeling should not be seen as an end product to research, but it also should not be dismissed as simply a game of computer aficionados. Rather, it is a simple technique for investigating the relationships between very complex phenomena.

Experimental archaeology has been important for many years, and it was one of the critical areas of research with the development of the new archaeology in the 1960s and 1970s, especially with the debates regarding analogy, ethnoarchaeology, and the use of middle range theory (Coles 1979), and is still important today (Mathieu 2002). Izumi Shimada has done much to continue and propagate experimental studies over the last 20 years, especially with his work on metallurgy on the Andean coast (Shimada and Merkel 1991; Shimada and Wagner 2001). He argues that "experimental archaeology is a method of testing our ideas about and discovering the past through experiments." He then outlines a history of experimental research in archaeology and reviews many of its most common and modern applications.

This part concludes with a review of reflexive methods. When Ian Hodder first started to discuss the importance of structural, contextual, and reflexive archaeologies nearly 25 years ago (1982a, 1982b), they were difficult to apply because no one had laid out the methods to put them into action. His recent work along these lines (1999) provides a framework for a postprocessual research program. He argues that there is a real need for a reflexive research effort in response to the overly codified methods of most archaeologists but that these need to be situated in the contexts of interpretation with an emphasis on the ethics of archaeology, especially with regard to alternative voices of interpretation.

Part 3 is titled "Applying Analytic Methods." There is no doubt that the two most important areas of investigation conducted at some point by 'nearly all archaeologists concern technology and subsistence. The topics discussed here include the primary methods that archaeologists employ to investigate the material record of the past—the methods by which material things are counted, measured, described, and compared. These are also the chapters that cover the basic questions of the subsistence economy—what people hunted, gathered, fished, or farmed. Technology and subsistence form the foundations of archaeological inquiry. Bioarchaeological studies take us far beyond these more basic questions, and we will see that so much can be learned from human remains that nearly all aspects of the material record are weak in comparison. Finally, few categories of remains allow us to make inferences about the cognitive, spiritual, and symbolic realms of the past, but rock art is a great place to begin such investigations.

The famous Paleolithic archaeologist C. B. M. McBurney wrote in his classic volume on the site of Hauh Fateah that stone tools were man's extracorporeal limbs (1967). I think many of us see most aspects of technology in this light, and this is certainly the case for ceramics and lithics. Throughout much of the world ceramics are the most important material remains in the archaeological record of the last 10,000 years (Rice 1987). So many regional chronologies have been constructed based on fragments of pottery that it would be difficult to imagine many sequences without them. Using examples from the eastern Mediterranean,

Carl Knappett shows that ceramics can inform us on an entire suite of activities that go far beyond typology and chronology. Lithic studies solve many of the same problems as ceramic analysis, but with less stylistic interference. In many areas of the world, especially when investigating the past lives of hunter-gatherers, stone tools are often the only remains, leading many archaeologists to base all of their interpretations on this highly durable material item. As William Andrefsky (1998, 2001; see also Odell 2004) points out, "lithic artifact variability is extremely complex and is linked not only to technological, cultural, and functional requirements but also to aberrations in raw-material availability and other situational constraints," which makes it suitable for a suite of detailed and replicable analyses.

Understanding what people ate at different times in the past under different social, demographic, and environmental conditions provided archaeologists with their first views of the socioeconomic past. Although archaeologists have been concerned with these topics for a century, these investigations became paramount with the advent of the new archaeology and its preoccupation with human-landscape interactions and cultural adaptations to the environment—continuing today as one of our most critical areas of investigation. The two means by which archaeologists do this are paleobotany and zooarchaeology. As Gayle Fritz points out, paleobotany is concerned with the analysis of plant remains in all of their forms, from pollen to charred plants, and is still one of our most important methods for understanding foraging and domestication (e.g., Piperno and Stothert 2003). She states that "paleoethnobotanists study past interrelationships between people and plants using various kinds of archaeological evidence" and that the numerous scenarios of human-plant interactions require a suite of both macroscopic and microscopic methods. Perhaps more widespread because of the commonality of the remains, zooarchaeology is now considered one of our most important and basic methods of investigation (Grayson 1984). In this volume Lee Lyman tells us that the analysis of faunal remains, and the parallel study of taphonomy (Lyman 1994), provide the bulk of the data on major mammalian, avian, and fish species used by the prehistoric inhabitants for food, tools, and the greater economy. Faunal remains can also be used to reconstruct past ecosystems and their study contributes to the solution of modern environmental problems (Lyman and Cannon 2004).

There is no method available to an archaeologist that provides a greater breadth of data than bioarchaeology (Larsen 1997). As Buzon, Eng, Lambert, and Walker point out in this volume, demography, social relations, inequality, gender roles, violence, warfare, disease, diet, genealogies, economic activities, migration, technology, and many other topics can be investigated from human skeletal remains. There is little surprise that, in nearly every region where the archaeological record has been studied for decades, when a detailed bioarchaeological analysis of an area becomes available, our understanding of the past grows exponentially (Lambert 2002; Walker 1997). Most recently and with spectacular results, bioarchaeological studies of health, violence and warfare, diet, and genetics are changing our basic perceptions of the past in many ways (Billman et al. 2000) and are contributing to the rewriting of history (Novak and Kopp 2003).

