Archaeology Magazine - July/August 1984 - 73

settlement information.
Part Four, "Cities," provides three
stimulating papers. In attempting to
isolate the relationships between regional
settlement patterns and political institutions, Warwick Bray focuses on Mesoamerica. He points out the need to model
prehistoric economies in terms of their
separate parts in order to delineate
archaeologically the differing systems
and activities which would enable the
subsequent identification of the compromises made in government systems.
Joyce Marcus synthesizes the recent
literature on Mesoamerican urbanism.
She presents three spatial models for
the organization of cities, and considers
these in relation to native Mesoamerican
views of the city, hierarchies, assessments of function, and comparisons of
features. William Sanders and Robert
Santley use data from central Mexico to
demonstrate that, in this case, local
interactions are more crucial than longdistance trade in the development of the
state.
Part Five of the book presents five
diverse contributions under the heading
"Regional Analysis." Grahame Clark's
commonsense paper focuses on Scandinavia and stresses the potential for initial
sedentism in coastal areas as well as the
possibilities for further intensification
in coastal regions with increased technological developments. R.E.W. Adams
uses his radar imagery data and limited
ground checks to provide a backdrop for
the culture history of the Pasión River
region of Guatemala. He suggests that
intensive cultivation not only added to
Maya prosperity, but may have also
served as a cause for competition and
unrest. An intriguing paper by Alberto
Rex Gonzalez considers Inca settlement
from northwestern Argentina and the
ways in which the nature of these settlements may reflect relationships between
Inca and local groups. In a controversial
vein, K.C. Chang challenges the traditional application of regional analysis in
archaeology. Working with settlement
pattern data from China, he convincingly
argues that locational analysis is problematic at best without concomitant
excavation at the sites in question.
Returning to the Maya area, David
Freidel demonstrates that much current
work on settlement pattern analysis does
not adequately mirror the dynamics of
Maya society and politics; this is largely
because of an interpretative framework
seeking to define a non-static, temporally
changing, prehistoric culture with uniform, synchronic terms.
The final four papers are bound together loosely as "Concepts and Methods." Ignacio Bernal poses a very serious
question which has wider implicationsthe relationship between archaeology
and national interests. With specific
regard to central Mexican archaeology,
he laments that the trend toward settle-

ment pattern studies, while of scientific
merit, is not of wide appeal to the
Mexican public; he sees this as isolating
archaeology from its humanistic background. H.B. Nicholson presents a
review of the various ethnohistoric materials which are available and relevant
to settlement studies; his emphasis on
combining archaeology and ethnohistory
in a single research design has obvious
benefits. In seeking to understand why
progress in settlement archaeology has
stalled, Jerry Sabloff suggests that Maya
settlement pattern studies would benefit
from greater emphasis on "why" rather
than "what" as well as from increased
use of ethnographic analogy. He stresses
the need for middle-range and lowerlevel theory. Michael Moseley considers
the substantial problem of preservation
and its possible effects on the interpretation of settlement patterns; it can only
be hoped that archaeology in South
America is not as backward as his review
suggests.
The final section of the book is a
commentary by Gordon Willey. Willey,
however,does not summarize each paper,
but chooses instead to offer a series of
thoughts and questions which go beyond
the issues addressed within each of the
preceding contributions.
Unlike the first volume, Civilization
in the Ancient Americas does not have
a pertinent summary from Willey. Coherence within this tome is primarily
derived from the fact that the contributors are former students of Willey and
have conducted fieldwork in Middle and
South America. In the Introduction,
Kolata and Leventhal note that they
purposely allowedauthors to choose their
own topics in order to suggest "the tenor
and breadth of Gordon Willey's own
scholarly enquiries." While these essays
do serve this purpose, the work itself is
somewhat uneven because of it. Norman
Hammond's history of Maya archaeology, for example, could have been
expanded or balanced by such overviews
for central Mexico and South America.
A short introduction to each major
section might also have served to tighten
the contents of the book. As with the
Burg Wartenstein volume, however,
Civilization in the Ancient Americas is
an impressive collection of essays.
Following Hammond's introductory
essay, the book is ostensibly organized
around a series of topics. The first
stresses the importance of maximizing
"basic data interpretation";
three
papers are included within this section.
Paul Healy reports on palaeoecological
interpretations derived from archaeological investigations in northeastern
Honduras. His detailed emphasis on
archaeological reconstruction of ecology
and subsistence activities is unusual.
Mary Pohl's article complements
Healy 's. She is concerned with the intercontinued on page 74

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1984
July/August

Archaeology Magazine - July/August 1984

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