Book Reviews

Holocene Human Ecology in Northeastern North America, George P. Nicholas (Editor), 1988, Plenum Press, xx + 319 pp, $34.50 (clothbound).

Occasionally one comes across a book of collected papers that makes truly interesting and profitable reading from cover to cover; Holocene Human Ecology is one of those rare finds. The collection stems from a conference held in 1982, and while the long delay in publication is unfortunate, the papers exhibit updating and are relevant today. Editor Nicholas is to be congratulated for his perseverance in seeing this volume through to publication.

The collection of ten papers is presented in three sections: The context of human adaptation; people on the landscape; and long-term perspectives. Although the focus is clearly on the Northeast, mostly New England, the papers should be of interest to those Quaternary scientists who are concerned with prehistoric human ecology.

New England is a region where the archaeological database has been slow to emerge and even slower to see publication of final reports on major projects. The papers in this volume tend to be authored by young scientists, trained to think in terms of interdisciplinary approaches. With some exceptions, the papers present “work in prog- ress’’; definitive statements regarding human-land relationships must await further work.

Editor Nicholas is responsible for a thoughtful introduction and useful linking com- ments between sections.

Russell Barber evaluates the ecological potential of land snails in New England sites. He points out that while snail remains may be very rare in typically acidic New England soils, they do occur, and should be considered in any environmental analysis of highly localized conditions.

William Baron, an historical climatologist, presents data on climates of New England using combinations of instrumental and diary analysis. Despite the demonstrably colder Neoglacial period, Baron argues that the effects of the climate were not demonstrably influential in determining the course of local history.

In a provocative paper, Catherine Carlson questions an oft-stated assumption that salmon constituted an important component of prehistoric diets in the northeast. A review of faunal lists reveals very few salmon remains, and it seems likely that much of the study area was not prime salmon habitat. Further, it appears unwarranted to automatically assume, as some authors have, that any site located by a falls is automatically a salmon fishing station.

The last paper in the first section, by Douglas Kellogg, discusses the uses and abuses of sea-level rise curves in archaeological reconstructions, with particular reference to the Gulf of Maine. Local, relative, sea-level data must be employed, and assump- tions involved in explaining human behavior based on changes in sea level should be clearly stated to avoid circular reasoning. A particularly useful bibliography is in- cluded.

Geoarchaeology: An International Journal, Vol. 5, No. 2, 187-196 (1990) 0 1990 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. CCC 0883-6353/90/020187-10$04.00

BOOK REVIEWS

To begin section two, William Patterson and Kenneth Sassaman examine historical and paleoecological (short core, lake bottom sediments) evidence for deliberate prehis- toric burning in New England forests. While the evidence seems overwhelming for southern New England, where prehistoric agriculture occurred, the case for the northern portion is equivocal. The perspective of humans intentionally altering the environment for calculated future advantages should be kept in mind by plant and human ecologists.

Mitchell Mulholland effectively uses a database of 7000 southern New England site locations to model shifting settlement patterns. He sees in the data evidence for fluctuat- ing populations, based on site numbers per millennium, and the change from early foraging to foraging-horticulture that developed approximately 1000 B.P. in the area.

Peter Thornbahn and Deborah Cox examine settlement patterns in a small Rhode Island estuary and proceed from there to model subsistence strategies based on produc- tivity estimates of changing environments. Site fauna and floral data will be needed to test the predictions which appear to differ from other southern New England estuaries and models that stress the importance of the marine resources rather than those of the uplands.

In a paper that focuses on the mid-Atlantic region, Arthur Joyce questions a number of ecological assertions found in the regional archaeological literature. He points out that the warmest period along the eastern seaboard occurs between 9000 and 5000 B.P. In an overly pedantic fashion, he chides regional archaeologists for what he regards as outmoded ecological theory and faulty conclusions.