The last chapter in this part concerns the analysis of rock art. The reader might wonder why the analysis of rock art around the world has become so important over the last 20 years and why it is now considered one of our most important methods of investigation. I believe rock art studies are now important because they are one of the few means by which archaeologists go beyond investigations of the economy, politics, and social worlds of a prehistoric people (Chippindale and Tacon 1998; Ho11 2004; Keyser 2004; Whitley 2001). Following some dissatisfaction with the economic emphasis of the 1960s and 1970s, archaeologists sought ways to investigate more cognitive aspects of past human lives, and rock art was the obvious choice. As David Whitley and Lawrence Loendorf make so clear through their careful discussion of the means by which archaeologists investigate the symbolic and spiritual past, these techniques can be applied to many forms of art and architecture, not only rock art, and provide clues to areas of the past unavailable in any other form of analysis.

Part 4 in this volume is titled "Frameworks for Methods." Studies of demography and geoarchaeology have had a long history in archaeology and have evolved through a suite of theoretical changes and technological achievements into important methods in their own right. Studies of craft specializations, historical archaeology, trade and exchange, and regional analysis are methods that were originally developed or elaborated to further the agendas of the new archaeology, but now have been turned toward many of the modern theoretical developments in the field. All are critical to our explanations of both cultural processes and individual events. They are methods that have been used in the context of heavily empirical and environmentally based studies and in the context of poststructuralist, neoMarxist, and feminist theoretical approaches.

Population size, growth, and demography have played such an important part in archaeological explanation over the last 40 years that it is difficult to imagine a scenario where an archaeologist hasn't spent time attempting to reconstruct past populations and their regional distributions. From the population pressure arguments of the 1960s (Binford 1969; Boserup 1965) to the population growth and scale arguments of the 1970s (Johnson 1982) to the paleodemographic studies of the 1990s (Paine 1997), demography has been a central theme in all these studies. Richard Paine lays out the method and theory of investigating prehistoric demography. Building on regional analysis, cemeteries, genetics, and other data, Paine states that "studies of prehistoric demography rely on three main courses of data: archaeology, archaeologically recovered human skeletons, and the genetic structure of living human populations. Each of these has great potential but presents obstacles that have yet to be surmounted."

Geoarchaeology in a general sense might be considered one of the classic methods of archaeology and many of us still remember some of the classic works that integrated geology and environmental archaeology, such as Butzer 's Environment and Archaeology (1964). But today geoarchaeology is much more sophisticated and provides the methods to build many of our most important behavioral and even postprocessual interpretations. Christopher Hill provides this overview and makes obvious that, although basic studies of landscape evolution, site geography, climate, and geomorphic context are still the most important contributions of geoarchaeology, studies of everything from microstratigraphy and site formation processes to global change events (Bradley 1999) are now within the realm of the field.

Craft production and specialization has become one of the primary methods for investigating the rise, development, organization, and structure of more complex societies (Costin and Wright 1998; Wailes 1996). Craft specialists are some of the first individuals in a society with economic goals transcending traditional food-related production. Part-time craft specialists are common in many village-based societies, even hunter-gatherer villages such as those along the north Pacific Rim and California (Ames 1995; Arnold 1987). But full-time craft specialists, which require an economic system with enough surplus food to support these individuals, are usually found in much more complex societies (Brumfiel and Earle 1987). As Cathy Costin points out, "crafting is best viewed as any transformational process involving skill (knowledge, talent or proficiency, effort), aesthetics, and cultural meaning and consider the results of that crafting (verb) to be crafts (noun)." This broad but succinct definition allows craft production to be used to address topics in nearly every theoretical perspective in a wide variety of contexts.

Whether investigating slavery, colonial expansion, military heritage, or the legacy of the Cold War, historical archaeology has come into its own in the last 40 years (South 1977a, 1977b). In Europe, historical archaeology takes many forms, from the Romans to medieval times to the Industrial Revolution, whereas in the Americas it deals specifically with the time since European colonization. Kenneth Kelly tells us that historical archaeology is defined from "the broad and literal (archaeology with a documentary component) to the chronological (archaeology of the post-fifteenth-century period), from the cultural (the archaeology of European expansion and its impact on the rest of the world) to a concern with the theoretical (the archaeology of the origins and spread of capitalism)." In this light, historical archaeology is applicable in an array of theoretical, temporal, and spatial contexts, resulting in one of the fastest-growing areas of archaeological method and theory.

When archaeologists in the 1970s were searching for methods to better understand cultural processes through regional interaction, studies of trade and exchange were important (Earleand Ericson 1977). Today, when studies of processes have changed to include agency, power, gender roles, and historical contingency, studies of trade and exchange provide a powerful means of investigating the past. Closely related to craft production, trade and exchange is certainly integrated into many other methodological arenas and is really a methodology of studying interaction. Marilyn Masson states in this volume that production and trade are intertwined, and we find that many of the processes already discussed in the chapter on craft production are again presented here but in an entirely different methodological context.

Perhaps no area of research has been more historically romanticized than regional analysis. From the Viru Valley in Peru (Willey 1953) to the basin of Mexico (Sanders et al. 1979) to the rolling chalk hills of Wessex in southern England (Renfrew 1978), regional analysis has been one of the critical areas of investigation for studying social evolution, interaction, political complexity, and economy. With the addition of quantitative approaches in the 1970s (Clark 1977; Hodder 1978b) and the rise of GIS technologies in the 1980s and 1990s for regional studies (Aldenderfer and Maschner 1996; Maschner 1996a; Wheatley and Gillings 2002), regional analysis has continued as a major theme in archaeological analysis. John Kantner, building on his own research in the American Southwest, argues that "although the goals, methods, and theory vary in all . . . examples of regional analysis, what is shared is an interest in how humans interact with, use, and modify space on a broad spatial scale."

If one surveys the many introductory textbooks on archaeological methods, it is difficult to find even a mention of the management or politics of archaeology until quite recently (e.g., Renfrew and Bahn 1996). In part 5, "Managing Archaeology," we look in detail at some of the critical topics faced by archaeologists in the research process. The chapters survey how one curates and manages archaeological sites once they have been found and the methods for curating the immense amount of data generated in most archaeological investigations. The methods for funding research and ultimately writing and publishing the results of research are equally important because the article, book, or chapter is a critical end product of any investigation. But perhaps most important today, the archaeologist must also be a good steward, and working with indigenous peoples has become critical to being a good manager and investigator of the past.

The biggest danger to archaeology today is the destruction of our archaeological heritage by looting and development (Fagan 1990; papers in Green 1984). Although most countries have laws protecting heritage resources, the management of those resources goes far beyond legal protections (King 1998). Francis McManamon states that "managing archaeological resources involves a set of activities intended to ensure the preservation, protection, proper treatment, and appropriate use of these resources." Appropriate use may mean research, heritage, tourism, protection, or some combination of these factors. This is similarly true for the curation of archaeological data. With the proliferation of computers and software, the management of archaeological data has grown from simply data storage and retrieval to data analysis and redistribution. Fred Limp and the staff of the Center for Advanced Spatial Technologies have been at the forefront of archaeological data management. In this volume Limp argues that "all archaeologists know that the archaeological resources that they study are nonrenewable. But data that they recover can be kept safe for the future. It does no good to rescue a site and then lose the data."

One of the biggest barriers to archaeological research is securing adequate funding for the project in mind. Funding can come from a number of sources, but as Michael Love points out, "in archaeology, what counts is not the project that you want to do but the one that you can get funded." This means that sometimes the funding one receives for a particular project that must be done, such as a cultural resources management project or a contract with an agency, can be turned into the research effort that you want to do by merging both goals. But there are opportunities for funding pure research that are highly competitive, and the process of creating a quality proposal is sometimes as time-consuming as the proposed research. Regardless of the approach one takes, adequate funding is the single most important barrier to conducting research.

Perhaps the most important facet of being a professional archaeologist is writing and publishing. One can be the greatest archaeologist with the greatest research in the world, but if no one can read about your work, then everything else is meaningless. Chris Chippindale argues that "knowledge is not public knowledge until other people know it; while it remains locked inside the head of the individual who found it out, perhaps it is not knowledge at all." He then takes the student through the process of getting research recognized, participating in conferences, and getting published. He believes that the ability to write about your research is intimately tied to the ability to talk about your research, and therefore public presentations and written presentations are equally important.

Last but certainly not least, and a chapter that perhaps should have been the first chapter because it is so centrally important, is one's ability to work with local and indigenous peoples. This requires finding research themes that are important to archaeology, on the one hand, but that create data and provide information that is important to local and indigenous peoples as well (Dongoske et al. 2000; Layton 1989; Swidler et al. 1997). It also requires the ability to adjust research plans to satisfy local cultural sensitivities. This can be a difficult but highly rewarding endeavor. As T. J. Ferguson and Joe Watkins emphasize, "as a discipline, we need to develop symbiotic, rather than parasitic, relationships and we need to integrate the values and needs of the indigenous peoples into the scientific agenda of archaeological research." But this should be the essence of any ethical and humanistic approach to good archaeology and makes us not only better stewards of the past but better conveyors of prehistory to the larger world.

The methods of archaeology are clearly diverse, situational, and unlimited in scope. The methods one employs must be chosen from those that most interesting or important for the research at hand. There are few cases where all of these methods are warranted, but in certain cases of long-term research efforts with a multidisciplinary cast of scholars, all of these methods are used at some point in the research effort. 

Centralization, Early Urbanization, and Colonization in First Millenium B.C. Greece and Italy by P. A. J. Attema (Bulletin Antieke Beschaving. Supplement, 9: Peeters) This volume brings together a number of case studies in the landscape archaeology of South and Cen­tral Italy by distinguished scholars writing from first-hand experience. The contributions illustrate the growing interest among Mediterranean landscape archaeologists in long-term regional trends and processes, such as the centralization of indigenous society during protohistory, the interaction between indigenous and Greek and Roman colonial culture, and the formation of the early historic landscape of town and country. The contributions also reflect the increasing sophistication of field methods and material studies as well as theoretically informed desktop studies, which now succeed in mapping a wide range of forms of permanent human settlement and ritual activity in the Italian landscape — from subsistence farms to complex urban settlements and from ritual cave sites to institutionalized sanctuarιes. Contributions by Marianne Kleibrink, Alessandro Vanzetti, Helle Horsnæs, Bert Nijboer, Gert-Jan Burgers, Peter Attema & Martijn ván Leusen.