Through the utilization of the Brown University pollen data bank, Denise Gaudreau presents isopolls to document the spread of tree species throughout the Holocene. The vegetational mosaic aspect of the landscape developed by colonization of small groups of plants is emphasized. Archaeologists should find this modern approach very useful as they progress from broad environmental and cultural discussions to more particularistic studies.

The final paper is by George Nicholas, also the volume editor. His aim is to demon- strate the potential attractiveness of early Holocene wetlands and glacial lakes a t a time when upland productivity might have been poor by comparison. The concept of ecological leveling is used to explain the shift in settlement pattern out of the wetlands and into the uplands as the two systems equalized in carrying capacity. The hypothesis seems a sound one, and preliminary site distributional data from western Connecticut appear to support the idea. Detailed paleoecological work has yet to be conducted, however, as has the kinds of upland site survey needed.

Although the focus is the Northeast, it would be unfortunate if only devotees of that area pick up this volume. It should, as already noted, be considered a book about potential, not necessariiy demonstrated, human-environmental relationships. And even if one cannot agree with every conclusion, or even the efficacy of the models presented, there is much useful scholarship here.

Overall, this is an excellent contribution to the prehistory and to the practice of geoarchaeology in the Northeast. It demonstrates the robustness of models that inte- grate modern paleoecological theory with archaeological concerns. As the archaeology database grows in refinement and detail we can expect some of the latent potential of the cultural ecological paradigm to contribute more effectively in this region than it has in the past.

The volume, one of a new series in “interdisciplinary contributions to archaeology”

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BOOK REVIEWS

by Plenum Press, is well edited, produced, and attractively priced. We should be looking forward to future publications in this series.

David Sanger Dept. of Anthropology and

Inst. for Quaternary Studies University of Maine

Orono, ME 04469

Phytolith Analysis: An Archaeological and Geological Perspective, Dolo- res R. Piperno, 1988, Academic Press, xii + 280 p., $49.00 (clothbound).

Phytolith Analysis is the first book that attempts to present all aspects of the subject in one volume. As such, a wide variety of fields need to be covered (botany, paleoecology, soil science) because phytolith analysis is a truly interdisciplinary subject. The book accomplishes this difficult task admirably, although oriented ultimately towards appli- cations to fossil material. The botanical aspect, however, is shown to be crucial to the interpretation of fossil phytoliths and is presented in detail.

The first chapter presents a concise review of the history of phytolith research, orga- nized into four periods: discovery and exploration (nineteenth-century microscopists), botanical research (pre-World War I1 botanists), ecological applications (post-World War I1 soil scientists), and archaeological applications (archaeologists since the 1960s). The brief summary asserts that although phytoliths exhibit high paleoecological signifi- cance, premature conclusions of limited phytolith extent and diversity prevented de- tailed research efforts. The remainder of the book strongly refutes these conclusions.

Chapter 2 describes the “phytolith cycle” from production in plants to deposition in sediments and dissolution. Topics of differential production and preservation are important for interpretation of fossil phytoliths. Patterns of production by family indi- cate that phytoliths are not restricted to the grasses or monocotyledons. Chapter 3 is a n extensive treatment of phytolith morphology, based largely on the author’s work in the New World tropics. Phytolith types are organized by origin within plant tissue; identifying characteristics are correlated to plant taxonomy. The wide diversity of phytolith morphology is well documented by both text and plates (although scales are lacking on the plates). Several classification keys indicate relative specificity of the various phytolith types.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal with the techniques of phytolith analysis in the field and laboratory, respectively. Field sampling is discussed from a methodological as well as technical viewpoint. Pairing of feature and nonfeature samples, analysis of noncultural samples, and modern analogs of vegetation regimes are essential strategies for accurate interpretation. Chapter 5 is less theoretical in nature, focusing on the various techniques for extracting phytoliths from plants and sediments. Although brief, these chapters provide an overview of the sampling and extraction techniques.

Chapters 6, 7, and 8 deal with applications of phytolith analysis to fossil material. Chapter 6 discusses issues of interpretation, centering on the types of information

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