This volume brings together a number of case studies that illustrate the recent interest among Mediterranean landscape archaeologists in long-term regional trends and processes, including the centralization of indigenous society during protohistory, the interaction between indigenous and colonial culture, and the formation of the early historic landscape of town and country. Centralization and early urbanization in the later Bronze Age and the first half of the 1st millennium BC, and Greek and Roman colonization starting in the late 8th c. and late 6th c. BC, are regarded as the core processes that shaped the classical landscapes of southern and central Italy. It is with these processes and their interpretation that the present volume is concerned. These processes operated in the shade of the historical events that created in Italy a society that is generally referred to as Hel­lenized and/or Romanized – a "global" world that shared a cultural koine and comparable ways of living. By the 4th c. BC the typical Hellenistic or early Roman landscape is characterized by a dense pattern of towns, villages, hamlets and farmsteads that can be found in the coastal plains, foothills and river valleys alike, and from northern Etruria to southern Calabria. This landscape centred on the principal cities, which in the south were often the former Greek colonies and in central Italy the Archaic city states of Etruria and Lazio. Field walking surveys have shown how Greek and Roman culture penetrated into the mountainous zones and the marshlands of the indigenous Italic landscape as well. The abundance and uniformity of settlements, and its contemporaneous appearance in all the Italic landscapes, make one aware of the importance of long and medium term changes in the shaping of what is generally called the classical landscape. This shift from localism to globalism, as Nicola Terrenato has put ít, produced a new cultural habitus in which the previously shocking prospect of unification under Roman rule suddenly became acceptable. It is not far-fetched to maintain that modern landscape archaeology has had an important role in this processual view of the creation of the Hell­enized and Roman world of the 4th c. BC and after. Qualitate qua the discipline of landscape archaeology has transcended the great divide between protohistory and classical archaeology, at first perhaps quite uncon­sciously, but more recently in full awareness of its contrίbutíon to our understanding of the longue durée of the Italic landscapes and of the processes of transformation at work in the conjoncture. 

The landscapes studied by the various authors in this volume are located, from south to north, in Calabria, Apulia, Lucania, South Lazio, Etruria, and the Veneto. It is from these landscapes that the authors derive case studies concerning the formative processes that led to the urbanized society of the 4th c. BC. Using a healthy mixture of excavation data and data resulting from topographical studies and landscape archaeology, they have delved into aspects of centralization of indigenous settlement and society in the later Bronze age and early Iron age including its relation to early Greek colonization (Vanzetti, Kleibrink); urbanization in the later Iron age and Archaic period (Horsnæs, Nijboer); and the transition from the Archaic into the Hellenistic and early Roman world (Burgers, Attema & van Leusen). Whilst these articles were written as a discussion and analy­sis of region-specific data, they offer in combination a comparative perspective on the central issues of centralization, early urbanization and colonization in early Italy. 

The volume starts with an introspective and critical contribution by the Italian protohistorian Alessandro Vanzetti on proto-urban developments in the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Italy. In his comparative study of regional developments in Etruria and Lazio, the Sibaritide in north Calabria and the Veneto, Vanzetti discusses the theory and methodology of archaeological interpretation as practised by the two main schools of protohis­tory in Italy – the Scuola Romana di Protostoria and the Scuola di Padova – and to a lesser degree also that of foreign schools. This thought-provoking paper focuses on the decisive role of inference (as opposed to direct evidence) in our construction of protohistorical settlement models; a situation that, even with the aid of the most sophisticated of field methodologies and methods, will improve only very slowly. According to the adherents of the Roman school of protohistory, the currently available data make clear that proto-urbanization in various regions of Italy began well before the onset of Greek colonization and even before the so-called pre-colonial

period (contra Etruscology). Especially the evidence from Etruria shows that we should not always think in terms of a slow and gradual process, but rather in terms of a highly dynamic development that caused settlements to coalesce into larger centres. It is especially the latter physical trait that defines proto-urbanization. Vanzetti confronts problems of continuity and discontinuity in the protohistorical landscape by exposing the Braudelian time model as applied by, for example, Graeme Barker in his publication of the Biferno valley sur­vey, as essentially a model of continuity. As one of the major weaknesses in the interpretative framework of the Roman School itself, Vanzetti identifies the so-called assumptions of spatial unity and temporal continuity. Were the large plateaus of the Etruscan sites already completely settled in the early Iron age or should we think of dispersed nuclei instead? Are finds from the slopes of the plateaus always derived from settlement on the plateau edge or could they also derive from in situ contexts? And can we, in the case of an apparent chronological discontinuity, attribute the `missing' period simply to sampling biases? To improve research into the protohistorical period, Vanzetti advocates full publication of the pottery data of the sites that figure in the recon­structed settlement models, as well as the integration of excavation and survey with environmental studies. 

In the second paper Marianne Kleibrink, director of the Dutch excavations at Francavilla Marittima, analyses — in what we may call a truly cognitive-processual study — the indigenous pre- and protohistorical patterns of religion and settlement in the Sibaritide in Calabria, one of the regions also discussed by Vanzetti in his com­parative study. Landscape and settlement appear in their guise of social and ritual space, while the artefacts uncovered in various archaeological contexts are treated as mediators between humans and the supernatural and between the people themselves. The author uses a deep time perspective to describe regional developments and to evaluate the role and significance of Greek colonisation. Moving from a discussion of the ritual use of Neolithic and Bronze age cave sites and the significance of axes buried in the Bronze age landscape to the interpretation of her excavations in the sanctuary of Timpone della Motta at Francavilla Marittima and a kinship analysis of the graves of its necropolis, Kleibrink creates a ritual and social perspective on centralisation and early urbanization in which the core element is the way people delineate space for ritual behaviour. She distinguishes two main centralisation phases that are archaeologically visible: a native phase occurring during the later Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (1500 — 700 BC), and the Greek process of apoikia (the founding of new towns), which resulted in the flourishing cities of Sybaris (founded around 700 BC) and its suc­cessor Thurioi (founded in 444 BC). In her contribution the emphasis is, however, on the first phase. In this context the Oinotrians, the indigenous population of the Sibaritide, are described as the true colonisers of old of the Sibaritide, having already developed a flourishing complex society by the early Iron age, i.e. well before the arrival of the Greeks. This is a scenario in which the Greeks are assigned a much humbler historical position than is usual in more traditional studies. The Greeks would have acquired hegemonic power only in the course of the 6th c. BC, not through destruction of the indigenous villages as Vanzetti maintains in the pre-ceding paper, but in a more peaceful process. 

The Danish archaeologist Helle Horsnæs discusses urbanization in the mountainous landscape of Northwestern coastal Lucania in the Archaic and Hellenistic periods. This well-documented study of the development of set­tlement patterns in the coastal strip between Poseidonia and Laos takes into account all available archaeological evidence (fortifications, houses, sanctuaries, graves) and discusses it in relation to epigraphical, numismatical and historical sources. Like Kleibrink, Horsnæs has a strong ethnical interest in the respective contributions of the Greeks as the founders of colonies as Poseidonia, Velia and Laos (the latter identified with Marcellina) and the indigenous Oinotrian population to the urbanization of the Lucanian landscape. The situation in Lucania seems, however, to be quite diverse from that in the Sibaritide, and the archaeological material points at two major devel­opments. The first major development would have occurred during the Archaic period, when the study area quite suddenly becomes settled. This presents a strong contrast with the preceding period of the Iron age in which the landscape seems largely unoccupied. Compared to the complex society that, by that time, had formed in the Sibar­itide one may wonder what could have been the cause for such diverging protohistorical trajectories? One obvi­ous explanation for the scarcity of protohistorical remains is undoubtedly the poor coverage of the landscape by intensive survey, but this cannot be the sole explanation. The next major development is the rise of larger set­tlements, some with a regular planned layout, the building of fortifications around coastal sites like Poseidonia and Laos, and a gradual infill of the countryside. According to Horsnaes it is possible to speak of an autonomous

Lucanían urbanization in the fourth century BC that was not a mere copy of the Greek one but the result of 200 years of contact between Greeks and indigenous peoples. Horsnæs identifies the 5th century BC as the period of transformation, and presents Roccagloriosa as an exceptionally strong example: innovations in urban architec­ture (the introduction of fortifications) and house architecture (introduction of courtyard houses) both occurred in the 5th century BC. As a particular difference between Greek and indigenous ideologies she identifίes the dif­ferent ways of housing the gods: "when the idea of houses for the gods and for the cult finally entered the Lucan­ian culture, the buildings were made in the image of Lucanían houses, not Greek temples". 

The contribution by Albert Nijboer on the characteristics of emerging towns in central Italy between 800 and 400 BC sheds light on a fundamental issue in the study of early urbanίzation that is relevant to other Italic regions as well. Concentrating on the intensification of industrial activities and the advance of market conditions as born out by the currently available archaeological evidence, Nijboer points out how economic cen­tralisation is closely tied up with urbanisation. Economic centralisation initially occurred in relation to mineral resources at settlements whose population was partially employed in industrial activities or took place on the shores of natural harbours where emporia were founded that accommodated sea borne trade. Pottery and metal workshops were established around the sanctuaries and elite buildings in the proto-urban centres. In the 6th and 5th centuries BC, primary centres tended to absorb smaller centres. In conjunction with this change in the configuration of the late Iron Age settlement pattern Nijboer traces the growth of a market mechanism based on exchange by quantification (i.e., using standard measures for volumes and weights), which in due time would replace the prevailing economy of reciprocity and redistribution. This, he notes, is not in line with the `minimalist' view of the Archaic economy, for which the main argument is the absence of archaeological evidence from the countryside, and which recent surveys have demonstrated is a misconception. It is now clear that south Etruria and Latium Vetus had a well-developed Archaic countryside in which the urban centres functioned as regional administrative centres and maintained fora for exchange. With the substantial introduction of the Mediterranean triad of cereals, vines and olives, the Archaic economy became increasingly based on the exchange of agricultural products in addition to crafted commodities (such as bronzes and buc­chero) but it remained essentially a pre-monetary society. Together with the crystallization of distinct and iden­tifiable forms of landownership in the territories of the early urban centres, the developments described by Nijboer may be viewed as providing the economic basis for the subsequent Classical/Hellenistic landscape of town and country that spread over large parts of Italy. 

It is the Classical/Hellenistic landscape itself that is the subject of a study of indigenous urbanization in the Brindisino region in the Salerno in Apulia by Gert-Jan Burgers. Drawing on the substantial data sets collected in many years of settlement excavations and systematic surveys by the Free University of Amsterdam, Burgers sets out to analyse the settlement dynamics that were at work in conjunction with social dynamics in the early Hellenistic period (4th/3rd century BC). Growing communal integration and central management can, according to the author, be deduced from the occurrence of structured rural infill (revealing an intensification and expansion of agriculture), conspicuous public or ceremonial architecture related to a self-conscious elite, and fortifications that symbolise tribal prestige and autonomy. The period treated by Burgers is described as one of maximum expansion of many of the fortified strongholds in southern Italy, as well as being character­ized by a widespread and dense rural infill from the wet coastal zones to the sandy soils of the Brindisi plain and the hard limestone plateau of the Murge. The spatial configuration of Hellenistic artefact scatters testifies to the existence of both isolated farmsteads and hamlets in the territories of the expanding towns. The view that towns and villages came to function as local centres that supplied their hinterlands with craft products and offered facilities for the processing, storage and exchange of agricultural products is in line with Nijboer's observations. The funerary record, finally, points to a situation in which most or all members of the commu­nity were given the right to formal burial. To this end a physical distinction between domestic and burial areas must have been institutionalised. The observed uniformity in grave structure and content reflects the existence of a homogeneous stratum in the social hierarchy of the urban population, distinct from that represented by the hypogea of the elite. Burgers concludes his paper with a discussion of the interesting issue of whether it was the native elites or the lower strata of society that brought about the social cohesion characterizing the early Hellenistic local communities in the Salento.

The final paper by Peter Attema and Martijn van Leusen is dedicated to a fundamental and historically attested phase in the making of Roman Italy: that of early Roman colonization in Latium Vetus during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The paper builds on data derived from a research programme involving intensive field walking survey and pottery studies of rural sites in the catchments of three Roman towns in Latium Vetus, carried out by the first author between 1995 and 1998. Two of these towns qualify as early Roman/Latin colonies that, according to the ancient sources, were founded by the Romans in the Pontine region and Sacco valley respec­tively; the third is an ancient Latin city state in the heartland of Latin civilisation, the Alban Hills. As an inte­gral part of their methodology, a classification method based on fabric analysis has been used to date the oth­erwise undiagnostic material typically collected in field surveys. This, together with the practice of `total artefact collection' during survey, has resulted in the discovery of a `hidden' protohistorical and archaic land­scape. Describing and comparing the results from the field surveys and pottery studies, the authors arrive at the conclusion that the rural landscape of Latium Vetus and Adiectum, irrespective of early Roman colonisation, is characterised by a high degree of continuity in settlement patterns between the protohistorical and Roman periods. In the absence of visible differences in material culture between the early Romans and other Latin tribes, the authors could therefore not find archaeological evidence for the historically attested early Roman colonization of the Latin rural territories. It is only from the mid-4th century BC that Roman rural col­onization becomes evident within the territories of the early colonies within the Pontine region. 

The contributions in this volume reflect the increasing sophistication of field methods and material studies as well as theoretically informed desktop studies, which now succeed in mapping a wide range of forms of permanent human settlement and ritual activity in the landscape — from subsistence farms to complex urban set­tlements and from ritual cave sites to instιtutionalised sanctuaries. In fact all papers implicitly stress the importance of the liaison between landscape archaeology and excavation of key sites (both urban and rural). The papers in this volume likewise show that it has become possible to analyse these archaeological data in the context of the spatial, social, ritual and economic dynamics that can be interpreted as historical processes of centralisation, early urbanisation and colonisation in the areas studied. In all cases these processes would ultimately lead to what appears to have been a relatively uniform classical landscape of town and country. Due to the increasing quality of regional archaeological data sets and a certain measure of standardization between projects it is not surprising that recently an interest has developed in comparing settlement trends between regions, with the aim of analysing the variables at work in creating the urban condition. Such cross-regional comparison should lead to a deeper understanding of the underlying processes leading to the formation of the early historic Mediterranean landscape of town and country.

The Proto-Neolithic Cemetery in Shanidar Cave by Ralph S. Solecki, Rose L. Solecki, & Anagnostis P. Agelarakis (Texas A & M University Anthropology Series: Texas A&M University Press) Archaeologists the world over breathed sighs of relief in April of 2003 when it was announced that of the three thousand artifacts looted from Baghdad's Iraq Museum, the prehistoric skulls and bones recovered from Shanidar Cave, which represented some of the earliest human ancestors found in the Middle East, remained safe and untouched.

One of the real-life inspirations for Jean Auel's popular 1970s novel, The Clan of the Cave Bear, Shanidar Cave, discovered in 1951 by Ralph S. Solecki and his research team, lies nestled in the Baradost Mountains about four hundred kilometers north of Baghdad and is the only prehistoric cemetery site east of the Mediterranean.

Long-awaited by anthropologists, The Proto-Neolithic Cemetery in Shanidar Cave systematically catalogs the thirty-five human skeletons, 26 burials and associated funerary artifacts excavated during the 1950s and 1960s. Other cave contents included stone tools, bone tools, gastropod shells, and animal teeth, all offering new evidence about the culture, agriculture, and trade of these people of the ninth millenium B.C. Although Shanidar Cave lies out of the main trade routes, its inhabitants maintained contact with distant areas in order to obtain obsidian, bitumen adhesive, exotic stones for beads, and other material. Because of this, cultural, social, economic, and religious customs were also being diffused throughout the area, heralding the "Neolithic Revolution."

According to the authors, Ralph S. Solecki, professor emeritus at Columbia University in New York City, Rose L. Solecki, research associate at Columbia University and Anagnostis P. Agelarakis, professor of Anthropology and director of the Environmental Studies Program at Adelphi University, "This was a period of significant cultural change in the Near East," ... and "thus adds a new geographic perspective to an investigation long dominated by the data and findings from the more extensively studied Levant area to the west. It also furnishes a new overview of the prehistory of Mesopotamia. The human skeletal samples recovered from the cemetery located to the rear of Shanidar Cave likewise represent a unique population data set, providing new insights into the population of the Near East at a time of transition from an earlier hunting and gathering way of life to a full Neolithic one, dependent on domesticated plants and animals."

In addition to detailed diagrams, maps, figures, and tables showing the layout and contents of Shanidar Cave, the authors compare these prehistoric funeral practices with those of the Levant, discuss cultural developments in the Near East, and analyze the Proto-Neolithic human condition based on osteological research of bones and possible causes of death.

Shanidar Cave has been inaccessible to archaeologists since 1961 because of political developments in Iraq, and as events in the Middle East currently stand, it's unlikely excavation work will resume even in the distant future. At such a time, when even museums are victimized, the rare artifacts described within the pages of The Proto-Neolithic Cemetery in Shanidar Cave take on even greater value and significance.

The Tennessee, Green, and Lower Ohio Rivers Expeditions of Clarence Bloomfield Moore by Clarence Bloomfield Moore, edited by Richard R. Polhemus (Classics in Southeastern Archaeology: University of Alabama Press) Clarence Bloomfield Moore (1852-1936) reached the northern limit of his archaeo­logical endeavors in the work along the Tennessee, the Green, and the Lower Ohio rivers reprinted in this volume of Classics in Southeastern Archaeology. The intention of this introduction is first to discuss in general the importance of Moore's 1913-1916 investigations; second, to examine factors influencing Moore's fieldwork; and, finally, to determine the significance of Moore's work for subsequent investigations on selected sites and areas. While many of the sites reported by Clarence B. Moore cannot be positively identified at the present, an attempt is made to correlate as many sites as possible with current site numbers, published excava­tion reports, and unpublished excavation records.

Unpublished site survey and excavation records and collections for the Tennessee River, in Tennessee, curated at the Frank H. McClung Museum, University of Ten­nessee, Knoxville, were examined in the correlation effort. Site file coordinators in Alabama and Kentucky were consulted to obtain current num­bers for Moore 's sites in those states. Substantial collections derived from subse­quent investigations of sites identified by Moore are curated at the Office of Ar­chaeological Services, University of Alabama Museums, Moundville, and at the Wil­liam S. Webb Museum of Anthropology, University of Kentucky , Lexington . Selected publications on Moore's sites are included in the list of references. The Appendix thus produced, while undoubtedly incomplete, will provide a starting point or finding aid for future use of both the C. B. Moore data and the largely unpublished subse­quent excavation data.

Sacrificing Truth: Archaeology and the Myth of Masada by Nachman Ben-Yehuda (Humanity Books) According to a patriotic legend still current in Israel, in 73 c. H:. 960 heroic Jewish rebels committed mass suicide at the fortress of Masada rather than surrender to the overwhelming force of their Roman oppressors. This version of what happened at Masada seemed to receive solid scientific validation when Prof. Yigael Yadin excavated the ancient wilderness stronghold from 1963 to 1965. But do the facts uncovered at Masada by archaeologists actually support the legend? According to sociologist Nachman Ben‑Yehuda, Masada provides a case study of how the search for scientific truth can be influenced by the pressures of a cultural agenda.

In this fascinating analysis of history in the making, Ben‑Yehuda closely examines the day-by-day transcripts of the archaeologists' conversations at Masada to determine the way in which they evaluated the findings. fie skillfully demonstrates that the interpretation of artifacts uncovered during the dig was significantly affected by the process of nation‑building and the forging of a national identity, which was then under way in Israel. Nation‑building required a heroic past, and the pressure of this requirement subtly led to concealing facts and even falsifying the historical evidence.

Why did the archaeologists involved, all scientifically trained scholars, ignore scientific evidence in favor of a version of history that now appears to be largely a myth? The answer is the focus of this intriguing study, which looks not only at Masada, but at the whole issue of deception in science and the social construction of knowledge. Ben‑Yehuda considers the larger question of how society creates the symbolic moral boundaries between truth and deception, as well as the subtle interplay of science, politics, and ideology.

This absorbing and thoroughly researched work makes a valuable contribution to our understanding of the construction of cultural meaning.

It must be noted that the excavations at Masada were not merely some haphazard dig in a desolate site in the middle of nowhere, or a search for remnants of some culture about which few people know or care. Rather, like the attempts to find the city of Troy, the excavations at Masada stirred hearts in Israel and abroad. Yadin's excavations are also important because they supported in a most significant way the mythical Masada narrative, and largely for that reason became world famous.

Indeed, the authors of the first volume of the final report of Masada's excavations state that "perhaps no other archaeological endeavor in Israel has attracted such widespread attention as the excavations of Masada" To drive the point even further, the authors cite Feldman:

No single event in the history of the second Jewish commonwealth has occasioned more discussion in recent years than the fall of Masada, the mausoleum of martyrs, as it has been called .... The spectacular discoveries in the excavations of Masada by Yadin in a nation where digging is a veritable form of prayer have made Masada a shrine for the Jewish people.

Indeed, another facet of Sacrificing Truth is focused on the quest into the nature of the interaction and mutual influence between Zionism and archaeology. Ben-Yehuda  is also interested in examining the way in which a specific research site was selected, and how the interpretation of the archaeological discoveries was (or was not) made in accordance with social, historical, and political views.

The methodology Ben-Yehuda used is novel. Studying the archaeological excavations of Masada provides us with a fascinating opportunity to examine and follow the development of the scientific interpretations attributed to the artifacts found on Masada.

The major archaeological excavations of Masada took place from 1963 to 1965. Yadin held daily evening meetings with his team of archaeologists which, to Yadin's credit, he recorded. Later these tape recordings were transcribed; and while no one seems certain who exactly did most of the transcriptions, almost all my interviewees seemed to agree that it was Yadin's wife at the time, Cannella. Ben-Yehuda was given full and free access to these original transcriptions at the Institute of Archaeology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. This indeed provides a unique opportunity to examine how the archaeologists reacted to their findings on an almost daily basis. Here are their debates, evaluations, impressions, disappointments, amazement, the manner in which they developed and applied interpretations to the artifacts and structures they were uncovering, and yes--‑their jokes and moods as well. These transcripts provide Ben-Yehuda with an open portal to the dally archaeological work as it actually progressed. From here he followed the different publications of the findings on Masada from 1963 to 1965 and the evolving interpretations of the original findings. The search was stopped with the final publications of the Masada excavation reports in five large volumes between 1989 and 1995, almost thirty years after the excavations had begun. Yadin's main publication of his work on Masada appeared in 1966 with the publication of his Masada books (in both English and Hebrew). Other than these two books, he published very little on Masada. There was a very significant delay in publishing the final results of the excavations. While some early reports were made available, the final reports began to be published only in the late 1980s and 1990s. For example, between 1989 and 1991 (almost twenty‑six years after completion of the excavations) three volumes summarizing part of the final reports were published.? When all the final reports appeared between 1989 and 1995, Yadin was no longer alive, and the volumes were published by some of his students and other scholars. Yadin's 1966 books thus furnish a most important source for his thoughts on Masada. Moreover, Yadin gave many lectures and was regularly interviewed on the radio and by newspapers. Ben-Yehuda located and collected as many of these radio recordings and interviews as he could.

Consequently, the information we have about the evolution of the scientific interpretations of the Masada discoveries is based on a variety of sources: the transcripts of the daily meetings of the archaeologists which reflect their day‑to‑day work, other scientific and popular publications, and the media. Integrating all this information in a meaningful way enables us to examine how the archaeological interpretations were constructed.

In a very real sense, Sacrificing Truth basically details the "excavation of the excavations of Masada."

Solving the puzzle of how archaeology supported the mythical account of Masada shapes the structure of this book. First we become acquainted with the historical tale of Masada as provided by Josephus Flavius, and with the Masada mythical narrative. It is necessary to know these two versions of the Masada tale fairly well before Ben-Yehuda details how and why archaeology was able to support a mythical narrative. Finally, the findings of this study are conceptualized within the sociology of science, deception, and moral boundaries.

Examining both the Masada mythical narrative and the ways in which the archaeological discoveries were interpreted to support that myth raises some fascinating questions about fabrications, deceptions, and the slyness of different reality constructions. Indeed, the study presented in Sacrificing Truth occasions, actually demands, a discussion of these issues. So the concluding chapters take the study presented here as a starting point to develop a discussion about deception, truth, and falsehood, all contextualized within a broader level of analysis.

Sacrificing Truth not only presents a discussion of a specific study of ideology, politics, and archaeology, but also utilizes that study to say something of a much more general nature about science, deception, and falsehood, and some of the ways we socially construct cultural meanings. Recommended as an important study in the social construction of scientific knowledge.

The Molecule Hunt: Archaeology and the Search for Ancient DNA by Martin Jones (Arcade) A revolution is underway in archaeology. Working at the cutting edge of genetic and molecular technologies, researchers have been probing the building blocks of ancient life-DNA, proteins, fats-to rewrite our understanding of the past. Their discoveries (including a Mitochondrial Eve, the woman from whom all modern humans descend) and analyses have helped revise the human genealogical tree and answer such questions as: How different are we from the Neanderthals? Who first domesticated horses and ancient grasses? What was life like for our ancestors? Here is science at its most engaging.

Practicing Archaeology by Thomas W. Neumann, Robert M. Sanford (AltaMira) Cultural Resources Archaeology by Thomas W. Neumann, Robert M. Sanford (AltaMira) practicing cultural resource (CRM) archaeologists bemoan the lack of knowledge, skill, and training of most archaeological field workers. This comprehensive training manual is designed to solve that problem. Neumann and Sanford use their decades of field experience to discuss in great detail the complex processes involved in conducting a CRM project. Dealing with everything from law to logistics, archival research to zoological analysis, project proposals to report production, they provide an invaluable sourcebook to archaeologists who do contract work in North America. After an introduction to the legal and ethical aspects of cultural resources management, the authors describe the process of designing a proposal and contracting for work, doing background research, conducting assessment, testing, and mitigation (Phase I, II, and III) work, laboratory analysis, and preparing a report for the project sponsor. Throughout, the emphasis on real-world problems and issues, the use of extensive examples, and the detailed advice on a host of subjects, make this an ideal teaching tool for novice archaeologists and field schools and a handy reference for experienced CRM archaeologists. The accompanying student textbook by the same authors, ) Cultural Resources Archaeology: An Introduction introduces the basic elements of CRM work to undergraduates. Cultural resources (CRM) archaeology is where graduating archaeology students get their jobs and where most fieldwork and funding is now found. Yet, to date, there has not been a basic textbook introducing students to the proper practices of cultural resources archaeology . . . until now. Neumann and Sanford use their decades of teaching and field experience to walk students through the process of conducting a CRM project. After an introduction to the legal and ethical aspects of cultural resources management, the authors describe the process of designing a project, of conducting assessment, testing, and mitigation (Phase I, II, and III) work, and preparing a report for the project sponsor. Throughout, the emphasis on real-world problems and issues, the use of extensive examples, and the practical advice given to the student on everything from law to logistics, make this an ideal teaching tool for archaeology students who wish to become practicing archaeologists. The accompanying training manual by the same authors, Practicing Archaeology, discusses each of these topics in greater depth for professional archaeologists.

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